Forum Moderators: martinibuster
For example if I say:
"I noticed your ad served via Google on our pages and I want to offer you advertising on our website."
I hope this should be OK because I am not discussing their links and so it should be in compliance with TOS. But I want to double-check this to be safe. What do you think?
Are you willing to lose your Adsense account over this move?
How about 'You have a similar site to mine and wondered if youd like to advertise with us?'
That way theres no link between your email and Adsense, but Id still reconsider doing it.
Sure, MAYBE you knew about this merchant before you ever started with AdSense and always meant to call them but never got around to it and you have a completely clear conscience, but I bet your basic pitch will be: I can give you better and cheaper traffic if we cut out the middleman.
If one of these potential advertisers doesn't want to be spammed or cold-called (what are the odds?) and it gets back to Google, you could be hooped. I don't know specifically what Google's response would be, but I know what I'd do if I were them.
P.S. Selling direct advertising is hard, tedious work. I don't do much of it now, finding it much more productive to let Google find the advertisers and do the ad serving, statistical reporting, invoicing and (especially) the collecting.
Geez, why can't anybody just adhere to the terms of the contract they agreed to when they joined? There's no two ways about it: accepting money from Google while trying to poach their advertisers is wrong. It's unethical, it's against the TOS, it's just wrong.
Are you sure about this? I had a look at the guidelines and T and Cs and the following two points were the only ones I could find that in any way related to this.
Communications Solely With Google. You agree to direct to Google, and not to any advertiser, any communication regarding any Ad(s) or Link(s) displayed in connection with Your Site(s).
Does the above not refer to refer to Google Ads or Links?
You shall not display any Ad Unit on a page that contains Ads associated with another Google AdSense customer (e.g., Your Web hosting company), unless authorized to do so by Google.
Clearly if you carried adverts from a company that used Google Ads you would have to remove Google Ads from the page where you did this.
N.B. Perhaps I missed something because the Google T and Cs contain some of the longest sentences I have ever seen so I would be happy for anyone to correct me :)
not sure if it even goes against the tos, but I highly doubt you would ever get caught.
I am considering offering direct advertising on my site, and what I'm planning to do is post a terms file on my site, with a note that if someone is already an AdWords advertiser and wants to advertise on my site, they should use site-targeting. I'm also going to run this by Google before I go live with it. Maybe I'm being more careful than I need to be, but the rules are not clear in this area and I don't want to jeopardize my AdSense income for what would be, at least to start, a fairly small additional source of income.
Either way, my main objection is that it's unethical to poach advertisers from your own sponsor. And if you rely on AdSense income, this could very easily blow up in your face - regardless of how you choose to interpret that clause.
When you think about it, it would be unethical of Google to try to ban advertisers from doing businees with vendors in their own marketplace.
This is contextual advertising so there is no way of knowing all of the people whose ads are likely to appear on my site. Should I sit for a couple of weeks checking all the ads all day long before approaching a company on the off chance that their ad may appear?
Adwords advertisers can set their own budgets and limits so it is entirely possible that if they are only paying for very limited exposure we would not know they were there. I think that if this was a "violation" Google would have to list all the advertisers who could possibly appear on our sites somewhere so that we would know if we were violating their rules. CLearly ths is impractical.
I was contacted by a company a while ago to display an ad for their product. I placed it on my page. Then I noticed recently their Adwords ad show up just above their paid ad on my page.
I just removed the paid ad... wheeew
I never thought to ask them if they were an adwords advertiser.
This clause refers to "Ad(s) or Link(s) displayed in connection with your site(s)". Google deals in Ads and Links so my interpretation of this is that it refers to Google Ad(s) or Link(s).When you think about it, it would be unethical of Google to try to ban advertisers from doing businees with vendors in their own marketplace.
You can interpret those rules any way you want, but the fact of the matter is that it's Google's program and they can decide to ban you for any reason they want. Your interpretation doesn't amount to squat.
If you don't mind risking your AdSense income, then go for it. You have to make the business decision that it's worth the extra cost and potential loss to bring in higher income directly from the advertiser. Oh, and you have to make sure you invoice them and hope they pay you promptly.
I just removed the paid ad... wheeewI never thought to ask them if they were an adwords advertiser.
Why would you do such a thing?
I sold direct advertising before I was in AdSense, it was all over my site when they approved me, and I still sell it and there were crossover ads on my site the first day I went live with AdSense.
I can't control who or what appears on AdSense and if they are site targeting then I don't even think the AdSense preview tool shows them and I'm sure not chasing ads all day on my page to see who's there and who's now.
I don't used AdSense to find advertisers whatsoever and they all come directly to me so as long as I don't know they're AdWords advertisers technically I've done nothing wrong.
Running AdSense and direct advertisers is like the military:
DON'T ASK / DON'T TELL
Your interpretation doesn't amount to squat.If you don't mind risking your AdSense income, then go for it.
This is not an interpretation, it's a fact and I am not risking anything. I did not ask the original question but I will ask you this.
How are web site owners supposed to know what company's ads Google will display on their sites when Google themselves don't even know?
This is an automatic, contextual advertising system so please think about what you are saying before dismissing my point.
Businesspeople do not typically enjoy being cold-called about sponsoring sites they've never heard of, and if they suspect you're calling because you're an AdSense publisher and they're an AdWords customer, then there's an excellent chance this will work its way back to Google.
Besides, any website has THOUSANDS of potential sponsors. Why not develop new sponsors rather than mine the advertisers who are already paying you anyway? That way you can have both.
Well lets see.. If you made $300K with adsense and .5K with a private advertiser would you risk the 300K or throw out the .5K?
Note: not exact figures.
Well lets see.. If you made $300K with adsense and .5K with a private advertiser would you risk the 300K or throw out the .5K?
Bottom line is I make enough on direct advertising that if push comes to shove I'll toss AdSense in a New York minute as I know I won't get "banned" from direct advertising, I know I get 100% of the revenue share, and SMART PRICING is just how much I can charge the advertiser before they complain ;)
OK, AdSense support has said point blank:
a) running my direct advertisers is fine
b) running Chitika minimalls is fine
c) non-contextual banners is fine
How would I ever know if anyone in the list of services above are conflicting with some ad currently showing in Google AdSense?
You shall not display any Ad Unit on a page that contains Ads associated with another Google AdSense customer (e.g., Your Web hosting company), unless authorized to do so by Google.
How would I even know MY advertiser shows up on my web site via AdSense?
I don't look at all the ads, I don't have enough time to find out what's all showing, it's impossible to do with the tools Google provides, yada yada yada.
The only way you could be clean is block all your advertisers in the competitive ad filter and it doesn't hold enough items (not for my list of advertisers anyway) so Google makes it impossible for a site like mine to comply and THEY REVIEWED what I was doing ahead of time and APPROVED my site.
Therefore, I'll take my acceptance into AdSense as "authorized to do so by Google" as I didn't get involved with direct advertising after the fact and they saw what I was doing from the start.
On the program policies page the only caveat is:
Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads do not mimic Google ads.
Which says NADA about them being the same advertiser.
Been in the program well over a year, have worked with a couple of their top tier support folks on my sites several times, it's never even been mentioned and it was right in front of their face so I sure as heck won't lose any sleep over it.
Although AdSense pays well in my case it simply does not have the potential to earn as much as direct monetization of my web site so this is a moot issue for me.
