AdSense TOS: Thou Shalt Not Mimic an AdSense Unit

What Constitutes Mimicking an Ad?

[howdyhi]

The TOS states: "Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads do not mimic Google ads."

Any idea what counts as "mimicing"? Would a banner ad the size of Google's banner ad defaults mimicing? I am a newbie and intend to be a totally ethical Adsense participant, but I have read many posts about banned sites that I am a bit paranoid.

I am asking today because someone would like to pay me directly to put a small banner add on my site.

[europeforvisitors]

Would a banner ad the size of Google's banner ad defaults mimicing?

Not if it doesn't look like an AdSense ad unit.

[toomuch72]

They are really only talking about the Contextual AD UNIT. Since most companies with affiliate programs allow you to use certain banners chnaces are you could actually use the SAME banner ad that google might show.

A perfect example of this was my dvd rental site showed the exact DVD RENTAL COMPANY banner that I was using on a differnt page on the site. So basically google was copying my ad since I had the banner in place long before I added the adsense code.

EDIT: Disclaimer GOOGLE I'm Just kidding on the copying thing--I strive to be more like you not you more like me ;-).

[david_uk]

I think mimic is taken to mean ads that look like adsense banners. Providing the ad you put up does not look like an adsense banner then you can have the ad on the same page as adsense.

[Jean]

So let's say it was a text ad as well. Would the fact that it doesn't contain Ads by Gooogle (with whatever number of o's) be sufficient to NOT be considered mimicking AdSense ads?
Other aspects of the AdSense banners (banner sizes and fonts) are not exactly very specific to AdSense so any text ad could be also said to mimic AdSense (if not for the Ads by Google).

[europeforvisitors]

So let's say it was a text ad as well. Would the fact that it doesn't contain Ads by Gooogle (with whatever number of o's) be sufficient to NOT be considered mimicking AdSense ads?

Not necessarily.

If you're unsure, the easiest (and safest) thing to do is e-mail a screen capture of your proposed text ads to AdSense Support. Don't rely on other publishers' guesses, especially when those other publishers haven't seen the ads.

[elguapo]

We sell direct advertising in both text and banner formats. Google has no problem with our text ads. Show Google a sample, and send an email to them asking them if your sample ads are ok.

[jchampliaud]

I have direct advertising on one of my sites. I e-mailed Google a sample page and they okayed it before the page went live. I'd suggest you do the same.

[incrediBILL]

I'm not sure what to think about this part of the TOS as one site with mimic ads I reported got whacked [no more adsense] but the other site is brazenly displaying copycat ads.

I think the second site falls into the domain park program so the rules changed, but I'm only speculating about that because of the sheer volume of domain names those scrapers have.