October 9, 2008

Shout-Out to LGBT DUers: Yes, the Ads Can Be Filtered, Quickly and Easily

Hear tell there’s a bit of a dust-up over a certain anti-gay ad on your site. Well, now, before you tell one of your own, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass,” listen to your old ex-comrade, who knows about these things, then make up and play nice. If something awful happens (like, the Dems not getting as many seats in the House as they should), you can’t afford to bitch each other out like that right now. (Bitch each other out after everybody else tires of blaming Teh Gays for whatever it is they’re going to blame you for this time).

Now, to the subject at hand:

Every Webmaster using Google Adsense can — I repeat, can — filter out any specific ad s/he wants.

I filter offending ads all the time. I don’t catch every one immediately (in fact, you may find one as you read this, but right now I see an ad for gay T-shirts, one for Unitarian Universalists of the Bay Area, a quit-smoking ad, one for the ACLU, and some sort of tool for tracking California legislation), but I do watch closely, and do my best to prevent pro-McCain ads, “Meet Christian Singles” ads, “alternatives to abortions” ads, and of course all anti-gay ads — which are bound to pop up occasionally, as the ads are contextual, after all.

But I wouldn’t use AdSense at all if it didn’t give me a surefire way to block ads that offended my visitors — or me.

After the first two or three months of diligent monitoring and filtering, I think I’ve caught the vast majority of sources for these ads, and am always on the lookout for new ads I haven’t filtered yet. Still, I have never once seen (nor been told about) the appearance of any ad from any of the pro-Proposition 8 sites, even though I spend an inordinate amount of space blogging about Proposition 8, and sometimes even linking to the anti-gay sites whose ads I would never allow on my site.

In fact, rather than any anti-gay ads, I have been seeing a lot of NoOnProp8.com ads, and even a few No On 102 ads (102 is the anti-gay Arizona amendment), a large number of welcoming-and-affirming churches, and wedding officiants who marry same-sex couples. And that’s just the way I like it.

So, a Webmaster can filter out offending ads — and if I ever saw anything as horrific as a ProtectMarriage.com ad on my site, I’d drop whatever I was doing and filter it out that second.

If that weren’t possible, I wouldn’t use AdSense.

Now, in case the Webmaster doesn’t know how to filter ads, it’s easy:

1. Log in to AdSense.

2. Click on the Adsense Setup tab.

3. Click on the Competitive Ad Filter tab.

4. Enter the URL of the offending ad (which can be found by copying the link of the ad; the actual URL is at the very end).

If the offending ad is a Flash ad, knowing where it leads would allow the Webmaster to enter the URL of the destination site, with and without “www.” just to be on the safe side.

If the offending ad persists, the Webmaster should contact Google for assistance — they’re very nice, helpful folks (although I can’t remember the last time I needed to contact AdSense support, because the system is so self-explanatory and easy to use).

It would also behoove the Webmaster to learn about the Ad Review Center:

“The Ad Review Center is a new publisher tool that enables you to review placement-targeted ads that may appear on your pages. The Ad Review Center provides publishers with more transparency and control over placement-targeted ads appearing on their sites. You can allow or block individual ad groups and advertisers, as well as filter ads by type: text or image.

“If you choose to block ads in the Ad Review Center, you’ll need to provide your reason for blocking the ad group or advertiser. This feedback, which we provide to advertisers, gives the advertisers more insight on how to adjust their ad quality, content, and relevance in order to appear on more sites.”

If none of the above works (and there’s no reason on earth any of it wouldn’t), the Webmaster could turn off image ads altogether. That’s a bit drastic, but, again, if I saw an anti-gay ad on my site, I’d get rid of the horrible thing before you could say, “Happy Anniversary, Sapph and Buffy!”

(We’ve been married two months today, you see. )

I can’t do anything about the horrifying cycle of homophobia you guys are experiencing right now (I’m Sapphocrat, not Sisyphus, you know), but perhaps some helpful advice on how to get those disgusting anti-gay ads off your site will help make the atmosphere feel a little less hostile.

Good luck, old pals (and wish us luck in the Golden State in November — the deep-pocketed religious extremists are crushing us gay folks here, you know, and I think they really are going to take away our right to marry ).