Forum Moderators: martinibuster
1. Can I display this advertisers image banner along with his company's adsense ads on same page?
2. If not, which would be the better option? Adding this advertiser to the ban list for the period of sponsorship or refusing the direct advertisements (I do not think that it would be professional on my part to do so)? Having said that I should mention that this is a prominent adveriser through adsense on my website and I assume his ads generate a substantial chunk of revenue through google. Though my direct advertisement rates are prohibitvely high, I am not sure which would be the more profitable and professional option.
Your views will be greatly appreciated (especially jenstar's and ASA's).
Sometime you have to look at the distant view rather than the short term.
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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).
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I would say that is a big "don't do" especially since that would cause a lessening or loss to Google of revenue this advertiser gives them, putting yourself in competition with Google. Not a good idea in my opinion.
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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).
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My understanding of this clause is that we should direct any feedback to google from "visitors" or from "ourselves". For example if any visitor is a victim of fraud as a result of any adsense advertisement and complains about it to us, we should contact google in stead of the advertiser in question. This happened to me once, and as a TOS abiding webmaster, I immediately directed that complaint to google. They quickly suspended the advertiser afterwards. This example just covers one aspect of this clause and there can be many other general things covered through it like "webmasters should not solicit or contact the advertisers for direct ad sales". Above these general interpretations, it does not appear to explicitly prohibit any two way communication between the advertisers and the webmaster.
The advertiser in question is a long standing advertiser for my company (even before the advent of adsense), and has sponsored many conferences and meetings for us in past. I have never solicited him to put his advertisements directly on my website as I am happy with the way it is now. It is the first time this advertiser has asked us to put his Image banner on site. I have been communicating with this advertiser for a long time now and it would be unfair for google to put a "gag order" on communication between him and me regarding any advertisements.
This particular website of mine is in a very small niche area (I know almost all of the advertisers in my niche personally for several years now), and like many other webmasters, I also run independent image banner campaigns. As most of the advertisers have moved to adsense and almost everyone has a potential to go adsense way in future, your interpretation of this clause will mean an end of independent banner advertisements for webmasters. I do not think that google meant to say this through that clause.
Currently, my relationship with a valued advertiser can be theatened if I refuse his offer. Most probably I will accept the image banner ad (it is not a contextual competing ad) and put him on the ban list in adsense (or take out adsense from the pages in question). I wanted the clarification only on one point which is "[u]am I allowed to show the same advertisers ads through adsense and through and image banner on the same page?[/u]". If someone has a definite answer, please let me know. I would not prefer any "speculations" as an answer to my query.
If someone has a definite answer, please let me know. I would not prefer any "speculations" as an answer to my query.
You can get the definitive answer only from Adsense Support.
We are all just "speculating" here :-)
You are not allowed to contact the advertiser yourself, but if the advertiser contacts you, that's ok.
I don't see anything in the current TOS which prohibits "double serving". IMO this was referring to ads appearing in different AdSense units only. However you should ask the advertiser whether they want to continue showing AdSense ads on your site. They may not want to be paying per click via AdWords in addition to whatever they are paying you directly. If not, you can just filter them and the problem is moot.
However, I do not agree with this part of her post;
However you should ask the advertiser whether they want to continue showing AdSense ads on your site. They may not want to be paying per click via AdWords in addition to whatever they are paying you directly.
Run the paid ads, but don't discuss AdSense or AdWords.
I sell direct advertising and people come to my site all the time and place ads and I was already doing this when Google signed me up. Whether the advertisers are on AdWords is meaningless as I didn't contact them directly (which I can't per TOS) and I don't even want to know how they found me.
Furthermore, I don't remember AdWords advertisers being restricted from directly contacting AdSense publishers.
It's like the military, don't ask, don't tell, and you're in compliance.
It's like the military, don't ask, don't tell, and you're in compliance.
LOL incredibill.
Thanks everyone for making the things clear. It was an ethical and professional dilemma for me and I just required few honest opinions (which I got in plenty!:-)).
I will most probably use incredibill's formula now!
If you'd like me to check the specific page in question, feel free to sticky mail me with the URL and I can give you a more precise answer. However, based on your description it sounds like including ads from both this advertiser and AdSense on your site would be fine from an AdSense policy perspective.
As long as the ad in question is not contextually targeted and does not mimic the look of Google ads (as per the 'Competitive Ads and Services' policy on [google.com ]), you should be OK.
As a general principle, it's possible that any Adwords advertiser could end up on any given site in the Adsense program. If you couldn't run ads that were presented in Adsense it would then be practically impossible for you to run any ads other than Adsense - not a rational outcome.
If the advertiser came to you, and you didn't contact them first, then all bets are off
Hmm you can't beat a bit of loyalty in business can you Bill, have you never heard of the saying
"Never bite the hand that feeds you"
That just what you are doing by going behind google's back, if it was not for adwords and adsense in the first place then that same advertiser would never of appeared on your site and would never of even contemplated contacting you...
