Is Google AdSense Losing Its Relevance?

Google AdSense is known for its uncanny relevance in serving context sensitive ads. Its competitors like Yahoo Publisher Network and Kontera aren’t being able to make significant inroads to AdSense / AdWords customer based primarily due to relevance, perceived or otherwise. However recently I am starting to see completely irrelevant ads as far as contextuality. The problem is deeper than simple not having relevant ads or even CPC ads. I suspect the problem is in the algorithm.

I have included a screeshot of an AdSense ad displayed for my recent article on WordPress comment spam prevention plugins. The ads on the top of the page are relevant which indicates that the page has been scanned and processed by Google AdSense media bots. However in the second ad slot, as shown, the displayed ad is about the impending marriage of two popular Indian movie stars (Aishwarya Rai & Abhishek Bachchan). The ad is obviously not contextually relevant. However it is probably relevant to some Indians who are interested in the love life of their movie stars, which I am not. This is not a mistake. This is very likely intentional. You have to understand that I am connecting from India, a fact that is known to Google Ad servers. The logic is that Google algorithm designers suspect that Indian’s by and large will be interested in general topics like movie or say dating. So Google has shifted, in this case, the contextuality from content to location (of the viewer). While it sounds good in theory, such approach is fraught with danger in terms of losing relevance.

Let’s take this simple example. The viewers of my site are mostly technically oriented and will most likely be looking for Java or WordPress articles, code, software etc. And while they are doing it, it is very likely that they will not be looking for Angelina Jolie or Aishwarys Rai as is in this case. While such ads may truly be relevant for some, overall such ads can only cheapen the content of the blog instead of enriching them. It may sound good in paper, but Google location sensitive ads should be deployed only in very limited cases and when there isn’t any context sensitive ads.