Adsense says “no” to traffic exchange programs…
In a clarification issued today, Mike Deeringer of AdSense Publisher Support had this to say about “traffic exchange programs”…
“We understand that our publishers are always looking for ways to attract interested users to their sites. But using third-party tools or services to increase your site traffic may lead to invalid clicks or impressions and result in your account being disabled. For this reason, we’d like to provide you with some guidance about this.
As many of you already know, our program policies strictly prohibit any means of artificially generating ad impressions or clicks, including third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, auto-surf, and click-exchange programs. These programs offer incentives for users to view web pages or click on ads, resulting in activity that is harmful to our advertisers.
We occasionally receive questions from publishers interested in using traffic exchanges to bring traffic to their site. While these services may help advertise your site, we don’t recommend using them, as they may also result in similar invalid activity. We realize that you may have questions about a specific traffic service and whether it could potentially create invalid impressions or clicks. However, please understand that we’re unable to comment on any particular third-party service.”
Hmmm, I wonder where that leave Adwords and other Pay Per Click search engines?
Oh, and what about an offline Billboard ad? Isn’t that encouraging people to visit your site who may, gasp, click on an Adsense ad?
I don’t get what the fuss is about. As long as you don’t encourage people to click your ads, or mislead them into clicking your ads, what business is it of Google’s to decide how you get your visitors?
I guess, since they’re now referring to “ad impressions” as well as “clicks”, they can dictate what type of traffic you get to your site.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:32 am
I don’t get the fuss either! Google really gets me riled up sometimes as to how arrogant they are. I believe it is simply flexing to show their advertisers that they care about click fraud. If they weren’t being pressured about invalid clicks I bet they’d not even care if click fraud existed. But since they need to keep their public image squeeky clean they do stuff like this and also stuff like busting sites for images close to ads (deceptive?). I am really rooting for Yahoo to come up and give Goo a run for the money! They deserve some competition!
April 21st, 2007 at 2:17 am
Not going to happen, yahoo is already behind by a long way. Simple market principles show it takes a lot to bring a looser back into the running - just ask Lee Iacocca
August 27th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
What is all this talk about website exchanges done by email?
I had a look at a site that surfs a site for 30 seconds.
Cant google recognise that humans dont look a website for exactly 30 seconds each time!!
As for Indian countries, dont google think “how come all his add clicks are coming from dehli?
I have heard that click groups work via email.
I imagine they dont go nuts but click all over the world to look natural and keep the click rate average.
Let me know all you can.
cheers
ann
October 8th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Well, I like what Google is doing with its TOS. I feel it will go a long way to help advertisers feel more comfortable that their money is being well spent on real visitors and not click networks looking to beat up on a ad network.
Phil
November 8th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Wow, great information. I will begin applying it to my website
Thanks!
Mike.
December 8th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Allowing AdWords to appear on 3rd party sites reduces the targeting of ads. This helps the AdSense advertiser by reducing their payments for non-targeted viewers.
Having your ads about “panic attacks”, for example, appear in a traffic exchange where general users are viewing the ads reduces the targeting that the AdSense user is hoping for. This is important for two reasons:
First, the click through rate will be reduced. This may mean that the AdWords user will have to pay a higher price per click to get their ads seen.
Second, traffic exchange users may click an ad wne they are really not interested in. This costs the AdWords user extra money with no real expectation of a return on their investment.
Hopefully, you can see why showing AdSense ads on 3rd party sites is frowned upon.
December 8th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
>Allowing AdWords to appear on 3rd party sites reduces the targeting of ads.<
I think you need to define “third party sites”, Bob, because Google only refers to “third party tools/services” used to *generate* traffic.
How a site gets traffic shouldn’t be relevant to Google, IMO. But they’ve gone from policing “clicks” to policing “impressions” which I don’t think is right.
Neil.