AdSense Introduces Ad Review Center

Google has added the ability to preview the ads that will run on a publisher’s site and to block those they don’t want to appear, the AdSense blog announced today.

This effort at improving transparency could help publishers and avoid sites advertising on a publisher’s site that they do not feel are a good fit.

“In an effort to provide you with more transparency and control over the ads appearing on your pages, we’ve developed the Ad Review Center. This new feature, which we’ll be rolling out to publishers over the next few months, will allow you to review ads placement-targeted to your site and ensure those ads are relevant to your site’s users,” the blog stated.

With growing compliance issues in some industries, this will help Google by allowing publishers to exclude sites that may violate their regulations and thus encourage them to add Google AdSense.

Google asks that you give feedback on why you exclude a site – a good idea and one that may start them looking at their content advertisers as well as the real needs of their publishers who helped make them a big chunk of their revenue.

The feature will be rolled out over the next few months, Google said.

“When it has been enabled for your account, you’ll see a green notification box at the top of your ‘Competitive Ad Filter’ page, located under the ‘AdSense Setup’ tab. By default, the Ad Review Center will let you review all placement-targeted ads after they have run on your site. However, if you have a strong need to manually review ads before they appear on your site, you may do so by clicking on the ‘update settings’ link in the Ad Review Center. You’ll then have 24 hours to review ads before they are automatically allowed to run on your site. Please note that you can also return to the Ad Review Center and allow a previously blocked ad, or block a previously allowed ad,” the blog explained.