Same thing happened to me - my site was getting ads for wallpaper (the stuff you paste on the wall) instead of the desktop wallpaper/screensaver ads I was hoping for. A change in naming conventions solved the problem.
The sandbox for AdSense returned very highly relevant sample ads for my webpage However, when I pasted the code into my page it just returned a small form asking for keywords. Can u help me?
I have also found that by linking to certain sites from a page the type of ads you get changes. Although its not consitant. That is a very interesting point about the anchor text used when linking to a page, being used by google to select ads. I guess that makes sense that google would look at incoming links anchor text, considering google uses it to rank pages in its listings.
I think it's been said, but I have had very good success using RSS feeds to set the topic of a site and then add the adsense code to get exactly what we want.
I take it you produce the RSS feed yourself in order to control the content? (and then place the adsense code near the "news" section on the page?).
This is so sad I have the opposite problem. I played around with the code on my website for accounting (warning: It's in Danish, called bogføring) and now my home page only displays ads for - yes you guessed it: Ringtones et cetera. I currently have no idea how to change this as it has been going on for a week or two. I really need to get my relevant accounting / "bogføring" ads back on site as this will double or triple my CTR. How often do the adsense ads change? Does it have to get a new adsense-bot visit or is it instantly changing with on-site changes?
Doncha hate it when people arrive late... but here I am! What were the links in your nav bar doing - were'nt they providing a stack of keyword sensitive links throughout your site? If this made such a difference then I'm guessing that the nav has image buttons, javascript mouseovers and no alt and title text to lead a friendly search engine down the right path. Sarah