Forum Moderators: martinibuster
AdSense updated their terms as well as their policies today. And here is your complete update and rundown of all the changes, and what they mean to you.
First, let's deal with the terms.
The first change is in the bolded capitalized text immediately following "Google AdSenseTM Online Standard Terms and Conditions". The last line in the section has a new clause added to it, which is bolded below.
. IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, PLEASE DO NOT REGISTER FOR OR PARTICIPATE IN THE GOOGLE ADSENSE ONLINE PROGRAM.
1. Program Participation
Some changes have been made to this section, partially in response to the new AdSense for Feeds that is currently in beta.
The following clause has been removed:
(each a "Site") using Google's advertising serving and search technology
And in its place, the following regarding AdSense for Feeds has been added:
and the Atom, RSS, or other feeds distributed through such Web site(s) (each such Web site or feed, a "Site"). For the avoidance of doubt, any reference in this Agreement or the Program Policies to an individual “Web page”, “Web site”, “Web site page” or the like that is part of the Site will also mean feeds distributed through such Web site
2. Implementation and Operation of Ads and Search Results.
This section has a few small changes, the first which is bolded in the following sentence:
All content and Site-based Ads (and Ads served in response to end user clicks on and queries entered into Links, if any) shall be grouped by Google and displayed with Links (where applicable) to end users of the Site(s) as ad units (such groups of Ads and/or Links collectively referred to as "Ad Units") in standard formats as offered generally by Google from time to time, as may be described in the FAQ.
The second removes the bolded section of the following paragraph:
In addition, You agree that while You may display more than one (1) Ad Unit on each Site Web page, You shall not display any Ad Unit on a page that contains Ads associated with another Google AdSense customer (e.g., Your Web hosting company), unless authorized to do so by Googleor such other AdSense customer, if authorized.
This helps clarify the section of the terms that has been confusing, and gives AdSense the ultimate control over where ads by more than one publisher appear on the same page during a single page view. Previously, as long as you had permission of the other publisher whose ad unit(s) also appeared on the same page at the same time, you were permitted to do it. This change now means that you must seek Google's approval before two publisher's ad units can be placed on the same page together during the same page view. Many freebie web hosts run AdSense on the hosted sites, but also grant permission to their clients to place their own AdSense on the same page. Now, those clients would need to seek permission from Google to do so.
Lastly in this section, the following in bold has been added:
If You have elected to receive content or Site-based Ads, You further agree not to display on any Serviced Page any non-Google content-targeted advertisement(s).
6.Termination; Cancellation.
An additional requirement has been added to the sentence regarding the number of valid clicks a publisher must receive in order to remain an active publisher. The addition is in bold:
In addition, Google reserves the right to terminate without notice any account that has not generated a sufficient number of valid clicks on or valid impressions of Ads (as measured by Google) for a period of two (2) months or more.
This has been added due to the new CPM ads. Theoretically, a publisher could be earning money while not receiving a single click due to the CPM ads, so it makes sense to change the terms to reflect this new ad format.
11. Payment
Another change has been made to reflect the new CPM ads.
You shall receive a payment related to the number of valid clicks on and/or valid impressions of Ads displayed in connection with Your Site(s) as determined by Google for its participants in the Program.
15. Information Rights
Another small change has been made to this section, again to reflect the new CPM ads, and the fact that Google needs to share publisher URLs with advertisers to select from in order to choose sites for their ads to appear via the site targeting CPM ads. The change to the following is in bold:
Google disclaims all responsibility, and will not be liable to You, however, for any disclosure of that information by any such third party. Google may share non-personally-identifiable information about You, including Site URLs, Site-specific statistics, and similar information collected by Google, with advertisers, business partners, sponsors, and other third parties.
And now on to the Policy changes.
Alternate Ads
A small change has been made to the wording.
If you have elected to receive contextually-targeted ads, you can make sure that your advertising space is always being used effectively, either by targeted Google ads, or by your own choice of content by specifying an image or ad server of your choice.
Previously, the term content-based was in the place of contextually targeted.
Code Modification
A change has been made to this section, with the addition made in bold.
. AdSense participants are not allowed to alter any portion of the ad code or change the layout, behaviour, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason.
I suspect this was added to give some extra emphasis due to the fact people were adding the extra javascript lines for hints, keywords, etc that are intended to be used by publishers with explicit permission from AdSense only.
This is being pushed out in a rolling update, like usual, so you might not see the changes right now. But keep checking and you will eventually see them today.
And that's all folks :) Interface changes post is coming up next!
It popped up when I just logged in and I knew I didn't have to read it as the highlights would be here.
Thanks for concise summary.
Does AdSense provide you with this or do you go over it line by line to find the changes? Just curious. :-)
Nice work, Google. I love the new interface!
The layout of the top channels makes it very easy to read. I'm impressed.
If this is the case google will lose millions of adsense ... Shopping.com would be banned... Business.com... even Ask jeeves!
What exactly is a non-google content targeted advertisement? I mean everyone has their own inventory.
Are we or are we not allowed to have an Amazon banner or Amazon content-targetted ad, for example?
Whenever I see some new terms on AdSense, I come straight over here for your analysis.
You've never let me down yet!
If this is the case google will lose millions of adsense ... Shopping.com would be banned... Business.com... even Ask jeeves!
What exactly is a non-google content targeted advertisement? I mean everyone has their own inventory.
Does this mean that the hundreds of sites that use both their own paid directory listings and adsense listings on the same page can know longer use adsense?...
No. If it did that would wipe out all of the paid directories and Google would lose million$ per month. They're talking about other contextual ad programs.
Seems like you're reading too much into it.
going to see if there is anything new and report back here.
update or glitch?
that is a strange one!
give it some time & see what happens
[webmasterworld.com...]
After ten minutes, logged in again to find the old interface again ..?
Did anyone else notice this?
