New Adsense policy changes.

[leebow]

I got an email yesterday about the new changes coming to Adsense (and other google products I don’t use)

If I read it right...

Monetising content that falls under the Google Publisher Restrictions will no longer be a policy violation; instead, we will restrict advertising on that content as appropriate, based on the preferences of each advertising product and/or advertisers’ individual preferences.

This would mean if google finds a page on your site it doesn’t like, maybe a page about guns - instead of a policy violation and a warning, account closure risk — now they just wont show ads on the pages with that type of content.

Is that how others are reading the new changes?

[tangor]

Related topic: [webmasterworld.com...]

Yes, it looks like g will decide where advertising will appear depending on their corporate stance on "content".

[matbennett]

I've asked this question of Google today as my interpretation is the same as @leebow . I've been told to sit tight and wait for clarification, but it sounded like that is correct.
I'm trying to understand where that demand is coming from. I don't work buy-side, but have I missed a change in Google Ads that allows advertisers to specify "yes, I'll have my ads next to guns"? I can't imagine that they are just passing it to a third party.

Yes, it looks like g will decide where advertising will appear depending on their corporate stance on "content".

I would say that is a better interpretation of the current handling, rather than what is coming.

[CommandDork]

My understanding, based on my experience with a current Google Certified Partner I'm working with, is that advertisers do have to opt-in to be featured next to 'sensitive content'.

What sensitive content is is debatable of course. 'Civil War Guns' aren't in the same realm as AR15 or AK47 despite them all being firearms.

[matbennett]

Yes, Google ads allows advertisers to opt-in/restrict some content areas.However these are areas within that is currently allowable by content policy (see here [support.google.com...] ).

Those options wouldn't give the case for showing ads alongside content that is outside of that current policy though. The current set-up would allow for "Put the code anywhere, but we'll only show ads when the content is within existing policy". For it to allow for "Put the code everywhere, we'll show a more limited subset of ads on content that was previously against policy" would either mean changing the buy-side controls or backfilling from third parties.

Looking at this more today, I'm currently leaning towards this meaning the former : "If you put code on non safe content, you won't be in trouble - we just won't show ads" - more similar to how page level violations have been handled recently.

I guess we'll soon see.

[irenefarber]

I wish to clarify, that I work with adsense, since 2007, and never had any warnings before. This is a branded site, born in 1996, considered of cultural interest by the Ministry of Culture.

My opinion, based on my recent experience:

It all depends on the accuracy of the detection system.
I have a bad experience in that field.
This images where detected as adult content:
[pasteboard.co...]
[pasteboard.co...]
[pasteboard.co...]

Off course when I ask for verification I become aproved without inconvinience.

But if the procedure, its going to be that they dont send me a warning, many of my pages could be considered as adult content, because they show drawings of indians in the colonization, or violent, because they show paintings of the Independence war.
 
Then Adsense, will restrict advertising on that content, that can be practically all the site, with the consequent consequence of low income, which is already happening with ups and downs

[NickMNS]

This looks like a big and significant change. I'm not sure whether the outcome will be positive or negative. On one hand sites that have content that occasionally triggered the filters may see their revenue increase as now the restrictions will be at the page level, but on another hand AdSense may decide to be more restrictive meaning that more sites may see reduced coverage.

As @Irenefarber points out it will depend largely on how restrictive the filters are. The terms described in the email(s) came across as being sufficiently vague that AdSense could decide to restrict pretty much any content that they wish.

[NickMNS]

Adsense is clearly doing a great job of filtering [insert sarcasm]. Here are a few examples of ads that I've blocked on my website in the past few days:
(warning the image shown sexually suggestive but appeared as ads) [imgur.com...]

Now contrast the ads I posted with images (publisher's content) posted by IreneFarber and it really makes you wonder what is going at AdSense. I suppose that by applying policy violations on a page level as opposed to a site wide level AdSense may be limiting its liability (if they even have any. which they likely don't).

I'm very much tempted to post the images that appear on the ads as images on a website with Adsense ads to see if those images would be flagged. My guess is that they would.