Is this Google TOS violation?

Guys,

This site called Tech2 a pretty established site in India and a part of TV18 network..display google ads with such a amazing blending and tweaking...i wonder if it's against TOS or they r premium publishers who r allowed to do such things.

http://www.tech2.com/india/news/cpus/nvidia-to-unveil-amdcentric-mcp72-chipset/4162/0

Check it out yourself.

 

WOW that took me an age to work out where the google adverts where. NO WAY can that be legal as they have altered the google adsense code . Report their arses and let google sort it out.

 

I think they are probably a premium publisher, in which case they are pretty much allowed to do what they want

 

This is bad .. bad ... bad. Surely google has an automated way of checking this, no?

 

I think they are a premium publisher. Their alexa rank is 10377.

 

Are you sure about that? I thought that even premium publishers where not allowed to alter the code so dramatically. They have made the display unrecognisable as adverts, and have the 'ads by google' almost the same colour as the background.

Surely this can't be acceptable as ads must be clearly marked.

I might well be wrong about this of course, but if I was an adwords publisher and my ads were appearing on that site in that manner I would NOT be happy and would complain to google.

 

They must be a premium publisher - surely no regular publisher would customise their ads as much as that.

 

Yeah i've seen some premium publishers where the ads are even less obvious than the ones on that site. I believe that they have to option to remove the "ads by google" that standard publishers have to display.

 

I think they are premium publisher

 

And on the top of that, the 'ads by google' isnt even clickable...

But TV18 network is a big media company with some large site, IBNlive.com alone generates enough page views to qualify as premium publisher..

Edit: GAWD!! they are using Javascript to alter the ads.. Sucks, if that is allowed by google just because they are premium publishes then I hate being general publisher..

 

Yeah guys...i was blown away yesterday when i saw that...i was like WTF..

I almost about to click on that ad but soon realised that seems to be some kind of ad...a lil bit of investigation with "Webmaster's prespective i could catch it..

but yeah even if u r a premier publisher is this allowed? I haven't seen this much variation ever before on any of the other premier publisher even sites like plentyoffish and digg doesnt do this.

They sometimes dont display ads by google...but haven't seen anyone alerting the code to make it look like content.

What do you say guys?

 

What we say don't matter. take it up with Google. Although I doubt such a large corporation as that would screw up to such a degree.

 

I have sent a mail to google asking about this site, I used my adwords account to send the mail, so hopefully I'll get a reply..

 

Adwords advertisers get a quick reply always

 

I honestly can't see this being ok as altering the code like they have done HAS to be against the TOS. If I was an advertiser I would be TOTALLY annoyed at this.

 

Thanks..let us know the outcome..