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

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131–140 of 158 posts

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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It seems one could even argue that Google's focus on algorithmic rather than human solutions is a kind of harmful ideology It's the kind of ideology that you often find in people who think they are smarter than everyone else.

That seems a bit ironic of an accusation given all of the people who don't do even back of the envelope math about what their demands for scaling would cost to try to do manually. Isn't that like saying plumbers are arrogantly obsessed with imprisoning water using pipes instead of free flowing streams of water while not considering the evaporation and contamination of said approach? Scalability of algorithims is how…

Techdirt doesn't sound like a small website, so presumably it generates quite some money for Google.

How hard it is to gate algorithmic decision making by (sum_of_ad_money_from_customer(x) > SOME_AMOUNT) goto human_review;

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

#132
post #114
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Except I don't think racketeering is even what google aimed for. Just too much lazy automation.

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

#133
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying you only made 5 cents after generating a thousand clicks on an ad?

In this situation, CPM is likely based on impressions, not clicks.

Most of the also-run ad networks do that, yes.

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

#134
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I was a pretty cynical bastard at 22 so I would actually have thought they were full of it.

Sometimes there's a very fine line between cynicism and realism.

That line is the size of a Venn Diagram intersection.

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

#135

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…

Have you tried reading the ToS? Might help...

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

#136
post #100
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…

> You hire a digital marketing agency or a marketing manager that has contacts inside Google Ads to get you unflagged.

Google might prefer to get broken up for monopoly before the racketeering cases get started.

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

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of alternatives to Adsense but none of them are comparable. There are two companies that could have helped minimize Adsense's monopoly but decided not to: Microsoft and Facebook.

I don't think it's the job of private actors to stop a monopoly from forming. Google's acquisition of double-click should have never been approved by the SEC.

>Google's acquisition of double-click should have never been approved by the SEC.

It seems obvious in hindsight that the acquisition would kill competition but at the time, it didn't seem so. Like right now, in hindsight, Facebook's acquisition of instagram should be blocked - at the time it looked risky.

Same with Google's acquisition of youtube.

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

#138
post #58

Finally, we started receiving reports from multiple Techdirt visitors (including those who told us they had purposefully whitelisted Techdirt from their ad blockers) that ads being delivered by Google were causing their computers to run hot. Multiple reports of ads on Techdirt failing to load properly, and causing Techdirt to fail to load properly. And also causing fans to turn on. "Ads being delivered by Google were…

Only that I've seen similar on other sites (carrying Google ads, like very site). It stopped a couple of weeks ago.

I thought it might be a cryptohijacker but I dug thru elements, code & did some packet captures. I couldn't spot what the issue was - I couldn't even confirm it was ads.

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

#139
post #97

Google would probably be happy if their ads ran only on sites that had only the site's own content. It wouldn't be surprising if Google de-monetized all sites that allow random users to submit comments.

> It wouldn't be surprising if Google de-monetized all sites that allow random users to submit comments.

It would indeed be surprising. Also unfortunate and counterproductive.

As with many sites that put competent effort into thoughtful moderation, some of Techdirt's best content shows up in article comments.

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

#140

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…

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

You can move to a cost per acquisition model, where you get paid when your traffic converts. There are tons of those around (including the Amazon program below)
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