Competitor puts AdSense on his/her site

and draws attention to Ads. Will my earnings drop?

[sven1977]

Is that true? I just watched one of my biggest competitors in terms of content put AdSense on his/her pages. Practically shows the same ads as I do. Plus he draws attention to his/her ads by putting something in the direction of "have a look here!" right above the ads! Will this affect my earnings? Should I report this to him/her or to Google?

[MikeNoLastName]

Very likely. Unless you turn him in and get him booted from Adsense.

[incrediBILL]

I'd report him in a heartbeat.

Ratted out my competitor for pre-loading the search box with a search term, he got a warning letter ;)

[celgins]

Definitely against Google's TOS. I would send them an email notifying them of your competitor's site layout.

[sven1977]

Thanks Bill and others for making me feel less evil when doing so ;P
I don't want to get him booted or anything but I don't see why my advertisers should spend all their money on fluke clicks going to my competitor. So the hack! I'll report him now!

[incrediBILL]

AdSense only boots the worst, they send letters first, you ignore them and you could end up in PSA hell easily.

[jomaxx]

Report him if it's clearly a violation of the TOS, but him running AdSense almost certainly won't have any effect whatsoever on your earnings. The Web's a pretty big place.

[MikeNoLastName]

Ha! don't bet on it. Especially if you're in a fairly narrow niche, the 'GOOD' hi paying advertisers can easily run out of funds in half the time or drastically lower their bid because there is now more advertising space. Imagine, worst case, possibly halving your current AS income, or worse if the competitor is above you in the serps, where visitors see their site first, and is displaying the same ads.

[sven1977]

I reported the competitor about three days ago, but I haven't seen any changes to his site. It still blatantly says "Have a look at these!" right above the google ads. How long does it usually take for google to take action?
I'm really mad at him for stealing valuable advertiser's money from them and me and all other honest publishers.

[wheelie34]

When someone blatently breaks the rules set out by G, I click the "Ads by Gooooogle" link to ask why this particular site is allowed to bend, flex and break publisher rules, I dont give my email address as I dont want a response and you never know how smartpricing works :0 although they will get my IP but that only narrows it down to a subset, paranoid or what.

[incrediBILL]

I haven't seen any changes to his site

Be patient, one of the worst offenders I reported took a couple of weeks before it came off his website. I'm assuming if they don't comply you'll see PSAs after a while.