Google Using Adsense?

I just got an Adsense Ad for Google.

[wonderbread]

On one of my pages with Adsense on it I was served an ad by Google themselves...do you suppose I get paid for this?

Title: Pay Per Click by Google
Body: Get a better ROI from your website. Try Google advertising programs!
URL: [google.com...]

Hopefully this is something new and I'm not just bringing up an old topic. It's kinda funny for me to see Google serving up their own ads. Seems like it could be a potential conflict of interest...what if they served up their ads in the place of others and then pay a lower CPC...

Cheers,

Nick

[Dpeper]

Alot of ad networks advertise there network as a default ad... Dunno if thats the case in google. But they do it because they can.

[wonderbread]

I know that this is not a default ad as it was shown above other 'normal' ads.

[richmondsteve]

wonderbread wrote:

I know that this is not a default ad as it was shown above other 'normal' ads.

You may be right about it not being a non-paying ad, but since AdSense inception there have been sightings of PSAs mixed with AdWords ads in the same ad block so you may not want to draw the conclusion simply based on it being in the top slot. I reported it here in March in the following thread:

PSAs mixed in with Adwords advertisers [webmasterworld.com]

I don't know whether it was testing affecting all publishers, testing affecting some publishers, a bug or a planned change and I don't know whether it's been noted by others in recent months.

[MaxMaxMax]

I don't know whether it was testing affecting all publishers, testing affecting some publishers, a bug or a planned change and I don't know whether it's been noted by others in recent months.

Yes, only yesterday I spotted a (not topic-related) PSA as the fourth ad in a skyscraper at my site (other three were targeted paying ads).

[wonderbread]

It is definately not showing with PSAs. I saw it many times on my site in addition to being served on the normal Google search results pages. Do a Google search for 'affiliate network' and their ad shows up #1 in the paid results (adwords).

-Nick