Just thought I would share a small tip I figured out about a year ago and have been using since. This only works if you are a very targeted site in a small market but it does work quit well. Lets say you are a very specialty shop like film scanners. You look over your site and notice several fairly small shops are targeting your site because they only sell film scanner repair parts, as well as several huge photo stores like B&H, 17th street and so on. 17th street and B&H are too big to monitor so this trick will not work on them. But of the smaller vendors who are paying a premium to target your site block a couple of them with the completive ad filter. If they monitor there stats they will see they are getting no impressions and usually assume its due to CTP. If this is the case they will usually try to raise their budget to regain the traffic they are used to. So after 2-3 days of filtering them remove the filter. As long as you have other vendors targeting your site you should not see a drop in your revenue the days you have the filters active, and a big spike after you remove them. I have done this on several sites and it works very well for specialty ones. Even on medium sized sites I can usually boost income 5-10 dollars a day with this trick.
Never had a single measurable decrease from it. Lets face it. Most ads look the same to people who clicks ads. So "Buy film parts here" and "Repair parts for your film scanner" all look the same. Key is just making sure you do not block too many sites. If you do the other vendors just get an increase in impressions. Or so has been my experience.
If you are gaining due to this its good... but regarding If they monitor there stats they will see they are getting no impressions and usually assume its due to CTP. If this is the case they will usually try to raise their budget to regain the traffic they are used to. I think adwords provides an option for advertiser to see who has blocked your site in competitive ad filter and who hasn't
I have done this very nice tips of yours. I managed my competitive filter but the problem is that those low paying ads keep on coming and it is hard for me to see through it everyday and manage about 35 sites plus other jobs that I do. Do you guys have any other suggestions? Thanks in advance.