Prescription drug ads and AdSense

advertising on a UK health site

[John_Caius]

As you may know, it is illegal for a UK health-related site to advertise prescription-only medicines to the general public. This issue was previously discussed here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Does anyone know how this affects a UK health-related site displaying AdSense adverts? My client is interested in signing up for AdSense but realises that prescription ads would go against the British Code of Advertising Practices. Is there some mechanism by which prescription medication ads are banned from AdSense on UK sites or are they banned from AdWords in the first place?

[John_Caius]

Another recent relevant post:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[cpnmm]

I have a healthcare orientated UK website serving adsense ads. There have been no prescription drug ads to my knowledge. I don't think that Google will allow the UK to be including in prescription drug Adwords campaigns.

[profitpuppy]

Google has banned ads for prescription drugs. This doesn't mean that a few won't slip through.

[charlier]

Could you elaborate on that a bit. I see adwords prescription drug ads on google (here in US). Are you saying they have banned them from adsense altogether or are blocking them to UK browsers or adsense ones on UK sites?

[John_Caius]

I asked Google and they replied to say that at the moment you can't filter out particular types of ads except by individually blocking each URL. They said that in the future they may add extra functionality to give the publisher greater control.

[profitpuppy]

My understand was that they are banned from advertising to UK users of google. Ads are not banned in the USA, but there are other requirements. Google sent around an email a while back to adwords advertisers.

[John_Caius]

E-mail from Google to say that they are banning pharmaceutical ads to UK IP addresses although a UK site could still show pharma ads to a non-UK IP address. Hopefully this covers us enough for the Code of Advertising Practices.