Fighting “Thong” Adsense Ads on FutureMe

Google does a lot of neat things. But AdSense is just not good yet. At least for small sites with not very much text like FutureMe.

For about the past four months, virtually *all* ads running on the footer of the front page of futureme.org have been something along the lines of “Buy Thongs” “Discount Thong Underwear”, and “Visit i-thong.net.” (I have since been waging a battle to screen out these ads — see postscript — so you may not have the pleasure of seeing these ads, but trust me. Thongs.  Everywhere.)

Huh?

What’s especially curious, is that the actual destination of several of these, is not actually a thong superstore, but info.com (a search engine aggregator) which could have many, many different link tags, but somehow “Find Thongs” was the text chosen for the ad.

So, Mr. Google, just what about FutureMe – a site where people write letters to themselves in the future – would lead you to show ads for buying thongs? And not one ad. Three ads. Repeatedly. Again, and again, and again. Thongs. This is not randomness. This is systematic displaying of ads about thong underwear.

Perhaps I am just getting reactionary in my old age, but I have a hard time believing that thongs are really the best thing to advertise on FutureMe. I would think that attractive ads would be more along the lines of: financial services, weight loss, continuing education, job sites, etc — things related to self-improvement.

But perhaps Google seems to feel, apparently with utter and resounding conviction, that a primary means of self-improvement is to acquire lots and lots of thongs.

Or, maybe this is indeed the work of one of the Google’s taxonomists trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy: people go to a site where the think about the future -> people see thong ads -> people associate thongs with their future selves -> everyone wears thongs -> weirdo taxonomist is happy!

I’m confused. And disturbed.

postscript: using Google’s “competitive ad filter” I was able to screen three of these sites.

but then another thong site showed up!  so i screened that one too.

the battle may be won, but i fear not yet the war. 

<rant> but i just don’t understand why Google has not introduced a more sophisticated means of having site owners *help* to target ads. the reality is that FutureMe is sparsely (but effectively) designed (nice job Jay!) and there is not much text to parse. so I want to be able to add terms in my AdSense account about *how people use the site* which is *different that what the site says*, and I would argue, much more relevant to what kind of ads to serve…</rant>