Ads and image placement - The official word from Google

I think Adsense are going to be fielding questions about this for some time to come. I think it's pretty clear what they're saying is and isn't allowed, but people are always going to be looking for ways to occupy the grey area, where there's profit involved.

Are we eventually going to get to a situation where Adsense insists on a border on all its adblocks, in order to keep overblending to a minimum?

 

it was about time for them to put it public
not only email some publishers

 

Incorrect. Take a look at the Google Adsense program policies. Specifically, the Ad Placement section. I quote:

I believe this covers MFA sites, does it not?

 

As I mentioned above still lots of MFA sites out there for a long time and why google does'nt take action against them showing their TOS, because 99% of the publishers banned because of invalid clicks only and not because of ad placement..

 

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So i guess sites like increasectr.com are going to die!?

 

This does affect a lot of MFA sites. It will be interesting to see if Google actually does shut down some AdSense accounts because of it. This may just be a PR statement because they need to post a public opinion regarding these tactics. After all, they have been under assault for the click fraud problem for some time. I've yet to see them shut down several MFA sites that I have found that are almost completely devoid of content and are clearly misleading in nature.

The placement of images next to ads is not necessarily misleading. The intent is to draw attention to the ads.

 

TechEvangelist,

This is where I agree with you totally:

However I did disable the Adsense ad next
to the picture, which is on my blog, just
in case. It is going to ruin the design, so
until I find a way to do it without the
picture - the ad next to it will stay disabled.

 

I dont thinks images next to ads are misleading.it is just to improve your site.

 

That's not the point. The point is that MFA sites are a violation of the Google Adsense program policies.

 

aw.. i have to remove mine

oh well.. there goes my ctr rate of .5 to something even lower

 

See that statement from the TOS about "sites made expressly to show adsense" doesn't make much sense to me. Of course people make sites expressly to show adsense, expressly to make money off of a neat tool. That's called enterprise. How many people go into a business with "making money" as a secondary goal? Any blog that shows adsense could perhaps fall into the category they describe.

 

already most of the existing MFA are black listed.

 

Good point. I guess that this is another gray area that could do with some clarification, but where can they draw the line? You must appreciate that it isn't as simple as just defining what a MFA site is.

In my opinion the sites that Google refer to are sites that were clearly MFA, i.e with no real purpose, little or no content and an abundance poorly implemented ads.

 

I am going to wait and see how google treats this, I too, think it might just be PR. My sites have high CTR because of images next to the ads. If that goes away, I think it might not be worth while for me to keep going with adsense.

 

There's going to be a lot of busy webmasters today

 

I'm surprised it's taken Google so long to finally confirm their standing on this. They've alluded to it a number of times but why have they chosen now to stick a stake in the ground? Have they been receiving complaints from advertisers? How many accounts have already been canned before Google confirms their policy?

 

No images = fewer clicks
No images = less bandwidth

 

What up with YPN? They don't explicitly forbid this yet, do they?

 

I agree with you on this.