Company Adsense Account

Can a small company (consisting of two people) obtain a "Company Account"?

[bsr007]

I currently have an "Individual" Adsense account and receive payment cheques in my name. My partner and I are thinking about setting up a small company and would therefore like a "Company" Adsense account to receive payment cheques in the company name. This raises a number of issues:

(1) According to the Adsense TOS a company is defined as having 20 or more employees. Would this mean that our company consisting of only two people would be ineligible to obtain a "Company" account and receive an "Individual" account.

(2) If we are granted a 'Company" account can I still retain my existing "Individual" account because they are regarded as separate entities?

(3) I have read that Google Adsense does not like people having more than one "Individual" account. Would this mean that I would have to close my "Individual" account and open one for the company.

Any advice on this would be most appreciated. I am very interested to know how people obtain their Adsense earnings in the name of a business.

Kind regards,

bsr007

[Macro]

I can't see anything about "20" employees in the TOS. A company does not need to have 20 employees to be a company. That would effectively rule out any <20 employees company from running an Adsense account. ;)

[trillianjedi]

I recently formed a new UK company for tax reasons and took this up with Google in relation to our AdSense account which was previously in my personal name.

Google told me to simply apply for AdSense again in the company name, let them know the email address I applied under (and they would then fast track it). Once approved I simply implement the new company's AdSense code in my pages, let google know when I'm done and they would then cancel my personal account.

I didn't ask the specific question, but rather got the impression they did not want me to keep my personal account, notwithstanding that, in the UK and US anyway, a company has it's own legal identity. That impression, from email correspondence I've had with google over this, was pretty strong.

No questions were directed at me at all regarding the comapny status. In fact, I told google from the outset that this was a brand new never traded "off-the-shelf" company.

I really don't think that the status of the company would make any difference to them. And why should it? They're paying you, not the other way around.

If you're in any doubt, the best thing to do is to write and ask. That's what I did - and if you really want to keep your personal AdSense account, I would direct the question at them. You'll get a response within 48 hours. The AdSense team are pretty good at customer service in this regard.

TJ

[bsr007]

Thanks very much for your replies.

Macro,
I definitely read somewhere in the TOS with reference to 20 or more people in the company - maybe I read it in the wrong context. I will have to check.

trillianjedi,
I take it you had to get your website totally reapproved by the Google Adsense Team inorder to obtain your "Company" acount (even though it was previously approved for the "Individual" account) - is that correct?

It is good that they allowed you to replace the account code with that of the company while the "Individual" account was still active - this prevented loss of income.

[edited by: bsr007 at 1:14 pm (utc) on Dec. 20, 2004]

[Macro]

I had a company website and a company account. Over a year ago I asked for permission to setup a separate account for the personal website and they approved. But, yes, I think they are quite strict about one person not having two accounts.

[trillianjedi]

I take it you had to get your website totally reapproved by the Google Adsense Team inorder to obtain your "Company" acount (even though it was previously approved for the "Individual" account) - is that correct?

Yes, but as the site being submitted for AdSense was one of my current AdSense sites anyway, it was pretty much pre-approved - they asked me to let them know when I had submitted the company application and they would then fast track it.

this prevented loss of income.

Yes, that was the idea. I specifically asked to do that and they OK'd it.

TJ

[bsr007]

trillianjedi and Macro,

Thanks a lot for clarifying things - much appreciated.

bsr007