Google, you can do better..

Last week, I was trying to look up old posts to link to something I was writing.

Three for three, the Google ads on the right sidebar were something like this.. 

My first thought was "hey, don't I know the woman in the top picture? have seen her somewhere before!"

Then realized that it is exactly the same ad where I had seen her before. the mind is a funny thing. It makes these associations.

Yes. I agree. There IS a "sweet Asian Woman I should be with" and she has a name already.. Sangeetha! 

If Google was smart enough, it would have figured it out. 

On the bright side, they have figured out the right demographic based on my travel habits.  For a good six months they were showing ads for the "sweet Russian woman I should be with". Sooner or later they will zero in on "Indian woman I should be with", then figure out I am already with a sweet woman and finally pitch me something else. Or so one hopes.. 

For crying out loud, there are very few things that are interesting to me right now Google. My life is an open blog!

Work, Home and Bikram Yoga

If it is work, pitch me things that will make travel a breeze (doesn't have to be sweet Asian women.. that is taking it to an extreme)

If it is home, it has to be "back to school" related.. pitch me something that I will be tempted to buy for the kids or for myself, which is restricted to food and photography (don't bother with the Nikon ads either. You should have figured out that I am too deeply invested in Canon to move now after 25 years). As for buying things for the "sweet girl", she would rather buy it herself. So you have to work a little harder and pitch me those things based on what she is checking out online. A little help there would be nice!

If it is Yoga, then you know what you can pitch.

It IS really that simple!

Adsense

after turning on the ads on the side (for more than two months) happened to go check that account.

Yippppeee...

have made a whopping 7300 bucks!

No, just kidding.

Actually made 73 cents in two months.

When I told my MIL that there was enough money to buy balli mittai for one kid, she said "how come I don't see any ads?". Then we compared it on our laptops and she was right. My laptop shows the ads and her laptop didn't.

Then we figured out that the ads show up only on Firefox and you don't see them if you use Internet explorer as the browser. My MIL, who is very devoted to her Microsoft employee son, is loyal to the explorer. Me being the paranoid techie, switched to firefox after many friends told me it is safer.

The lack of making the 10000 dollar mark.. err. 1$ mark has been blamed on IE.

To all those people who said "indha blog wog ellam oru ana paisavukku prayojanam unda?" (Is this blog wog even worth an ana paisa?).....

Okay, first we need to tell you what an ana-paisa is. One "ana" which used to be the old Indian minor currency denomination is 6.25 paise in today's terms. (one rupee was 16 anas and is now 100 paise).

If you use the conversion, one dollar is 47.66 rupees (today's rate). One rupee is 16 anas. So 1 ana is 0.13 cents. If I made 73 cents, it is 556 anas!

There, take that you nay sayers!

ps. The ads are consistantly irrelevant since they were turned on. The topic of the post and the ads seem to have no connection. Really wanted to see the algorithm at work. That is the real reason for turning on adsense. Fond hopes that a photoblog for canon and HDR would turn up ads for really popular software that fits the context. Nope, instead we get ads for home loans. This seems to be highly over rated!

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Adsense

Today we were having dinner with a relative who works at google.

He convinced me to use Adsense. He was asking me why I don't use Adsense. I did not understand. Told him that

1. somehow the ads would clutter up the template
2. don't care about the money
3. don't want to be indirectly responsible for suggesting products that I might not recommend

and he said "totally not true!"

You can completely select what kind of contextual ads to place and it might actually help you, if not the people who read your blog and point them to some interesting related links..

So tried it.. and it messed up my template for sure. So have signed up for an account and now I have to figure out how to get it into the sidebar instead of the top of the blog!

If google wants me to use Adsense, they should make it more idiot proof for simpletons like me (who are still on the same old template from four years ago!).

Maybe those who have this on their blog can give me some pointers?

Does this actually help point you to interesting links?

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