AdSense and Facebook?

[AhmedF]

Been looking and reading up on Facebook applications, and someone started a thread about making off their apps.

A few mentioned using Adsense via iframe - is this allowed? I don't see how adsense would be able to get context as you need to be logged in to access any of these apps.

[Paris]

Before we get to the gray areas of running AdSense within an app, know that Facebook has a contextual marketing deal with MSN. So, no, you can't run AdSense within a widget that is on a page running MSN AdCenter contextual ads.

[jason207]

email adsense support like i did, and you may find out that it is acceptable to place adsense on facebook apps. to paraphrase the reply i got basically if you can edit the source code of the page to add the code in, you are ok, as long as the webpage displayed meets TOS.

recent changes to the TOS allows you to place adsense on the same page as competeting contextual ads, as long as they don't look the same. Facebook also runs adsense as well, and probaly every other major ad player.

As for targetting, if you are building an app of an existing domain thats been "themed" by adsense, you are going to get those ads on the app. or at least that's what ive noticed on my apps. for example a facebook app on blue widgets, served from bluewidgets.com, which has been an adsense site for awhile, is going to get ads on blue widgets. just like you would get by adding a new page to the site or when you add a page for red widgets and all you get is blue widget ad. also you can use the fb:iframe tag and place the entire page content inside an iframe and not just calling the ad code thru an iframe. though i haven't noticed much better targetting with this method.

i would suggest making the adblock "targetable" and write a good description for advertisers to see when looking for sites to target.