Most advertising campaigns allow blog publishers to approve or decline paid advertisements. However, a blogger friend who consistently rejected competitor ads and other credit spam ads was surprised to see them live on his site when he returned from a 2 week long vacation.
Most advertising programs have a clause which lets ads auto approve and go live if the blog owner fails to approve or reject the ads over a short period of time. They have kept this feature to help you get the ad in case the email goes into your email spam folder. I know Text link ads autoapproves after 2 days, Blogads goes live after 3 days, Feedburner accepts them after 2 days if you do not actively reject these ads.
Bloggers usually select the option to select ads before going live to easily reject spam ads, competitor ads or ads unrelated to their site context (its not all about money!). But bloggers often remind their readers of no posting schedule when they take a blog vacation on far away islands with no internet connection. That is when evil advertisers can push through auto approving ads which get auto-accepted after a few days and go live on your site. The longer your vacation, the more is the chance of such ads slipping through which could harm the credibility of your brand.
How to block auto-approved ads
1. A subtle goodbye. Do you really need to publicly announce your blog vacation? Your regular readers usually access your feed for daily updates. They know when you are on a lean posting schedule. Its not a good idea to plaster a huge notice to let everyone know you are gone for a few days and let your blog become a target for unwanted evil activities.
2. Remove the code – Most ad programs require you to paste a javascript code in your blog template or use a wordpress plugin (TLA) to auto update the advertisements. Simply remove the code and regain control of your blog on your vacation. Of course this works only when there are no current advertisers running on the code. You do not want to lose advertising income from your current advertisers and it would be against the advertising terms of service to do so too.
3. Block New Advertisers – Inform the advertising campaign support that you would not be accepting new advertisers for the time you are on vacation. They might fix it up for you easily.
This post aims to highlight an issue that if you do not post, it does not mean your blog will stay as it is. When you take a blog vacation next time, remember that undesired advertisements might go live. Be sure to take all the blog keys with you!