Half-Elf on Tech

Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian

Tag: ads

  • Disable Google Ads on One Page

    Disable Google Ads on One Page

    After my adventures with Google telling me I was hosting adult content (again, this is actually my third go-round with them), I’m here to inform you that you can now block Google Ads on one page only.

    Add a URL Channel

    First you have to tell Google what your URLs are that you want to treat differently. For that, we’ll use a URL channel which you can find at My Ads > Content > URL Channels. Now, you only get 500 of these, which means you can only flag 500 unique URLs as … well … unique.

    Add a new URL channel - It gives you some examples, but basically forget using wildcards.

    You may notice, no wildcards. So I can add halfelf.org/2012/legitimate-porn-plugins/ but not halfelf.org/.*/.*[porn].*/ which would be pretty cool. Once you’ve added your URL, you’ll see it like this:

    URL channel in place, it's basically a list of all the URLs you treat special. Nothing fancy.

    Edit Ad Settings

    I’m using Auto Ads because I’m incurably lazy, as my friend Syed knows. So I go to My Ads > Auto Ads, but if you were using specific units, you’d go to My Ads > Ad Units. There you go to the Advanced URL Settings section and click on the add button for a new URL Group.

    Advanced settings, there's a button for "New URL Group" and nothing else explanatory.

    This brings you to a page where you can select the URLs for this group. 

    A massive list of all URLs. This could get messy, Google. Thanks.

    When you’ve picked all your URLs (and yes you can add more later), click next and you’ll get a list of all the possible ad units. Uncheck them all. That’s the point of this, right? Finally you’ll review the group and give it a name. I picked “No Ads” since that’s what this was.

    Review the group, come up with a name, make sure the URLs are correct.

    Annoyances

    1. You have to add in each URL one at a time
    2. There’s no wildcards or regex
    3. You only get 500 urls
    4. You still can’t talk to a human

    All in all, it’s another day with Google.

  • Google Auto Ads

    Google Auto Ads

    After upgrading my theme, I saw a note that I could add my Google Adsense ID, but “Auto Ads must be enabled in your AdSense account for this feature to work properly.”

    Auto Ads?

    Auto Ads

    A month ago Google introduced a new way to handle ads, and simply that is you don’t have to mess around with placing adds. You put your code in and then you tell Google “Gimme them auto ads!” and they add in … well … ads.

    Depending on your options, you can show in-article ads or just section ones, and it comes out looking a bit like this:

    An example of in-article ads

    Not Perfect

    There are some issues with this.

    There are obvious pros to this, and mostly it’s that I don’t have to think about where an ad is going to go. I can tell Google “Show a medium amount of ads where you think is best” and walk away. I don’t have to worry about which ads to use. Also they use Google’s ‘what fits with the content’ magic algorithm.

    But.

    I can’t exclude certain areas.

    Which means on one of my sites has an extra hunk of ads in the headers, as Google inserted an ad in each section. And I can’t tell it not to put adds in specific sections. I can tell it not to put ads on specific pages, and with Genesis I can do that from within WordPress, but the options just aren’t quite where I want. Yet.

    Setting It Up

    Like all

    1. In the left navigation panel, visit My ads and select Get Started.
    2. On the “Choose your global settings” page, select the ad formats that you’d like to show and click Save.
    3. On the next page, click Copy code.
    4. Paste the ad code between the < head > and </ head > tags of each page where you want to show Auto ads.

    It takes about 20 minutes for ads to show up

    If you’re using Genesis themes, upgrade to 2.6 and paste your Publisher ID in the new setting field for Auto Ads, in either the Theme Settings, or the new Customizer panel.

    If you don’t want that at all, Gary Jones made a plugin to remove it entirely from Genesis Themes. Though I’d point out you don’t have to use it if you don’t want.