Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Over the last few weeks I have had a few advertisers contact me and ask to establish individual advertising accounts with my site. Is it against Adsense TOS for me to accept if I suspect that they are Adwords (content) advertisers. If I do suspect they are, do I have an obligation to enquire if they are Adwords advertisers (content side)? (At this point in time, 2007, who hasn't been an Adwords advertiser?)
I hope I've made my question clear.
So, how are others handling this situation and how are others getting in trouble with Adsense over this? What are the pit falls? Do websites get in trouble because their privately arranged ads too closely mimic Adsense ads (maybe I should only offer banner advertising to these companies) or is it simply because of the fact that they are doing business with know Adwords advertisers and get caught?
As an example of how ridiculous and unrealistic these Adsense terms seem, I have two long term private accounts that were up and runing some years before Adsense existed. I know that these companies are currently Adwords advertisers, so how would I prove to Adsense that I hadn't broken TOS just by having those accounts?
That being said, my advice is for you to write to Google yourself and ask them the same question you asked here. It's best that you hear it directly from them. You could copy and paste your message as posted in this forum.
Here's the link to contact Google:
[google.com...]
When you hear from them, please do follow up in this thread. I'm interested in this topic and I would like to get as many viewpoints as possible.
I am under the impression that, as a participant in Adsense, I am not "allowed" to contact advertisers whose advertisements I see in Adsense advertising units and make my own private arrangements with them.
The following is from the Program Policies:
In order to prevent user confusion, we do not permit Google ads or search boxes to be published on websites that also contain other ads or services formatted to use the same layout and colors as the Google ads or search boxes on that site. Although you may sell ads directly on your site, it is your responsibility to ensure these ads cannot be confused with Google ads.
Where does it indicate you can't contact AdSense advertisers?
Remember that other people may be seeing ads from a particular advertiser on your site without your seeing those ads on your site.
FarmBoy
3. Communications Solely With Google. You agree to direct to Google, and not to any advertiser, any communication regarding any Ad(s) or Link(s) displayed in connection with Your Site(s).
That could just mean that you tell Google any feedback about Adsense ads rather than contacting the site being advertised.
The problem is it doesn't say communication from whom and with whom. Is it a visitor communicting, or is it an advertiser?
As with all these things, it's more about the spirit of the law, rather than the word - something Americans in particular fail to understand, possibly because of the litigeous culture over the water. Google do not want you picking up the phone to every advertiser you see on adsense, and circumventing their profit (or hassling advertisers). On the flip side, if advertisers contact you directly, Google aren't going to complain, because at the end of the day, you're the publisher and can remove adSense code at any time without notice. It's one of those 'in there for common sense' rules. We run a mix of CPM, CPC, CPA, CPL on our sites, with Google being one of about 6 advertising companies. It works for them - and it works for us. I have seen on occassion a particular company appearing both on our managed CPM banner ad space *and* on google ads...
to be honest, if a company is contacting you directly, the odds are they're not advertising on your site with adsense anyway. The CPM rate you should be offering them would be less cost efficient than them advertising with Google - so I'd say if a company contacts you, it's fine to go with them.
Well put.
This has been a major issue for us as we have lost quite a few direct advertisers to GAS.
It is a real problem as while they are still visible on the site I have no real idea how much they are spending etc. Before I knew that their ads would bring in X and now it is all just part of the wonderful and mysterious recipe which is GAS.
The only way to combat it is to offer even more benefits that G cannot offer but that is not easy when G has so many things the advertiser can tweak.
Back to the OP's question. As has already been stated, avoid ads that look like GAS ads (although not sure how that works with GAS image ads) and you should be fine. Just don't start approaching advertisers directly.
we have lost quite a few direct advertisers to GAS
- If you find and contact an AdWords advertiser, they can simply forward your email and report you to AdSense and you will be found in breach.
It's all in who contacts who first.
If they have such a great desire to advertise on your site, why not block them in adsense via your filter. Maybe (hopefully) the come back to you for direct placement.
If I did that, then I doubt that would help the relationship, as I am sure they would be able to work out what happened. Plus GAS does give many advantages which I cannot. Advantages such as bidding, geo-targetting, contextual targetting, timed ads etc etc.
The only way to retain the advertiser is to offer things that G cannot of which there are a few things but overall a net savvy client knows that it will probably be cheaper for them to use GAS.
Advantages such as bidding, geo-targetting, contextual targetting, timed ads etc etc.
Collecting the fees is a biggie. Accounting and billing are a huge pain for me.
to be honest, if a company is contacting you directly, the odds are they're not advertising on your site with adsense anyway.
Or, they have been advertising on your site through Adsense and rather than competing with other ads for ad space, the company has a desire to occupy an entire ad block and create more attention to their brand.
As with all these things, it's more about the spirit of the law, rather than the word - something Americans in particular fail to understand...
Always nice to hear the geniuses of the world categorize an entire country of 300 million or so. :)
Could also be they're trying to boost their organic search results by boost their rankings through purchased text links on relevant sites.
to be honest, if a company is contacting you directly, the odds are they're not advertising on your site with adsense anyway. The CPM rate you should be offering them would be less cost efficient than them advertising with Google
He contacted me first about the possibility of my reviewing one of his products, and I mentioned I would be open to a direct advertising deal if he wanted to pursue that. He said no, then contacted me a couple months later after paying closer attention to his site targeting stats and wanted to give it a try.
It's really well targeted for my site, and as best I can tell, the deal works out better for both of us.
I'm getting over my standard EPM that I get from AdSense, and he's paying about half my average income per click. I rotate his ad along with AdSense.
It helps to use channels to know exactly how much an AdSense block is generating for a particular piece of screen real-estate, so you can come up with a realistic CPM price that makes it worthwhile. (If CPM is the route you go.)
I use a banner rotation module from my CMS with minor modifications. He's paying for enough impressions to last two months with the weighted rotation he has, so the administration isn't a lot of work.
I may pursue more deals like this, although I plan to keep AdSense in the rotation as an indicator of the value of the block.
Since adsense/adwords has come around, I have several advertisers that advertise on my direct sold ads and adsense.
On one forum that I run, I don't show adsense ads to visitors, I only show targeted direct sold ads. So that offers advertisers a way to reach my audience.
The billing part isn't hard at all, since it's mostly automated. I collect payment in advance for their ad run, and when their ad run ends, their banners stop and they are notified by email so they can decide to pay again or let it expire.
I would never contact an advertiser that I saw in an adsense ad to see if they wanted to buy my direct sold ads. Actually, I've never contacted an advertiser to see if they wanted to advertise on my site.
