clancey has it right. This is not a case of bidding up adsense. He is talking about site targeting, which he gets most of money returned to him (after googles cut). This is a form of price fixing and if a large company was doing, you would see Federal charges filed. It's similar to shill bidding on ebay. He is bidding for advertising on his own site. He pays google for his advertising to run on one site he owns. Google then pays him back most of that money. His bidding creates an artificial price increase. Google would certainly not allow this to go on - just like ebay goes after shill bidding. Even though ebay would technically make more commission with a higher price, they lose credibility by letting it happen. Google is already having a hard time with the content network because of click fraud. Many adwords advertisers are opting out of the content network for lower performance and fraud, which means lower payouts to Adsense publishers and more money for google and "google search". Right now advertisers can choose not to have their ad run on sites other than googles, and they can also bid a much lower price per click.... i.e. a click on google search might pay google $1.00 while the same ad click on a site run by you or I could pay 10 cents because the advertiser pays less.
What a nice conversation around this thread Now I try to express myself in a way that there will not be any misunderstanding with my point of view, even I hate to do this with a language that is not my native. The situation: I have two sites - Site A and Site B. Site A is a high traffic site that has been up for several years and I'm publishing AdSense on that. Site B is quite new, traffic is still low, but I have big expectations with it. I really believe that I will have a true money making machine in it. I'm publishing AdSense on that too. But because the traffic is still quite low on the Site B, I need to advertise it - and what would be better tool to do it than AdWords. As a AdSense-publisher I know how powerful AdWords can be. And because I know that both of my sites have quite similar target audiences, what would be better place to advertise the low traffic Site B than the high traffic Site A. When you run a sitetargetted (JackBurton, you were right about that I misspoked/mistyped in my original posting) AdWords-campaing, it's allways pay per view campaing. Which is good, because it's very economic way to advertise with AdWords. You can have a lot of clicks with small amount of money if your ad is good. And this is all what I was looking for with running the AdWords-campaing. But then I noticed the side-effect. First I didn't notice it, but after Google made latest improvements to the "Advanded reports" and the AdSense-team explained how site targetted ads and content targetted ads compete, I took closer look to my revenue from AdSense and my AdWords campaign. What I found was that after I started my campaing the average eCPM did rise. And it did rise more than I was finally paying (AdWords cost - AdSense site targetted income = total payout) of my campaing. And the Site B got more traffic, so the I started to receive more AdSense income from there too. Ok, that's not much, but every drop makes the lake bigger. What I have learned of running this campaing is that you should bid only that much that your ad is shown only every now and then. You don't try to be the No.1 advertiser. You bid just that much that the lowest paying ads drop and the second lowest must pay little more than normal. It might happen that the lowest paying advertiser is ready to bid a bit more to be seen again and then your ad drops away from your site, but then you (and Google) make bit more money. Ok, then you loose again the traffic you got and ... the loop is running. You just have count how much you are ready to pay of the traffic, because allways there is point where it's not clever anymore. Just stay avare. Is this against TOS? I haven't found the sentence that says this is denied. If Google changes the TOS, as it does sometimes, I will stop it. But untill that - everything that is not denied, must be allowed. BTW - writing here works little bit in a same way -> You start a thread, people reads it and they comment it, it will receive more readers and more comments and everytime there is AdSense shown. And once it will happen - someone clicks the ad. I own few forums too and I do it a lot in there - start a thread an so on. Forums does not make big money, but as I said - every drop makes the lake bigger.
What you are doing is paying to run ads on another site you own. You pay google and since you own the other site, google kicks back to you the majority of what you pay them. You stated in your first post you intention - to inflate the price the others who were paying to site-target your site. If you really wanted to advertise site B from site A, you would just place your own ad and keep google out of it. As it is now, you are paying google a percentage to run an ad on your own site. You are paying google this small percentage because it inflates the cost to other advertisers and the net result is it makes you more money at the expense of someone else. It's called price fixing and is illegal. I have no problem with you wanting to make more money, but what you are doing is costing other advertisers more money by jacking up the price with a phoney bid - it's phoney because whatever you bid, the vast majority goes back into your pocket. You're bidding in an auction knowing that you will get a kick back of the money you spend. When you sign up for Adwords, you can choose to run your ad: 1) Only on google search (these are google owned and google keeps 100% of the money). 2) Google search AND Search Network (these include partners like AOL) google shares the money with those partners. 3) Content Network (these are sites for Adsense Partners - websites operated by people like the posters on DP). More and more seasoned professionals are choosing NOT to run their ads on the Content Network because of click fraud and scheme like the one you are currently doing. I spend quite a bit of money on adwords and don't use the content network (so nothing you do personally affects me). Because of the fraud that is possible with the Content Network, the highest paying keywords go directly to google or one of their big partners because the advertiser has decided they don't want to run their ad on the Content Network OR they as they allowed to bid separately, they bid a much smaller amount for click that come from the "Content Network". This has directly resulted in lower payouts to anyone running adsense on their sites (other than google or AOL, etc). So google gets to pocket the $20 clicks and adsense publishers get nothing or perhaps get to share a much lower priced click with google. Clicking on your own ads cheats the advertiser. Shill bidding on your own sites cheats the advertiser. They are both illegal. It winds up hurting anyone running adsense because it drives down the payout per click.
As You all know, banners just does not work. I have tried that. They just not work. If I just could add a link to my content, I would do that, but it just does not fit in the content. And making AdWords-look-a-like ads is against TOS. And we all know that AdWords-type ads are very powerful. So what else can I do? As I said, when Google will change their TOS so that this kind of activity is illegal - I will stop it and I have to re-think my activities. Until that just show me the sentence from TOS where they say that this is illegal and I'll stop it right away. Google has changed the TOS because of my activities earlier too, and when they did it I stopped what I was doing. Now you can't advertise a site that is look-a-like from another. Year ago I was an affiliate of a webshop and I created a 100% copy of their landingpage and I started a AdWords campaing. That was a killer. I made lot's of $$$$. Google even stopped my campaign once saying that my landing page wasn't on same domain as the visible URL. I just wrote back them and told to read the URL and there wasn't anything that denied look-a-like pages. They had to start my campaing again and then took some time before they changed the TOS so that using this trick is now illegal. After the change I didn't do it anymore. This is me - I'm allways looking for some wormholes and using them as long it's possible. God, Google should pay me good money for looking so close their TOS Maybe this happens because I use Apple - I think different
I think like most people the key to success is hard work. I am fairly new to this whole thing, but recently I have dedicated a lot of time and energy into making it work for me, how I want it to. My most recent idea is getting friends and family involved with the whole thing. I am offering anyone and everyone free web hosting etc (I will try to charge a small fee if they will pay it though) and also I am building the site for them to use. They just add and update the content. In return for this, I ask for 50% of the advertising revenue. For the most people the sites are used as a hobby producing a little bit of income, but in the long run if the person is committed to making it work for them then the income I receive will far out way the initial input. Bit of a gamble, but I think it’s worth it. On top of this I am going to start to offer traffic building services to people, in order to generate more income for them and thus for me. The thing I most like about this sort of venture is how versatile it is. If one thing does not work, you can try something new, without too much of an overhead. My latest site is www.naturalcrystalinfo.com (there is the plug) it is not the best site you will ever see, and will not win any awards, but it does however suit its purpose. The guy the site is for has recently started up a small business, so the offer of a free website was snapped up. He told me how he wanted it to look and I did it. The site generates traffic through business cards he has paid for and also through newspaper ads that he takes out, so the cost to me is very small (a domain name per year and also hosting.) Even at a bottom end if the site were to be making me only $20 per week, that in my eyes is more than fair for the few hours (at most) work put into the making of the site. If say I have created another 10 sites with deals like this (easily attainable no?) and added to that the earnings from my own sites, web hosting and in the future the traffic building services, then it is easy to see how large earnings can be achieved with other people doing the major part of the leg work. I think my next move with this whole thing is to pay my brother to do some sites in his spare time, and then it really will be money for nothing. But that’s getting too lazy and far too ahead of myself. Hope you found this rant entertaining and hopefully some part interesting or useful. Not posted many things in this forum yet (I have read a lot of it though,) but it looks like a really useful “tool†for people like me. Hope I can become a good part of the team you all seem to have got going here. And I would also like to say thanks for all the good information available. I look forwards to reading (and who knows maybe even writing) more…
"As You all know, banners just does not work. I have tried that. They just not work. If I just could add a link to my content, I would do that, but it just does not fit in the content. And making AdWords-look-a-like ads is against TOS. And we all know that AdWords-type ads are very powerful. So what else can I do?" Give me a break. Most people would give me their right arm to be able to change the adsense layout and now you want to claim that you can't create some form of advertising to showcase your other site? LOL - go back to your original post, you are doing what you are doing to jack up the price and cheat adsense advertisers. "As I said, when Google will change their TOS so that this kind of activity is illegal - I will stop it and I have to re-think my activities. Until that just show me the sentence from TOS where they say that this is illegal and I'll stop it right away." Google doesn't make laws. They don't decide what is legal and what isn't. This is fraudulent deception and price fixing. It's a criminal activity. Google has no say one way or the other in this. "Google has changed the TOS because of my activities earlier too, and when they did it I stopped what I was doing. Now you can't advertise a site that is look-a-like from another. Year ago I was an affiliate of a webshop and I created a 100% copy of their landingpage and I started a AdWords campaing. That was a killer. I made lot's of $$$$. Google even stopped my campaign once saying that my landing page wasn't on same domain as the visible URL. I just wrote back them and told to read the URL and there wasn't anything that denied look-a-like pages. They had to start my campaing again and then took some time before they changed the TOS so that using this trick is now illegal. After the change I didn't do it anymore." You forced google to restart your campaign? PLEEEZE..... Google can stop running your ad anytime they want. "we [google] reserve the right to reject or approve any ads." This is me - I'm allways looking for some wormholes and using them as long it's possible. God, Google should pay me good money for looking so close their TOS Pay less attention to the TOS and concentrate on trying to make money without cheating the advertisers. "Maybe this happens because I use Apple - I think different " There are a lot of people who think just like you. We even have a special place just for them. It's called the "Big House".
Your definition of loyal visitor is the one that clicks ads . ok ok got the point, I am missing loyal visitors for all these days
OMG, how many threads have I read here which talk about AdSense blindness? If banners dont' work, what about small text box ads which do not look like AdSense, but which stand out? Please, this is not an explanation, it is something we tell ourselves to pretend we are doing something other than what we intend. What about ethics? You clearly do not care about your customer. You spend all you time trying to dig your hands deeper into their wallet. But, instead of trying to improve your product and upsell your customer, you are manipulating them into paying more. If you provide free access to your website, then your customer is the advertiser. And it is not Google. It is the individual or company which is placing ads through Google. I put a higher value on business ethics and reputation than money. I guess that is just the thing that happens when you build your own computers. You are not just a user -- you do it different!
First, you don't have to shout all the time. It's rude. And then the AdSense layout, it's working. I know it's not stylish, no eyecandy, it just works. I don't know if you are a AdSense-publisher, I am. And I have published allkind of banners too, so without telling my AdSense CTR, I can tell that the AdSense-layout is more than 10 times more powerful than banners. Ok, about the law. You are there in northern California and I'm here in Finland. Maybe you don't know where it's located, but I can tell you it's in the other side the globe. And you there have US Federal law and we here have local law. And we have even different Google TOS here. So far I don't find local law or part of TOS that I violate. If I do, please tell me. That's correct, they "reserve the right to reject or approve any ads". But they wrote me and they told me about the "violation I was doing" and I answered them that I didn't violate any rules. So they started my campaing again and after that they changed the rules. And I followed them. Paying attention to TOS is part of my business which is running pretty nice. I so like to tell you my CTR and CPM, but it violates the TOS. I can only say that they are quite nice In some cases "Big House", some cases "White House" and sometimes "Nut House". Which one do you prefer?
I just noticed at my own blog that Google runs it's own ads in the middle of all other ads. If someone cliks Googles own ad, does publisher get payed? Should be! And then I remembered that I have read from somewhere that Google bids just like everybody else to their own ads and they compete as a normal advertiser of publishers ad space. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? So isn't this same thing what I told in my 1st posting? Aren't they fixing the price up with their ads? Not only in one site, but in the whole system.
since you are an adwords advertiser, please tell us how his technique is going to drive the price you pay for ads above the limits that *you* set in your adwords campaign. lets say that he does indeed drive the price of adwords advertising up a little bit on one website... is that going to drive up the adwords rates on every other website in the sector as well? "Price fixing -- Actions, generally by a several large corporations that dominate in a single market, to escape market discipline by setting prices for goods or services at an agreed-on level." that's why it can't be price fixing... he's not controlling the adwords prices on all the websites in his sector.
that's a good question maybe you should provide some examples for him. i will say that you guys are reinforcing his theories by reacting so strongly... i personally don't see how it'll work on quality sites that already have a decent epc, so i'm not going to get too upset about it. this reminds me of mfa's... it's pretty well established that they drive earnings down for us, and therefore must be eliminated by the publisher, because google won't fix the problem. as an adwords advertiser, i guess that you have to be aware of all manner of schemes that'll cost you money... call it the flip side of mfa's.
Just got infraction because of you guys arguing about if this is legal or no. I have see many websites doing this for years and they didnt get banned, im not doing it because i read on this forum that this ism illegal, and in this topic we also see that some people say its illegal and some its legal. Is there someone who knows this for sure, not just guessing and thinking, but someone who got banned because of this or someone who emailed adsense and asked them and got answer from them. Please share with us.