Forum sharing adsense profits with users

Can they do this?

[twist]

I recieved an email last night from a forum saying they will share their adsense profits with their users. All you have to do is give them your adsense pub-id and your ads show up a percentage of the time as long as you are the thread starter or last poster to a thread. They hide your own ads when you are logged in, so you can't accidently click your own ads.

Is this allowed?

If this is allowed, it seems it would create a large amount of potential problems. For example, lets say I was in a close race with a competitor for a niche market. We both used are adsense earnings to buy adwords to compete with each other. Whats to stop me from creating a dummy website that breaks all the adsense rules (gambling and so on), using his adsense on the site, reporting it, and getting him banned from adsense?

[warth0g]

i would say you would have to be a complete idiot to give someone permission to run your adsense ads.

one breach in TOS and you will be banned - keep your adsense on your own site

[chaaban]

i just saw this on a forum (related to martial arts) they ask for the code and the owner of the post get 50 %

[jomaxx]

I agree it's a terrible idea but it has no bearing on the example in the original post. Everybody's AdSense publisher ID is plainly visible in their site source code anyway, so there's no additional risk if you reveal it.

[twist]

I signed up for Google maps API the other day. They give you a key that only allows their maps to be served from your domain and nowhere else. Why don't they implement this system for adsense? Is this new forum adsense sharing the reason?

One concern that many probably share is the concern over the proxy and framing sites that modify your source code. I haven't yet seen it done, but I know it can be done. They could frame your page, change the pub-id to their own and make money off your content. All google would have to do is use the same key system they use for their mapping service and this scenerio couldn't happen. So why don't they?

I'm kind of new to adsense, so if this has all been discussed before, then I apologize.

[europeforvisitors]

All google would have to do is use the same key system they use for their mapping service and this scenerio couldn't happen. So why don't they?

Is it easy for publishers to implement, without having to change any code on their pages? If not, that could be the reason: "the tyranny of the installed base."

[Rodney]

I don't think it violates any rules of the TOS.

It's been done on very large forums for almost a year now. The owners of those forums have asked Adsense about it specifically.

Maybe if it's something you're interested in, you could ask Adsense directly as well?

[jomaxx]

If you look at the exact wording in the T&C you will see that there's wiggle room for this to be legal.

[twist]

Anybody here doing it?

Another potential problem, what would stop people starting threads about how they just clicked an adsense link and were randomnly selected by google and won $1,000 just for clicking an ad. One in every 50 people win. It doesn't have to be that exact scenerio, but you get the idea. If ads are shown by the first poster and the laster poster also, if you write the first post, and the last poster writes the 1 in 50 post, and then people click on your ads. A publisher notices the thread, reports it, and ...

I am not sure I would feel comfortable with ads on pages where I can't directly control the content. Am I just being paranoid?

[martinibuster]

Please, let's refrain from talking about specific websites, thanks.

As Rodney says, some websites apparently have permission to do revenue sharing. But that's something you will have to clear with AdSense.

Can they do this?

Afaik, yes, but with permission.

[Jafo]

I know of some sites that pay their writers with adsense. When the writer creates a new article, the writers ad shows up 50% of the time for X amount of days.