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Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

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Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#32
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that they can't - it's probably more that they don't want to and think they shouldn't. Show me one Google Service that actually offers decent support (apart form their more recent adventures as Google Fibre ISP).

I've had great support from Google with Google Apps issues.

Although just try and use your Google Apps account with:

* Google Fi

* Google Family Library Sharing

* Android Apps Family Sharing

* Google Play Music Family Sharing

* YouTube Red

* Google Spaces

Apps accounts, the only thing that has a decent support option, are purposefully limited in functionality and cannot do a lot of things.

The whole "One account. All of Google." is a lie, and attempting to ask Apps support about it results in a "this product isn't part of Apps and we offer no support", even though one has an Apps account and the issue is with the ability of a paid account.

There's a great thread on this, hundreds of comments, all angry when it started, all still angry, no help from Google or word from anyone at Google, and the only audience affected are paying customers of Google Apps:

https://goo.gl/Y8hG8P

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#33
post #20

This year we will stop using AdSense altogether. No support at all and the payouts have been declining every year. With the increase of ad blockers, even less encouraging to use ads in general. Sometimes I wonder, are ads as we know it, dead? Everyone hates it, has real usability impact and security risks. Didnt get the email though...

Let me provide you with some insight into your bewonderment: 1) I work in the Ad technology industry and i can tell you with confidence that ads are far from dead. The human logic of "We hate it, so it must not be working" is understandable but condradicting the actual data entirely. I look at this data on a daily basis and i can tell you that Ads have increased by a LOT in the last 10 years. They are also working fo…

>First of all, adblock has destroyed a significant number of small bloggers, content-writers, and other publishers, as especially those were struggling to stay above water.

People used to do that for free because they cared about the content they were writing, rather than because it was making their daily bread.

I distinctly remember the quality of writing during this time being much higher than it is today.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#34
post #20

This year we will stop using AdSense altogether. No support at all and the payouts have been declining every year. With the increase of ad blockers, even less encouraging to use ads in general. Sometimes I wonder, are ads as we know it, dead? Everyone hates it, has real usability impact and security risks. Didnt get the email though...

Let me provide you with some insight into your bewonderment: 1) I work in the Ad technology industry and i can tell you with confidence that ads are far from dead. The human logic of "We hate it, so it must not be working" is understandable but condradicting the actual data entirely. I look at this data on a daily basis and i can tell you that Ads have increased by a LOT in the last 10 years. They are also working fo…

As you're in the industry, I'd like to ask two "aggressive" questions in the spirit of genuine curiosity. That is, I am looking to learn a different POV from my own end-user anti-ad POV.

Regarding point 1:

>They are also working for the Advertiser better now than they did 10 years ago, as we are able to track and measure much better. What people haven't noticed is the fact that they have become more native, less intrusive and more relevant altogether. I am not talking about your flashy ads that you encounter on your various pirating sites and other places that Adsense blocks to begin with.

What is the benefit to the end-user though?

I guess I've seen the opposite as an end-user. Non-pirate websites, common blogs, news papers, etc, push through video ads, pop-over ads, and in the mobile space, positioning ads deliberately close to navigation controls on iOS or with the dismissal moving or being difficult to accurately tap even with a precision tool.

While I know there are "good ads", there is also a huge prevalence of bad ads, and the damage of the bad is far more impactful to the end user than the benefit of the good. I can't really comment on ad relevancy since I use ad-blockers on personal content, but similar systems (amazon's recs, youtube's recs) have an abyssmal "hit" rate for me, in that I rarely find the content worth pursuing.

Re point 2, I've felt for some time that other payment venues would need to be pursued by content creators as I've heard frequently from streamers or vBloggers I've followed that the ad payout is very low, even with high subscription numbers. Most decline to get into actual details, but several game streamers on Twitch have commented that a one time donation of a few $$$ overwhelmingly makes up for adblocking on their stream. Realistically, are the payouts from ads enough for "small" operations with low viewership? It just seems like supplementary income at best, rather than something that a newcomer or casual creator can rely on for support. In fact, it's a frequent occurrence for many vLoggers and web comics for when the creators need to decide are they ready to commit to the project as a job or continue it in their spare time, and often it'd dependent on how popular they're getting.

In other words, I don't think that anyone is denying that adblocking small operations lowers the payout, but are there that many operations that bank soley on ad revenue without other sources of income? It just seems like there's a point, once the viewership increases, that suddenly the project lives or dies by the revenue, instead of the project relying on the revenue from the beginning.

Finally, just a general question, why not use more ad-walls if adblockers are a problem?

I know for whatever reason people are against them, but to a degree I appreciate ad walls - the website is actively putting forth what the arrangement is, they're not trying to sneak an ad past me (native advertising, fake download links, etc), and I have to make a decision on how badly I want to read the content. Often I'll unblock briefly to read something from an unfamiliar site, and if I like the quality of the site, it goes on the whitelist. If not, AB goes back on and it's a reminder to me each time that I did not trust the website. Everyone's wishes get respected.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#36
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me provide you with some insight into your bewonderment: 1) I work in the Ad technology industry and i can tell you with confidence that ads are far from dead. The human logic of "We hate it, so it must not be working" is understandable but condradicting the actual data entirely. I look at this data on a daily basis and i can tell you that Ads have increased by a LOT in the last 10 years. They are also working fo…

As someone who also works in an industry tangentially related: * Ad impressions have gone up - its getting easier and easier to launch sites so the absolute number of ads on the internet is definitely going up. That doesn't speak to either side of the 'ads are dying' claims. * CPM rates are more or less going down * As CPM goes down, publishers are looking to recoup their losses, so they use bigger/more invasive ads,…

"Acceptable Ads program" is a label that covers up the extortion of Advertisers & Networks. Also, if the USER were actually controlling/deciding what is shown and what isn't then i would have 0 problems with it. However, so far their practice of who/what they allow and what not is arbitrary at best. Im not talking about the automatic acceptable ads program. I'm talking about their closed-door deals that have been going on since 2015. Large sums of money crossed over to Eyeo's accounts from the big Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. to simply allow all their ads. Eyeo posted that they verify that these "agreements" are kept manually https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads-agreements HA HA HA. Any reasonable person who has ever worked with ad networks knows that manually monitoring ads is impossible. When looking at their Team, they certainly don't possess the resources to do this manually. Basically, they accepted cash for ads. Aside from all that, Adblock the plugin logs everything you do. From what websites you browse, to how long you spent on them, all the way to keystrokes. I heard they are even considering building a sort of Ad network since they have data on their users that NOBODY else can offer. I get the whole blind fanboy-trust for things that you find useful, but i look at people not at products. And Eyeo has been fishy from the start. I have no doubt they will do whatever is necessary to increase monetization on their tool. The guys come from the Advertising Industry after all.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#37
Seems like one of the auto-cancel scripts (probably one of the ones for fraud purposes) may have gone off the rails over the holiday. AdSense Ops is indeed global but presumably they're asking the PM/Eng team in Mountain View what's going on, since they wouldn't normally have too much visibility into these kinds of scripts except maybe some automated account notes the script leaves.

Because of the holiday I doubt anyone is in MTV to formulate a fix & response fast enough as it would likely involve corp comms, PM, PMM and other teams (besides eng to actually fix the issue). No excuses for it, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't being worked on now as surely someone probably had to come in last night to begin the triage.

(former AdSense PM)

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#38
post #20

This year we will stop using AdSense altogether. No support at all and the payouts have been declining every year. With the increase of ad blockers, even less encouraging to use ads in general. Sometimes I wonder, are ads as we know it, dead? Everyone hates it, has real usability impact and security risks. Didnt get the email though...

Let me provide you with some insight into your bewonderment: 1) I work in the Ad technology industry and i can tell you with confidence that ads are far from dead. The human logic of "We hate it, so it must not be working" is understandable but condradicting the actual data entirely. I look at this data on a daily basis and i can tell you that Ads have increased by a LOT in the last 10 years. They are also working fo…

Take away all the flash ads, the ads that start music (!), the ads that start video (!), and I will not block the site. Stop splitting articles in 1000 pages because you need to cram more ads in and I will unblock the site. Stop pushing useless overlays and pop ups into my face and I will turn the adblocker off.

My first visit to a website is always with the adblocker disabled. The second visit depends on what ads I see the first time. Unsurprisingly I turn on the adblocker 95% of the time.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#39
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand if you dislike adblockers, but calling them a scam seems misguided. I think most people are well aware that adblockers prevent income for the site owners.

Although the example he gives (AdBlock plus) is definitly a scam, as you can buy your way into it, so your ad will not be held at ransom.

So far, one can still uncheck the "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" box in Filter Preferences.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#40
post #13

If you ever think about relying on Google for your business, this linked thread is a good reason not to. You are at the mercy of helpful volunteers while Google is stonewalling anyone from ever reaching them and getting help.

My mom called MS about a problem with Edge on Win 10 and they resolved it over the phone within 5 minutes of her requesting they call her. If google ever did that id be completely shocked. Do they even have a phone number?
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