Our contract (by performance) with Adsense

does it exist?

[Powdork]

I would like to toss out the theory that Google is under contract with us to provide relevant, targetted ads on our sites based on the fact that that is what they had done prior to 4/2/04. Now that they are providing irrelevant, untargeted ads they are in breach of contract. As a result of this I should be allowed to say my ctr has dropped from 4.5% (prior to Bad Friday) to 2.3% (after Bad Friday)and my earnings per mil have dropped from $21.50 to $17.00 as a result (examples, of course). This comes at a time when I have been going through pages to move the adsense code to more prominency. Of course, I am making these changes as a result of Google's past performance, which they are no longer living up to. Adsense is no longer the best program out there, just the biggest, and their lack of respect for the publisher shouldn't be tolerated. I'm off to remove code!
only from the pages that aren't performing, of course

What I don't understand is why they would be doing this. They are losing money, I am losing money, and anybody that clicks on the ads is not going to convert to a business objective.

[nyet]

customers......whadda gonna do?

Google is your customer. Like most customers they can decide how and when and where to spend their money on a whim.....

[Rodney]

my sites seem to be getting every more highly targeted ads and as a result, my CTR is climbing and so are my earnings.

I don't know if google is under any such contract as you mention though.

It's always up to the publisher what they choose to do with their ad real estate.

[billegal]

I'm not sure what Google offers can really be considered a contract. I'm not sure they've taken any obligation that they could really be held to. We are not assured any revenue percentage of the ad price or even any guarantee that we'll get a check.

That said, the mistargetted ads are really annoying to me and I'm sure the visitors to my site.

[Marcia]

The CTR is way down, that's got to be because of a targetting issue; the pages themselves haven't changed even one little bit.

Don't know about a contractual issue being valid, but imho a confidence issue is equally as important. If any kind of a noteworthy competitor turns up with something that looks half-way promising and a good sales pitch there will be a lot of publishers ripe and ready to take a plunge.

The less there is to lose the easier it is to go philandering, that's just human nature.

Added:
That just applies to "normal" publishers. The ones that are cranking out garbage pages just to run AdSense wouldn't necessarily be affected, they could easily just crank out loads more garbage pages for another program that comes along.

[anallawalla]

Although they use the term "Agreement" in most parts of the British Commonwealth it would be a contract - there is an offer and an acceptance and a consideration.

As for performance, the agreement makes no mention of relevancy. Where do you read that?

The FAQ is not part of the agreement, but it says "Google does not guarantee that we'll always have relevant ads to display".

I think you are legless. :)

[Powdork]

Actually, they say

Google does not guarantee that we'll always have relevant ads to display. If we don't have relevant ads for a given page, or if we haven't yet crawled your site, we may display public service ads

I would rather have PSA's then irrelevant ads. They are not giving me that.

As for performance, the agreement makes no mention of relevancy. Where do you read that?

IMO there does not need to be an agreement. For as long as I have been in the program I have been receiving targeted ads (or PSA's). In some legales that creates a contract based on prior performance.
In this connotation, 'performance' simply means "how it was done before'.

[europeforvisitors]

Well, let us know how the lawsuit turns out. :-)

[Powdork]

I don't want to sue. I want to start sharing statistics freely.

[funandgames]

Powdork:

Just wait it out. My company has many channels covering our sites grouped by topic. I have noticed that a group of similar topic sites fall at the same time while other topics remain unchanged. It is usually caused by one or two advertisers running out of money (usually temporarily). One channel dropped by 70% just two days ago. I am sure it will return.

One way to avoid a total plunge in earnings is to spread out topics on your sites, or make a backup site(s) with a different topic but close to your field.

[Powdork]

One way to avoid a total plunge in earnings is to spread out topics on your sites

It's not just about the earnings, though. It's also about the ability to define the content on my site. It didn't use to be a problem because the ads would match the content on my site, or be closely related. The only URL's I would filter previously were direct competitors of the clients paying to be on the site; those that you could call too relevant. Most people seem to agree that a little bit of off-topicicity is good thing for ctr, and I too agree. But when they mess up the location (Lake Tahoe does not equal Toronto, New England, or Florida) they're just wasting space and bandwidth, while making me look bad.

Perhaps we could use europeforvisitors idea for helper keywords. Even if just for location.