Forum Moderators: martinibuster
So what makes Google's TOS so different? What online PPC advertising group does not have these terms that accounts will be banned when fraud is detected, and which publisher does not have the exclusive right to determine this?
So is the issue with Adsense or just advertising groups in general and the contracts with publishers? Would be interested in any comments regarding this.
If you want some real nasty T&Cs take a peek at ContextWeb's T&Cs. Those people can boot you if your site "lacks a professional appearance" which would result (I'm being conservative) in 90% of the AdSense sites being booted tomorrow. Also, if you don't exceed $50/month in revenue then "such revenue share shall be forfeited".
Boils down to the people wanting a free lunch don't understand why they can't slap AdSense on their site and join a click ring to make money as "they" didn't click the ads, someone else did, therefore it's legit. Not.
Have a minimum monthly earnings set... and if you don't reach it, you forfeit all your earnings for that month.
Some dictate you cannot run their ads if you have *any* non-US traffic, or less than 90% US traffic.
If your daily traffic fluctuates more than 15%, you have to give them 5 - 10 days notice.
If you are suspended, you must remove all ad javascript within a set number of hours (under 12 hours, I can't remember offhand what it was specifically).
When comparing all the various program terms, very few are as good as the AdSense terms. So it does make me chuckle when I read about people complaining about how bad it is ;)
I really have to wonder what people expect Google to say? That artificially inflating impressions is not prohibited?
I must also say that, when I joined AdSense and read the TOS, I was amazed that Google did not have a minimum revenue requirement and that the program was basically open to one and all.
In the two companies that I worked with prior to my recent retirement, we had revenue requirements written into the contracts with all of our customers. If the revenue was not attained or at least had little likelihood of being attained, we simply terminated the contract. The main reason was that many (although certainly not all) small accounts created problems completely disproportional to the revenue that they produced for us. These accounts were very expensive to maintain.
I am sure that Google has considered this issue many times, and it would certainly not surprise me if they take action upon it at some time in the future.
I am sure that many of Google's fraudulent click problems originate with small accounts that have either not read, failed to understand, or simply chosen to flaunt the TOS.
The bottom line is that Google could certainly have a much more stringent TOS that would shut huge numbers of existing accounts out of the program. I suspect that taking such a move would probably have a minimal impact upon their financial results.
It contains the clause that you can not check your own site to see:
a) that the program is operating correctly.
b) where the adverts actually go to after all the redirects. (are you advertising for your competition?)
c) to see that the ads lead to appropriate content.
d) to test of ads are being correctly targetted and accuaratly reflect the intent and content of your site.
If you have displayed AdSense for a week or two, you have probably seen all four of the above serious problems.
Other programs such as DoubleClick and Burst, have in the past, not only allowed publishers that freedom, they have often ASKED publishers to check their ads once a day. What is different about the AdSense tos, is it dictates what you can and can't do on the privacy of your own site.
it dictates what you can and can't do on the privacy of your own site.
Arguably, the AdSense ads aren't really part of your site--they are part of Google. Like an embassy is actually sovereign territory of the country running it...
Actually, we can check the ads on our site, and I've done so on a regular basis on mine. Hover over the ad, and type in the URL in your browser, or right-click and copy and paste, and you can go to the advertiser's site without generating a click.
Or are you saying that getting the URL in one of those ways isn't the same as clicking an ad--that we might somehow end up at a different destination page?
Yes.
[webmasterworld.com...]
However right-clicking and selecting "copy shortcut", and then pulling the actual URL out of the redirect URL does work, as does the AdSense preview tool.
I agree this is an annoyance, but I'm not so sure that this makes AdSense different from other contextual CPC programs. Does Yahoo Publisher network allow you to click your own ads?
Right clicking the ad and extracting the URL also works.
1) AdSense is used by tens of thousands of Webmasters who have never had to sign contracts or work with business partners before.
2) AdSense gives publishers a great deal of freedom--e.g., they can slap the AdSense code on any new site without Google's prior approval. As a result, the program is often abused, and the abusers complain when they get caught.
I do not see why Google with its algo power cannot automatically discount clicks by publishers on their own sites.
It would solve two problems:
1) Allow publishers to legitimately check out their own sites.
2) Resolve the situation of publishers accidentally clicking once on their own ads. I can't remember how many posts of this type I have read in the 3 months that I have been reading this forum. Why should publishers have to go the trouble of sending emails to Google when they accidentally click on an ad. At present they feel they have to just to protect themselves contractually. Just have Google automatically discount the click instead.
Am I missing something here? Is it a lot more difficult for Google to do this than I think? They clearly already have a lot of sophisticated tools in place to detect fraudulent clicks. It should be a breeze to discount publisher clicks. No legitimate publisher would object and the advertisers would be protected.
The situation of publishers legitimately checking out their own sites should be treated separately from fraudulent click issues in the TOS. At present they are conflated, and publishers are essentially considered to be participating in fraudulent activity when they click on ads on their own sites.
I would suggest a two part TOS concerning clicking on ads:
1) The fraudulent click provisions in the TOS would stay in place
except:
2) Publishers would be able to legitimately click on ads on their own site from their registered IP with these clicks being discounted.
I'm sure someone can pick this reasoning apart.
I do not see why Google with its algo power cannot automatically discount clicks by publishers on their own sites.
I think they try to do that but the algo isn’t perfect.
Not everyone has a static IP address
Yes, but a COOKIE would work.
I've suggested this before, you login to AdSense, get a "test mode" cookie and then Google shows the ads in italics or something to show it's in test mode so you know.
It contains the clause that you can not check your own site to see:a) that the program is operating correctly.
b) where the adverts actually go to after all the redirects. (are you advertising for your competition?)
c) to see that the ads lead to appropriate content.
d) to test of ads are being correctly targetted and accuaratly reflect the intent and content of your site.
Many other ad networks contain clauses in their TOS that don't allow you to click your own ads. You call it test, but in the CPC/PPC world, that "test" is actual money for advertisers.
Burst/Doubeclick were primarily CPM networks, so if you clicked an advertisers CPM ad to test the destination, you weren't directly inflating their costs.
The original poster was specifically talking about PPC networks, and all of them that I know of have the same type clause.
I've suggested this before, you login to AdSense, get a "test mode" cookie and then Google shows the ads in italics or something to show it's in test mode so you know.
Would you trust the "test mode" to work correctly 100% of the time?
I've suggested this same thing in the past, but I don't think italics is a strong enough visual cue. IMO it should be black text on highlighter-yellow background or something similar that shrieks "test mode". I suppose you'd also have to build in the ability to let users override those colors.
