Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts • Hacker News Board

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#151

Post by ksk » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 6:57 PM UTC

chronid wrote: post #38

t0pz wrote: 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…

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…

But, why not just stop visiting those sites and instead visit sites that run ads in ways you agree with. Kind of like how its better to not willfully infringe on copyright to "stick it" to some random megacorp. Instead just support the people who're doing things you agree with.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#152

Post by Donzo » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 7:13 PM UTC

spiderfarmer wrote: post #9

According to their terms, Google can cancel any account at any time without having to offer an explanation. They also have a history of not replying to publisher problems at all. The whole 'Official' Adsense forum is run by volunteers and it's near impossible to speak to a real person. Even if they are hacked and thousands of accounts are cancelled I don't think Google will respond. I would so, so love to see a big p…

It appears that these accounts were closed for inactivity:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/adsense/hy0...

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#153

Post by iheartmemcache » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

ungzd wrote: post #81

elorant wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only one who could run an AdSense alternative is Facebook. I'd love to see them going that way but I seriously doubt they'd bother. There's too much friction to support such a platform and with ad blockers gaining traction it might become unsustainable pretty soon.

Facebook is against web outside Facebook.

Is that actual mandate from FB leadership? Between the Like buttons that track visit habits (used actively in non-FB marketing since 2014[1]), native FB visits + tracking on that, mobile tracking[2], and volunteered information, Facebook + their share widgets probably has information parity with Google + the Google Analytics aggregate information + Gmail (which has the added "benefit" of only needing one party to profile multiple people - i.e., John uses gmail and CC's 15 non-gmail users about $foo provides Gmail with a certain amount of information). The Forbes article is a really good analysis (albeit from 2014) as to the specifics of their privacy policy (which, as I understand it, doesn't give out PII, but certainly has the potential to craft an 'anonymized' profile on a user). Car insurance companies, mortgage companies, health insurance companies (fans of McDonalds!), etc could do wonders with that data[3] compared to how crude their existing metrics are.

[1] http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-web-browsing-histo...

[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/13/facebook-...

[3] Mortgage lending has certain 'fair lending' and anti-discriminatory practices to counteract things like reverse redlining[4] after the whole racial discriminatory scandal thing, but exploiting the law is easier than exploiting the instruction pointer on a Linux 2.2 box haha.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_discrimination#Revers...

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#154

Post by iheartmemcache » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 7:21 PM UTC

oneloop wrote: post #43

bitJericho wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm a "small but not insignificant" adsense publisher. I have in the past received phone calls from an account manager on the phone. I have the phone number they called from, but if you call them it always goes to voice mail. They can call me but I can't call them.

Account manager John's noticed your spending has gone down by 5% each month for the last quarter, flagging you in their CRM as a member to reach out to 'to help you out, in case you have any questions!' Casinos do the same thing by profiling high-rollers who haven't visited in a while ("well we just happen to have a Gulfstream ready for you, sir, and the Villa suite opened up too!").

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#155

Post by Sir_Substance » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

ksk wrote: post #148

Sir_Substance wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>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. Those two points are not necessarily connected. People can and do, do a good job at things even if they're just doing it for the money. >I distinctly remember the quality of writing during this time being much higher than it is today. What writing are you thinking about? Person…

>People can and do, do a good job at things even if they're just doing it for the money.

In order to make the big dolla dolla on ads, your piece can't be too confronting, it can't be so dense or specific that's it's unapproachable for a general audience and it can't critique the people who supply your ads. It probably needs to use simple enough words and sentences that it translates through google with reasonable accuracy. It must have a sufficiently eyecatching title and meet a minimum of entertainment value for the average netizen.

Most importantly, it must cater to the facebook, twitter and/or reddit communities well enough to trend on at least one, and thus must meet the community standards that prevent those communities or their moderators from quashing it.

In short: content that is effective at generating ad revenue must be shallow, vapid and limited in scope.

These days, my best source of written content on the internet comes either from company blogs and pages, which notably do not survive on ad revenue since they have a real business model paying their hosting bills, or from community/project specific blogs and pages, which are generally donation supported.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#156

Post by blakeyrat » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 7:36 PM UTC

biztos wrote: post #64

GoToRO wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that ads are the only ones to blame. I think the problem is with the web nature of the... Web. I just looked at a simple Wordpress plugin that implements a Call Now feature for mobile sites ( Call Now! ) and for some reason they include a bunch of scripts from PayPal and what not. The only solution to this is to have everything on a page come from the same origin.

> have everything on a page come from the same origin Would that really be so bad? It's not like you couldn't still hook into an ad network and all that, in fact if I were building something AdSense-like I would love to get API calls from the server instead of worrying about the browser. Things like WordPress could bake that into the server side and nontechnical publishers wouldn't have to even know the difference. O…

Same origin ads can't be independently verified; the ad purchaser would just have to trust the publisher to give them accurate numbers, and publishers have every incentive to exaggerate or just plain lie about their views.

That's basically the reason ad exchanges were created in the first place.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#157

Post by blakeyrat » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

chetangole wrote: post #146

OFFICIAL UPDATE from Google : https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/adsense/hy0cC...

They could have saved a lot of confusion by simply putting those few sentences on the email itself.

But that would require Google to have some ability to empathize with human beings.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#158

Post by blakeyrat » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 7:40 PM UTC

fahrradflucht wrote: post #7

Isn't it a bit surprising that a company like Google can't give any helpful support for such an issue just because there is a holiday in the US? I mean AddSense has customers all around the globe...

They certainly have the resources to do it, they simply do not care.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#159

Post by zeta0134 » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 8:01 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #98

zeta0134 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I appreciate your viewpoint on adblockers, being in the advertising business yourself, that is not enough of an argument to convince me to disable mine. I find the entire practice of invasive advertising to be a huge disservice to users in general. There is one type of ad my ad blocker regularly fails to block: original, vetted content put in place by the site owner, that does not come from a third party. "Spon…

The online ad industry is already gearing up to monetize/systemize/data mine "organic" sponsorships. The third part aspect will just be more hidden. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing but the ad industry absolutely wants to make ad content relevant but they also want to track it. The tracking part is just easier...

I'm totally OK with that actually. Organic sponsorships have the very important quality of being vetted by the site in question, which greatly lowers the risk of malware being delivered in a way that the site owner can't claim responsibility over. I think tracking of these types of sponsorships would also be fairly trivial (server-side code to report back pageloads or even access to youtube's analytics for sponsored videos) and shouldn't need to involve third-party software running in the user's browser.

It's third-party javascript (and flash) that I mostly object to. If the site owners have to serve the script in question, they can inspect it for shady behavior, and make informed decisions. I believe the practice of tossing a third-party iframe in your template/css and calling it a day is the most dangerous trend on the web right now.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#160

Post by angry-hacker » Tue, Jul 05, 2016, 8:12 PM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #142

djhn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you seem to know the industry well, what are the top resources (of any kind) to study the current state of online advertising for an advanced audience? Both from the technical side, and from the advertiser's business side. At a level that you would ideally know and learn if you were working as an executive in the industry.

I actually wrote a 10 page article on this for an internal audience. If people are interested I could clean it up and post it somewhere. Otherwise, the knowledge is scattered over blogs, ad exchanger, etc.

I'm interested. Please let me know if you publish it. Trying to get a better understanding about the industry, but the information is hard to find or scattered all over the Web.