Street Fighter 2 made me click on AdSense ad :)

Now.. I've seen this website earlier and I liked the way AdSense ads were camouflaged. I came back to it about 10 mins ago to study that matter again.
Well somehow I ran onto this Street Fighter game and started playing.
At one moment I lost the game, got really annoyed and quickly clicked on the first game I saw below. Which in fact was an AdSense ad.

Is that good ad positioning or it's against Google's TOS?

Webpage is: http://www.fadgames.net/play/street-fighter-2

 

Looks fine to me! Good luck!

 

Not to me, it looks like those are links to other games based upon the text above the ads drawing attention to them.

 

Haha, no, it's not again the rules - a lot of publishers tend to use that method.

 

Its clever scheming, I just cant bring myself to implementing something like that.

I could definately see how you would have mistakenly clicked the ad though

 

My opinion is that it's indeed against the TOS. But I'm curious what others think. If it's not, I'll use that layout on my websites as well. It's very efficient

But the main thing is that the ad placement is misleading for the visitors! Google says you're not allowed to induce someone to click an ad unless it's their desire to do so. Or, after you play something and get annoyed you can't really stop and search for "Ads by Google" to see what NOT to click next. Pretty controversial I'd say. The ad title can be confusing and the placement does the rest.

 

It looks in breech to me, if they just deleted the encouraging sentence I think the CTR would be pretty good anyway.

 

Why's that? Its not against the rules as long as they're not saying "Please click here".

 

Damn you just made me burn up 30 minutes of my weekend!

Thanks for the link... classic themeing!

 

mihaidamianov is probably frustrated because he clicked on an ad.

 

Not really, I just liked the way that website "made me" click on that ad an I want to know if it's ok to use that layout or not, 'coz I want to use it

 

clever....
but not to me//

 

Forget whether that's illegal or not. What are the controls for that Street Fighter game?

 

Try your arrow keys and ASD and ZXC

 

Brilliant ad position. Everyone should do it like that if their site will support such ad placement. And it's absolutely NOT against the TOS. It does exactly what google always tells you to do , which is to blend your ads into the content.

 

OK, first of all, for clarity, incase it wasn't obvious...the "offending" site in the first post is mine.

The site is a basic install of www.shockscript.com with some modifications and the ad placement credits all go to the author of shockscript as seen on his website at www.shockarcade.com .

AFAIK, similar adsense ad placement was OK'ed by google on other sites. I do agree though it is very borderline.

Question is, would an advertiser, seeking a gaming audience want that click regardless of whether the user intended to click an ad or not? My personal justification on an ethical level is that its googles job to serve relevant ads. And if the ad is suited for a gaming audience, the exposure provided is what the advertiser wants. And if the advertiser is getting the right exposure with the target audience, then its finally up to the advertiser to convert the user into a lead/sale/whatever.

I'm open to critical discussion on this!

 

Hi Fahd. As the 1st post is mine all I have to say is.. CONGRATULATIONS!

To be honest, relevant or not relevant, Street Fighter 2 annoyed me so much that I didn't even read what the 'game' below is about.. It was some casino stuff as I found out later..

 

The plausible breech might be in the "If you liked this game, then you might like the following:" - that statement is border-line from breaching the TOS.

The ad that has the graphic to the left of it is fine, as I have several sites with the similar layouts THAT WERE approved by G adsense support. HOWEVER, their "preference" is to actually have a border around the ad or create some sort of seperator between the ad and the image. If you are creative enough, borders will actually blend images and ads even more.

You can accomplish this not only by adding a color on the ad border but using a similar strategy to what I used in the following link which was also approved by Google Adsense team:

Acceptable Blend (hover over the image and enlarge to size)

I'm going to leave you with this thought to ponder. The last thing that google wants is for users to become "ad blind" to their ads, like most of us have become with the traditional banners on sites. If you can be creative and not misleading with your blends, you're going to be fine for the most part. The general rule is that MOST people read the links they click on.


cheers
Frank

 

No breach is seen unless the complete ad is visible. All the 3 parts along with the URL