Sigh. An 'Article' About People Asking The Audience To Click Ads.

How Low Can You Go To Disguise Fraud...

[humblebeginnings]

Was just doing the odd Googling for "click my ads" to do some (maybe useless) reporting of AS TOS violations, and this one was really weird.

A blog with an "article" about "bad publishers" who ask visitors to click the ads. But the article itself seems to be an obvious attempt to ask visitors to do the same. Just to make sure this guy is a fraud, he also has his share of:

1) Imitating Google Adsense ads
3) Adsense code on pages with mp3 and movie results
4) Links to nudity
5) Keyword stuffing
6) Ads for alcoholic drinks

Find the other 365 violations!

I can't post the URL but <snip>

By the way: this guy uses a referral button I have never seen before... Did I miss anything?

[edited by: Jenstar at 1:43 pm (utc) on Nov. 7, 2005]
[edit reason] No "outting" of publisher sites please, as per charter [/edit]

[malachite]

Speaking of ads for alcoholic drinks being against TOS, I was puzzled to find quite a few sites for home brewing which show Adsense. One of the ads was for the famous Irish black stuff, which is surely BEER? (ok, stout, but you know what I mean!)

Last time I looked at AS TOS (a couple of days ago), while wine wasn't listed as against the rules, promotion of beer was.

Confused!

[AlexMiles]

You know, IMO Americans have a very liberal definition of the word 'beer'. :)

[mrSEman]

Food for thought.

So you are not alowed to tell your visitors to click on your ads. Sounds fair. But... Have you seen the new refferal buttons? Wouldn't putting the one that says "This website is monetized by Google Adsense" right above your adblock be kinda like uging your visitors to support you by clicking an ad?

[jomaxx]

I don't read it that way, in part because it doesn't tell people that the site is paid on a per-click basis, as opposed to per-impression or some other way.

But I'm sure people will try this and sooner report back here on whether it seems to make clicks go up or down. I don't personally see an upside to adding the button for the sake of the referral income, but if gross revenue goes up I'll happily add it.