Think Google Adsense is good? - Think again

[X3r0X]

A timesonline article:

The nonsense about AdSense

Benjamin Cohen, the former teenaged dot.com millionaire, has run into a problem as he tries to make his next million: Google won't pay him for ads run on his website


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Google AdSense lies at the heart of Google's advertising empire. AdSense ads are the funny little text boxes that are scattered across the internet, displaying links related to the content on a web page. For many sites, AdSense has become the sole source of income, with some small one man band publishing outfits claiming to make in excess of $100,000 through showing the adverts. AdSense also amounts to some 43 per cent of Google's total revenue.

However, my own experience of the program has been less than favourable.

From day one, I integrated Google AdSense adverts on to PinkNews.co.uk. It instantly provided advertising that was both relevant to my readers and that fitted into the context of the website. In addition, I was able to weed out advertisers that I didn't want my brand to be associated with, such as pornography and dating.

Sure enough, a couple of months later, a cheque for a couple of hundred pounds arrived from Google, which was duly banked and the funds cleared. So far, so good.

But a couple of days later, I was informed by e-mail that my AdSense account had been terminated due to "click fraud", and that I would receive no further payments and be unable to use Google's advertising products again.

Click fraud is where people or programs - automated robots, or 'bots - click on your to an advertising link in an attempt to defraud either or both the advertiser and Google. Click fraud experts tend to run up huge levels of traffic, generating thousands of clicks and each may cost a particular advertiser in excess of £10,000.

In my case, PinkNews.co.uk had received very little traffic and consequently very few clicks on advertisements. We're talking in the region of £100 of advertising, hardly the sort of figure someone seriously engaging in click fraud would bother about.

After a number of e-mails to Google without replies and no response from their press office, I decided to cut my losses and concentrate on selling advertising direct to clients, thereby bypassing Google's system.

Then a few months ago, I got chatting about my experiences with Google's AdSense product with some friends in the industry and it became apparent that the false allegations of fraud were not unique to my business. I also learnt that some advertisers claim that money they spent on "fraudulent clicks" was never returned to them.

In order to test Google out, I signed up to Google AdSense once again. I was accepted, despite the fact that they had previously told me in no uncertain terms to never use their products again. I wrote to them to make sure that my site would meet their admission criteria. Trinh, from the American based AdSense team, checked us out and said that we were approved for the ads.

Read the rest here: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13129-2123601,00.html

 

[phoenix_]

Meh, Googles my last wanted publisher :lol:

 

[Faithless]

LOL they use google adsense themselves

 

[hottweelz]

Google has Published Corporate Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission here in the US. Its Stock Provider is Goldman Sachs.

Adsense accounts for 80-85% of their Annual Revenue. Not 43%

This aricle is not only wrong, but useless. Add at least 37% to all the figures.