Forum Posting about Adsense- What to do?

[yoyo8]

Background: I run a community driven site that has nothing to do with the web. It displays only Adsense ads, period. No sponsors, no other ads, etc.

Situation: I come home after several hours and notice a thread about the ads on my site (adsense), complimenting how wonderful they are compared to ads on other sites. The following posts compliment the ads some more and discuss some inconsistencies with certain ads (mis-targeting).

Result: I remove the thread and post another thread stating that due to the stringent requirements of the program it was necessary to remove the thread about the ads. I also contacted some of the forum posters explaining the same thing.

Question: Did I do the right thing? Would there be a more appropriate procedure to do if I encounter this in the future?

[Blue_Fin]

You could include in your Posting Guidelines something to the effect of the following:

Comments with regard to advertisements which appear on our forums should not be posted and will be removed. I welcome your feedback by email. Thank you for your cooperation.

No mention of Google or AdSense specifically.

[kwasher]

...and I think its a shame you had to remove COMPLIMENTARY threads from your site. Ususally, its the negative racist stuff that one has to remove. It just don't seem right....

"Go ahead an buy stuff from the ads on my site, just dont talk about them."

[edited by: kwasher at 1:38 am (utc) on Nov. 3, 2003]

[rogerd]

I think your action was perfect, yoyo8. You couldn't leave the posts in place, lest they appear to be some kind of promotion to click on ads.

Informing the posters was important, too. They had no clue that their posts would be a problem, so I'm sure you were polite & understanding.

TOS changes something along the lines of what Bluefin suggests are a good idea, too. Even advertisers other than Adsense shouldn't be forum topics.

The main thing, I think, is to provide a clear explanation so your posters don't think you are cracking down on a whim. "Our contracts with our advertisers prohibit ... we appreciate your compliance and understanding."

[Jenstar]

It is suspected that discussion of AdSense ads on one forum lead to the suspension of that publisher - a discussion began detailing how much cheaper tickets to an event were through the AdSense ads than through other revues. That would definitely be considered an incentive to click, which is against the AdSense terms.

In my opinion, you did the right thing, and I would have done the same myself. Just be careful of what is discussed in that thread you began. Discussion of how your run the ads to "support the site" etc could be seen as inciting people to click as well, so they will help support the site.

[roddy]

Sounds like the best solution to me, and it's what I'm planning to do when I inevitably get the same thread. So far I've had a couple of passing comments like 'Hey, look, we're getting ads for XXXXXX already, isn't that clever', but no Adsense focussed discussion.

Overall though, I'm really happy with Adsense, and my members don't object to the ads at all.

Roddy

[yoyo8]

OK, makes sense, thanks. BTW, the thread I opened responding to the initial ad thread was immediately locked by me so there wouldn't be any open discussion, and in it I mention that if anyone has any questions or concerns to contact me directly.

[whizkiddo]

maybe people could soon start playing games on such forums. like choose a particular keyword and use it all over in the post. then see whose keyword gets targetted. say for example I use "porsche 911" to fit in 6-7 sentences. Similar for other users...the winner is obviously the one selected by the adsense bot to target his ads to ;)

Just kidding, on a more serious thought could someone sticky me the url of a forum running Adsense ads, I wont click I promise..its just that I havent seen them so far. Not unusual since I only hang out at webmaster world. Isnt the situation I discussed above possible..do the ads sometimes get targetted based on just 1 post which has nothing to do with the topic? And how long before the ads get targetted once the thread has started?

<added> BTW yoyo8 I think what u did was perfect, isnt sensible to take chances with adsense and since u explained your point of view to the posters ; you must have earned a lot of respect in their eyes too. Since you obviously said no to some advertising revenue by locking that thread. </added>

[tombola]

Instead of removing these postings manually, you can add a few lines to your script to screen postings for "unwanted" strings (in this case: "Adsense"). When such a string appears in a submitted posting, you can set up your script to reject that posting and you never have to worry again ;-)

In general, to comply with the Adsense TOS, you can set up your scripts to screen for words or strings that contain /sex/ or /gambling/.
I take no risks and whenever my scripts encounter these terms, the Adsense code will NOT be displayed on that particular page.