AdSense Disabling Arbitrage Accounts by June 1st

[Freddy81]

They told me my account will be disabled at 1st June, and also added that I'll receive payment for all outstanding earnings in accordance with the standard AdSense payment schedule.

For this day (17 May), does it mean that they will pay for April 1-30 earnings, or for May (1-18) also?

[biscuit]

I'd like to look more closely at the idea expressed by a poster a while back that arbitragers have been 'pumping a lot of money into the network' and what another arb mentioned about his site paying for clicks on a publisher's website.

As I see it, arbitragers are taking a lot more money out of the system than they are putting into it, since otherwise what would be in it for them?

If the system in adsense is that publishers provide a service, and the advertisers pay for that, then either the arbitragers are in some way adding value for the money that they extract from the system, or their presence is less then benign.

So ask, firstly, where is the money that the arbitrageurs are making coming from? Secondly would bona fide advertisers be putting in more or less money if arbitrageurs were not operating?

From those answers it might become clearer whether arbs are 'pumping money into the network' or draining it out, and whether Adsense publishers (and advertisers) will do better or worse with them gone.

[Hobbs]

>running it through a corp that you can shut down without any hassles

Don't know, what do they do for taxes? Don't they fill tax forms with social security numbers?

[econman]

Corporations have Federal ID numbers, which serve the same function as a social security number.

[fischermx]

You can always, always use a corporation to start over.

[lammert]

The arbitrage sites were not pumping a lot of money into the network directly, rather sucking a lot of money from the advertisers and pumping part of that money back to other AdSense publishers.

After June 1st, the advertisers will only be left with 'ordinary' publishers with in general a lower CTR. This can lead to many effects:

• Advertisers will fill the arbitrage ad slots for low bids (causing lower EPC)
• Bids from advertisers who use a monthly budget and automatic bid optimization will see an increase in the bidprice due to less ad slots available (causing higher EPC)
• Advertisers whose daily budget was reached early in the day will advertise for more hours per day before their budget is reached, causing a higher EPC, especially at the end of the day
• Advertisers will get more confidence in the content network and either return to the content network, or increase their bids (causing higher EPC)

My prediction is that the first effect will be that current advertisers will fill the low bid ad slots and CPM will decrease. But maybe my prediction is wrong and the other effects compensate enough to create healthier CPMs. And hopefully as EFV some posts earlier mentioned creates the current disabling round, together with extra functionality on the AdWords side to give advertisers more information about good and bad performing publisher sites, enough confidence with AdWords advertisers to see the content network as a proper advertising place again.

[MThiessen]

It may not be "arb sites" that are the main focus. I think maybe it is "thin content".

A message board I started in December of last year shows one adsense ad on any page with more then two replies.

I buy adwords to build the community and get traffic.

Surely some folks arriving via adwords click the adsense. This *is* click arb, even though it is inadvertent.

No ban letter, in fact just last week adwords folks called me on the phone and offered to help me optimize my ads.

The thing is, imo, the latest crack down is focused to improve the quality of the web itself, not attack ALL arbs. Sites that are a waste of time, MFA, Arb or other, are the targets. If adsense is involved on the page, and the page offers neither a useful product, or useful information, it got the axe.

Even a page with thin adsense, but heavy affiliate connections will get the boot imo, if my theory is correct.

Arb sites that offer content still exist. Since the public, you and I, search for answers on the web, we hate being lead astray, or "tricked". If I click your ad to find a boat spotlight, I *expect* *YOU* to be selling boat spotlights. If I wanted to look on amazon or ebay, I would have went there, not to google search.

The web audience does not ask a lot. All they ask is to get what they clicked for.

I wonder how many arb sites threw you into an endless loop? Click an ad for widgets, got to a widget landing page, click another ad for widgets, end up on another landing page... on and on..

The arb guys might get all warm and cozy at this scenario, but do *you* as a surfer find this "helpful to your search?"

But lets look at it another way. Suppose you clicked an ad for widgets, and the landing page was *thoughtfully* built with lots of VERY useful stuff about widgets. *AND* the site SOLD widgets at a reasonable price. On the page are *also* optimized adsense widget sales.

Now, even if you had break-even prices on the widgets, your goal is arb, you accomplish a few unique things:

1. Your surfer found what they were looking for, and more, not just the product, but info on the product.
2. Found a great price.
3. Found many "links" (ads) to even more places to buy.

These types of arb sites exist, and are NOT being banned.

It all boils down to your focus. Are you focused on simply "flipping clicks" or are you focused on making the web a better place while profiting from it with a business model that will stand the test of time?

Since it is likely that G is not *just* focused on arb, but on basically a web "clean up", we might also be seeing bans from business models using affiliates in an awkward manner (Find Dead Kittens on Ebay).

I suspect the clean up is just now starting. The next leg of this journey will be to prune out the affiliate schemes.

Just my theory on the whole situation, not trying to put-down anyone here. After reading this whole thread that's the conclusions that I have arrived at.

[Hobbs]

MThiessen,
No one reads 500+ posts
but 10% are by farmboy, so perhaps some do :-)

[dibbern2]

MThiessen's commentary is too good to be buried on page 17 of this tired thread. I sense that this whole issue could be just the first step in an AS improvement scheme that will be much wider that just the arbitragers.

Much of this thread has become circular and repetitive, as often happens after so many posts. Could we start something new on the broader subject of what AdSense changes might come next?

[MThiessen]

Yeah Hobbs, I rarely ever read a thread this long, but it is a subject effecting a mutual friend of ours, so I took the time. And yes much of what I said is covered here and there, but I wanted to formulate it into one logic post.

Thank you Dibbern2, yeah maybe a new thread is in order.

[gendude]

Turning arbi low quality content churning machines into good Internet citizens is possible, but not likely unless they really learn their lessons and a big hug and kiss goodbye may not do that so well.

You have more faith than I do - I've heard from a couple of arb-types in this thread and elsewhere bragging about how they did it because it required hardly any time and effort to do, while mocking those of us who have put a lot of time into our "hobbyist" sites.

I'm thinking if they were drawn to arb-type/MFA sites to begin with, they would rather find some other easy way rather than put the time and effort into building real sites.