Why isn’t it ok to encourage your visitors to click on your AdSenseads?
Here's a little story about what NOT to do if you have signed up for Google AdSense.
Actually I didn't have to write this story myself - A couple of clueless people, who violated the Google AdSense TOS, publicly told their story in Google's Senseless AdSense Program
Here's a little snippet from their story:
Last week I went online and posted a simple message. I asked everyone who liked our blog to do their part and "click three times for Alice and Bill" each time they visited our site
Oh no, big no-no - you're not allowed to encourage people to click on those ads. It said so in the TOS you agreed to when you signed up for AdSense.
And the story continues:
I explained that our ads were targeted to a tech audience and that I had checked out the advertisers to make sure they were legitimate
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but blogs are highly dynamic right?
So the ads change depending on what currently on the page where they are shown.
And at any moment another advertiser could bid higher, improve their ad, or the current advertisers could reach their daily maximum - result: New ads are shown.
So no matter how many times you check out the advertisers behind the AdSense ads, there is no way you can be certain that new advertisers "unchecked" doesn't enter the picture.
I didn't read their blog itself, just their story in PC Magazine, but I wonder which criteria was used to determine how legitimate the companies behind the ads were.
In one day, the number of clicks went up to nearly 1,000
Ok, a few more daily clicks and they could have probably slipped under Google's click fraud radar, but a surge to 1,000 daily clicks is bound to be noticed.
Within hours, a user posted the Google AdSense usage policy, which apparently forbids people from pointing out ads or asking anyone to click on one
"apparently" ???
It's been a while since I signed up for AdSense, but I'm pretty sure that there is a checkbox you have to mark that signifies that you agree to adhere to the TOS.
But the story doesn't end there.
True, in my excitement I had not checked the policy, but I never thought we had asked people to click on something as a way to deceive an advertiser. In my mind, I was delivering what the advertisers were looking for: an audience of tech-savvy users who are proficient online
Their visitors might be tech-savvy, and the bloggers themselves might be tech-savvy, but these bloggers clearly haven't got a clue when it comes to advertising.
Yes, they are deceiving the advertisers by sending them unqualified visitors - and costing them a bundle.
They didn't deliver the advertisers an audience of interested tech-savvy users - they delivered a bunch of people that had no problem clicking their mouse three times just to make these bloggers some money.
If they wanted donations, which was clearly what this was all about, then they could have just put up a PayPal button.
But - yes you guessed it - the story isn't over.
The next day, a Google rep named Suzie informed me that we had to take our posting down immediately or face being thrown out of the program
I hate to tell you this, but "I told you so"
1,000 additional daily clicks doesn't go unnoticed.
So, now that they have got an official response from Google, one would suspect that they would somehow grasp what it was they signed up for but...
So now we have no posting and no word about ads on our Web site. But I just have to stop and rant for a moment. Why is a little blog "bad" if it asks its users to click three times and have a look at three advertisers vying for their attention? An ad, after all, is simply a hook to get you to stop by and have a look. There is no guarantee you'll buy anything from an online click, any more than you'll rush into every store that has a window display. But every now and then what you find is what you want, and that will generate a sale.
Let me tell you why.
A little blog - or big for that matter - is bad when it encourages people to cost advertisers money.
And an ad might - as they put it - simply be a hook to get you to stop by, but once you click it, it's no longer just a hook - then it's an expense.
I like the window display analogy, because it gives me the opportunity to visualize what really is going on.
Imagine you're a store owner - with a window display.
There is a man outside your store - you don't know him, but he is somehow bringing lots of people into your store.
You get curious, so you watch him to see what he is doing.
Now, here comes someone in the street, they stop to talk to the man, and then they follow him into your store.
Great you think - a new interested customer - not just someone that is going to browse for half an hour, and then leave without buying anything.
They walk over to the cash register, and now something happens that makes you really mad.
The man dives in, and picks up a handful of coins.
And then he puts them in his pocket.
Each day he brings in 1,000 browsing people, and each time he steals 10 cent from you - by the end of the week he has inflicted a loss of $500 to your business.
I still think what Bill and I did was not wrong. If exposing 1,000 people to Dell printers and a cool site that covered flying-lesson software and some great high-end custom CPU-case manufacturers is wrong, then I guess I am missing something
Yes, they are missing something - and they obviously have no intention of trying to understand what it is that is so wrong with their thinking and reasoning.
As I see it, the little guy blogger could be the advertiser's best friend, because we can ask for something like three clicks and actually generate user support, when big tech sites would likely only anger their users if they did that. And we don't cost anything until someone actually clicks. The economics are on our side.
They are still clueless about what they did. They caused the clicks, so they cost the advertisers money - in fact they didn't just throw their money away - they handed them over to the bloggers.
Oh well. The AdSense policy may make sense to someone, but not me.
That's possibly because they only see it from their own point of view.
So, what should you do if you think that the AdWords advertisers ads on your site would appeal to your visitors?
Encurage to click on them? - NO
Contact the advertiser and see if they offer an affiliate program. Or have them make your visitors a good price on some of their products.
But whatever you do, don't violate the TOS of the hand that feeds you.
Hmmm, I wonder if they would have made the same recommendation to click through if they themselves would have had to pay 10 cent per visitor they sent to the advertiser