“Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need.” (Will Rogers)
Many websites rely solely on Advertising for generating revenues and the Search giant, Google knows this and in order to reap in from the benefits, Google even offers its own advertisement placement service titled as AdWords. However, not all ad placements receive the same treatment.
Due to the spammy nature of many websites, Google has updated its search engine algorithm to exclude certain websites which do the “dirty” advertisements. It is essential that you know which ad placements might get you in trouble and earn you penalization from Google and end up in getting your site excluded from Search Engine Results Page.
Ads above the fold
Above the fold is the area that a user first sees when your webpage is loaded. Whenever a user navigates to your website, they expect content to be the first thing to popup, however, if your webpage exhibits excessive ads first and the actual content is buried somewhere underneath the pile of ads then your website is not well designed.
Not only this, Google will take your ad placement into consideration when determining the page rankings and pages having excessive ads above the fold are heavily penalized. However, having one banner above the fold is acceptable.
OVERLAY ADS
Overlay ads also known as Full-screen floating ads are the ones that fill up the entire browser window when a user navigates to the webpage. Such ads prevent the user from viewing the content till the ad finishes or the appropriate button to close the ad is found and executed. Since, such ads clog up the entire browser window, many users navigate away from the Website.
Needless to say, such ads have a negative impact on the website and the website ends up getting a high bounce rate (the number of viewers who navigate away from the webpage immediately after landing on it). Google factors in bounce rates when formulating their search results and a high rate results in penalization.
Interstitials
Interstitials (also called Roadblocks) are forms of full-page advertisements and they go beyond the normal full-screen floating ads. Such ads redirect the user to an entirely different webpage and most users immediately click the back button without even letting the page loading finish. Hence, roadblocks contribute to an even higher bounce rate than other forms of advertisements. As with other foul advertising policies, putting up an obstacle between content and the user will most likely yield a penalization.
Deceiving Ads
Ads disguised as content is another way of fishing in users to view more ads. Ad is mostly disguised as a continuation of another section at the end of the articles and no matter what the user clicks, he is directed to a huge amount of meaningless blabber or pages filled with popups and advertisements.
Deceiving users to click onsites filled with advertisements is a strict violation of the Google guidelines and ends up getting a straight away penalization.
Conclusion
The type of advertisements that run on your webpage and how they are placed plays a detrimental role in your site’s success. Even though there is nothing wrong in earning revenue through ads, but a violation of Google’s guidelines not only results in site penalization but also contributes towards a dissatisfied user who will not navigate to your website again.
“Advertising is legalized lying.” (H. G. Wells)
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