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Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

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Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#111

Post by stevesearer »

raverbashing wrote: post #92
data_spy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a small site, Amazon Associates is probably the most reliable and non-shady opportunity besides Google. If the site get's a few million pageviews a month, options improve.

If you're in a niche area you could try selling ads directly to relevant companies, preferably with a geographical connection

This is what my company does and it works well enough, though your site would need a reasonable amount of traffic or industry clout before an ad-buyer would take your email/call seriously.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#112

Post by stevesearer »

jasonv wrote: post #64
esperent wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about adding ads to a website like this. Is there really no alternative to Google?

I've been reviewing self-service ad sales & serving plugins for Wordpress sites and my conclusion would be: no, there isn't.

We use advanced ads pro for Wordpress and it seems to work well enough for serving self-hosted ads.

What are you looking for that it or others don’t offer?

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#113

Post by creinhardt »

nkozyra wrote: post #31
jeffbee wrote: post #19

I don't know if this is the case with techdirt, but by far the most common reason why sites and domains (for mail) end up getting flagged is because their resources have been hijacked by organized criminals and are being used for crime, unbeknownst to the people who own the domains. So if this ever happens to you your first instinct should be to question your own production security situation, not to assume that Goog…

Well let's entertain this possibility. It then seems very easy for Google to report why it disabled or why you were flagged. Playing the guessing game is not helpful. In my experience, things just go dark and you get very little or no helpful messaging about resolving the problem.

This. Having been in a similar scenario, the most frustrating part is hearing "there's a problem, it's bad enough that we're disabling your account, but we can't even give you a hint what the actual issue was. We hope you can figure it out, maybe we'll eventually re-instate your account".

In my experience, you can usually find something that COULD be the cause by digging through analytics/reports, if you can demonstrate that you took positive action on this, and get it infront of the right support people, they can sometimes help you out and ask for your account to be re-evaluated. You will never, ever find out if this is the reason they disabled your account in the first place though.

Then, prepare for your account to be paused again.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#114

Post by type0 »

rchaud wrote: post #100
mvn9 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one ever start a business after such a ban? Does this require a co-founder who runs the marketing?

You hire a digital marketing agency or a marketing manager that has contacts inside Google Ads to get you unflagged. I work at a national nonprofit and while we could handle the marketing in house, we simply get too much in donations from Google Ads to risk being randomly flagged with no recourse. $3k/month to an agency to handle all the Google/Bing/FB ad campaigns and A/B testing and to deal with Google's automated…

This is also how racketeering works in some places. "Your club needs to hire our guy and we'll leave you alone."

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#115

Post by 8note »

jeffbee wrote: post #56
bcrosby95 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had some abuse on our site that Google blocked us for - people were trying to run a scam through it. Except the scam was being propagated on youtube and Google did nothing about the videos despite multiple reports from us. So my attitude is pretty simple: Google can fuck off. They can't even fix their own properties and will ban you for their inability to do so.

So, just to be clear, by "ban" you mean they stopped serving ads on your site, or something else? As a seller of advertising space, to what extent is Google obligated to fill your inventory? How reliant are you on assumptions about whether they will and how much?

Id say with their monopolization, they have that obligation, otherwise they should be broken up

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#116

Post by scottrogowski »

sandworm101 wrote: post #74
scottrogowski wrote: post #49

A few months ago, I tried experimenting with Google ads to drive some traffic to a side project of mine which was basically a chess-over-videochat website. A little more than 40 impressions later, it was taken down for being "in violation of our Google ad policies". There was never any indication what the violation actually was. I replied and asked several times hoping to get a human to tell me what I had actually do…

>> videochat Big red flag. If you are connecting random people via video chat you open yourself to all sorts of abuse. I'm not saying that it is happening on your service, just that advertizers (and therefore google) are wary of videochat.

I am not connecting random people via video chat (the site generates a unique url that is meant to be shared among friends). However, even if I was connecting random people, I think it would have been appropriate for them to specify why they suspended my account.

I doubt it had anything to do with the video chat aspect though.

This is the link they pointed me to in their suspension email https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/2375414 Given that I received no warning, they must have suspended me for an "egregious violation" of which they define five:

- Circumventing systems

- Counterfeit

- Promotion of unauthorized pharmacies

- Unacceptable business practices

- Trade Sanctions violation

I am really curious what their algorithm saw in my little chess website that suggests that I'm peddling pharmaceuticals, counterfeiting money, or selling banned technology to unsavory regimes. Heck, I don't even accept payments!

My best guess is that their algorithm panicked because I have that automatic redirect to a new unique URL when you click to start a new game. Apart from that, I have no idea what it could possibly be.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#117

Post by asdff »

Nasrudith wrote: post #96
asdff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like being told you are heir to the throne, and many engineers carry that same princely arrogance obliviously. At least doctors and lawyers have gone through a second gauntlet after acing school to temper this somewhat. Those fields might not even start making good money until you are years above the entry level, even with a pricey professional degree.

I would argue a second gauntlet only makes matters worse not better for "arrogance".

Maybe in the past where these professional degrees guaranteed highly compensated positions, but that's not the case now that these fields are saturated. A medical school grad still has a painful and overworked road to travel before they start making serious money and overcome their medical school debt. Similarly, if you are in a law school that isn't in the top 10, or you are not in the top 10 of your class, drop out while you can because you are looking at a career of terrible pay and insurmountable debt.

These sorts of gauntlets are much more life or death than a CSE program, where you are guaranteed at least a decent paying job if you make ok grades. On the other hand, pressure of not even knowing how many years before you can pay down your 300k+ professional school debt and start your life hanging over your head humbles you fast, compared to someone who turns in their capstone project and walks into 200k/yr.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#118

Post by chris_f »

stevesearer wrote: post #111
raverbashing wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in a niche area you could try selling ads directly to relevant companies, preferably with a geographical connection

This is what my company does and it works well enough, though your site would need a reasonable amount of traffic or industry clout before an ad-buyer would take your email/call seriously.

>...though your site would need a reasonable amount of traffic

Any insight on what a reasonable amount of traffic amounts to based on your experience?

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#119

Post by scottrogowski »

mvn9 wrote: post #84
scottrogowski wrote: post #49

A few months ago, I tried experimenting with Google ads to drive some traffic to a side project of mine which was basically a chess-over-videochat website. A little more than 40 impressions later, it was taken down for being "in violation of our Google ad policies". There was never any indication what the violation actually was. I replied and asked several times hoping to get a human to tell me what I had actually do…

How does one ever start a business after such a ban? Does this require a co-founder who runs the marketing?

This is something I've been acutely concerned about. I'm working on several side projects right now and I think I will want to try running ads for another one soon. Given that I don't have any power to my name and my emails to their support team seem to go nowhere, I wonder whether I'm completely shut out of their ads ecosystem now.

Re: Why are currently no ads on Techdirt? apparently Google thinks we're dangerous

#120

Post by creinhardt »

im3w1l wrote: post #3

> Sometimes it was "dangerous and derogatory content." Sometimes it was "shocking content." So Google turned the filter sensitivity up to 11 just now huh? I don't get why techdirt insists that that is not about ideology.

My hunch on this was that there probably was a misconfiguration with whatever service they're using to send out emails. If they don't have the sending domain whitelisted with whatever service they're using, it can look super fishy (or phishy!). I'd be really, really surprised to find out that Google's automated AdSense ad quality tools are in any way tied to their email quality tools.
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