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I hate Zwinky’s

…because I’m clearly not in the target demographic. Every time I load Desktop Tower Defense (DTD), I have told “MochiAds” (the in-game ad company that apparently sells DTD inventory) just as much by choosing 1/5 under “Rate this Ad.” And yet, 97% of the time I go to DTD, I get one of the same three stupid Zwinky ads.

So - is the “rate this ad” feature a sham designed to increase ad-memorability by driving a response? Or is MochiAds incapable of selling anything other than Zwinky ad units? Whatever the case, why are they wasting an opportunity to improve the ads served and increase the likelihood of a clickthrough? If I were an advertiser, I’d be annoyed. If I were the DTD people, I’d be annoyed. As a game player, I’m annoyed. Basically, MochiAds seems to be underserving everyone in the value chain here.

And, I know they could improve. MochiAds plants a browser cookie (look for “Mochibot”) that lists my “mochiGUID” - which FYI is “e421d88403a601f70149a530d06c1229.” So - they know who I am and how I’ve rated each ad I’ve seen. So why doesn’t Mochi try to provide me with ads that I do like?

Then again, Google’s vaunted AdSense can’t serve ads for DTD worth a damn either. HandDrawnGames is really missing out.

adsense, adunits, advertising, desktop+tower+defence, desktoptowerdefence, dtd, flash, google, handdrawngames, mochiads zwinky

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When AdSense Fails

For all Google’s algorithmic awesomeness, the AdSense crawler still has the incredible ability to suck at keyword analysis. Take, for example, the awesomely popular Desktop Tower Defence game. Check out the AdSense placements:

Yes, that’s an ad for some type of antenna tower, because the page says “Tower” on it in a number of places.

Meanwhile, the perfectly serviceable meta keyword and content tags tell the real story:

<meta name=”description” content=”A flash version of Warcraft III TD”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”warcraft, flash, game”>

So - Goolge is missing some killer targeted inventory, and HandDrawnGames is missing revenue. Is there no opportunity to create a better connection between content and ad placement here?

1. Meta Tags: I understand that meta tags are easily abused and Google by-and-large disregards them. What about algorithmically assessing the credibility of meta tags on a site by site basis on the criteria of URL age, history, and traffic pattern?
2. Webmaster Tools & AdSense: Again why not let webmasters categorize their sites in Google’s Webmaster Tools, allowing superior placement? Again, a credibility algorithm could reduce the impact from link farms, etc.
3. Tie into DMOZ: Ok, DMOZ is dead in the water. But perhaps its time to resurrect it, and make use of it as a categorization engine for AdSense. Crank up the community profile of DMOZ again, and surface its “category lookup” as a free API, of which AdSense would be the biggest but not only customer.
4. Del.icio.us: Ok, the Yahoo ownership might make this sticky for Google, but Del.icio.us URL tag history would be a great way to categorize sites for AdSense inventory purposes. Sure del.icio.us can be gamed, but so can anything, and community self-policing tends to dampen gamed popularity spikes. Perhaps Yahoo should be using this as a source of competitive advantage in Panama?

Are people at the search engines thinking of these sort of things? I would have thought Google would be all over this, given that relevance was what made AdSense king in the first place.

adsense, del.icio.us, delicious, desktoptowerdefence, dmoz, dtd, google, meta, metatages, panama, tags, warcraft yahoo

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