Repetitive Google Ads

[ro...@spearhead.biz]

Kudos to the Scribd Team for creating such a great and easy to use
document platform. I'm a non-programmer with advanced beginner html
knowledge and I easily used the javascript API to convert my document
to Ipaper and embed it in my website with Google Ads.

That said, I have a document that is over 100 pages long and Google
Ads is showing the SAME FOUR ADS throughout the document every three
pages. This repitition starts to get increasingly annoying to a
reader over the length of the document. I realize that Google Ads has
'assessed' the overall subject of the document and assigned the ads
accordingly, but it would be of much greater service to both reader
and publisher if the ads varied a little and were more specific to the
pages immediately surrounding or preceding each ad 'bar'. Is there
any way to make this happen?

I did try breaking the document into chapters with titles and spaces
in between but that didn't work.

As a means of comparison, I also converted the document into html,
added my own google ads through my personal adsense account, and
published the web page. The result was a much nicer variety of ads
throughout the text, all still relevent. In fact, it was exactly the
kind of result that I would've hoped to achieve using the Scribd
platform. Is there something that can be done about this?


Thanks,

Roy

[ro...@spearhead.biz]

As nobody has answered, I realize I may be the only person interested
in this issue. Nevertheless, for the record, I would like to make a
clarification regarding my previous posting. After more extensive
research, I have discovered that when I convert my document to html,
place my own Google Adsense code inside, and publish it to the web,
there are sections in which the ads in the html version are superior
to the ads in the scribd version because they are all relevant but
there is a greater variety. However, in other sections of the html
version, the ads are less relevant than the ads in the scribd
version. I have yet to experiment with Adsense's section targeting
feature but for now it's a bit of wash, I guess.

Nevertheless, I am thinking that perhaps the easiest way for the
scribd platform to initially deal with overly repetitive ads might be
simply to give the publisher more control over how often the ad bar
appears. An added option on the API settings page could simply allow
a publisher to place an ad bar after every X pages. Currently, it's a
constant set at 3, so changing that to a simple variable in the scribd
code shouldn't be that hard (although I'm not a programmer so I can't
say for sure). Anyway, that way, if somebody does get a lot of
repetitive ads, they can at least tone the repitition down throughout
the document by placing less ads bars. Others who feel they can get
away with it might place more, like one ad bar every other page. It
would certainly be a step forward in terms of optimizing the
advertising inside Scribd without having to do too much work.

Thanks,

Roy

[Jared Friedman]

Hi Roy,
The repetition of the ads is an artifact of how ads in iPaper are
implemented. Because iPaper is a Flash application, we can't use the
ordinary Adsense ad system. Instead, we use an API to pull ad data
from Google and render it manually using Flash. Currently the
implementation simply grabs the first four ads and repeats them.

I'm aware that that's not the optimal arrangement, as more variety
would provide a better user experience. We do plan to implement that
at some point, but unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it
in the meantime. I'll post something to the list when an improved ad
experience gets rolled out.

Best,
Jared

--
Jared Friedman
CTO, Scribd
m: 646-296-0973

[ro...@spearhead.biz]

Got it. Thanks for the response.

> >> Roy- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -