What is double-serving? Same Google ads twice?

I am seeing this on my site

[skunker]

Hi all,
I am seeing two of the same ads on the same page on my website. I have a horizontal banner and a skyscraper. Both have at least one ad that is the same as the other. Is this the illegal double-serving of ads that Google mentions in their TOS?

[DamonHD]

Hi,

I sometimes see this too. Unless you are altering Google's JavaScript or fiddling with their JS variables then you have no control over it and so I don't think Google can complain.

I've also noticed PSAs appearing in the first slot and then real ads in the second and third slot.

I *suspect* that one cause of this is if you rotate ad formats on your page the MediaBot may *prime* the ad-servers with which format it expects and can be out of date and thus cause double serving. That would be a Google implementation/optimisation issue and again not your fault IMHO.

But an official word from ASA would be interesting.

Rgds

Damon

[Sharper]

They may also be different ads that look and act the same. If an advertiser posts an ad for one campaign, then seperately for another campaign keyword (which is probably closely related), then the two ads could be different in the system, but identical in content.

Some advertisers are doing this on purpose for tracking purposes. Others just don't know what they are doing.

Have you tried right-clicking and copying the exact link text (not just the final destination, but all the included google tracking stuff) in the ad and comparing it with the same ad in the other format to see if they are really identical?

I'd be curious to see if they are.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

I haven't tried that, but life is short and I don't care! B^>

I may from sheer curiosity though...

Rgds

Damon

[MikeNoLastName]

I constantly see this, the ads ARE identical even down to the link, and I used to report it to GAd (even to the extent of copying all the text and links into my e-mail), but they'd always claim THEY 'don't see it happening now' from their end. So I just figured if they don't care, I did my due diligence, so I don't care either. Maybe they figure the bid is so nice, they'll show it twice.

[Reid]

Is this the illegal double-serving of ads that Google mentions in their TOS?

I don't understand how you could have any control over this 'double serving' when google is serving the ads.

I have a related question to this.
the TOS says it is illegal to alter the code.
I recently added channels and instead of making ads for each and every channel I just got the google_ad_channel numbers and pasted them into the existing ad code. It all seems to work fine.

Then I read the TOS. should I be worried?

also it says 'cut and paste this directly onto your page' can I paste it onto many pages or do I need to login and make the same ad code for each page? I did that too and it works fine.

Also the search bar code they say 'do not alter the code for any reason' well the code had an

</img>

tag which I removed because it was causing a validation error and I just noticed that they specify no image size for their gif. In opera or firefox tests it shows as a red box "no size". Come to think of it I played around with their table too, like make the background match my page and a few other things that I dont remember. Oh yeah I had to remove a bunch of

/input

tags that are only for xhtml.

I hate it when they say 'heres some crappy code don't fix it'

but anyway my question is - are my ad channels ok (because they work) or should I go over the whole thing page by page and make one ad at a time like an idiot?