Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Banned from Google AdSense – 70k gone, no explanation

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 21 posts

Banned from Google AdSense – 70k gone, no explanation

#1

Post by naturalauction »

I'm working on an app that lets people create and talk to chat-bots (https://chai.ml/). It's pretty expensive to host so we decided to run mobile ads using Google AdMob starting in early June to cover some of our costs.

On the 7th of July, we got an email saying "detected invalid traffic or activity on your account." That same day we submitted an appeal and worked transitioning to a new ad partner.

We spoke to our contact at Google Ads who told us 'Trust & Safety is bound not to give any specifics out as far as policy infringement, but I'm hoping to get some sort of feedback. All I have read is "account abuse."' they have since stopped replying to us.

On the 13th of July we got an email stating "after taking into consideration the information that you have provided, we have confirmed that we are unable to reinstate your publisher account. Please note that your account will not receive further payments."

We've been limited in the past but it's always been resolved in under a week with no feedback on how we should fix any issues.

We were serving ads to our users for over a month and relying on that $70,000 that we expected to get paid (~50k for June and ~20k for July) For that to be taken away from us with no transparency is extremely frustrating (the only thing Google have told us is that we had "invalid traffic").

Does anyone know if there's anything else we can do to solve this issue?

Re: Banned from Google AdSense – 70k gone, no explanation

#2

Post by techdragon »

I’m just going to say … it’s fucking atrocious that Google can be in a business relationship worth 70k, owe another business seventy thousand dollars, and they can just go “you know what, we don’t owe you shit, and we’re not going to even tell you why”.

This sort of shit should be illegal. Google for all intent except the legal obligation, in a legal relationship pertaining to the money you helped them make, they should not be able to fuck people over like this.

Re: Banned from Google AdSense – 70k gone, no explanation

#3

Post by PaulHoule »

techdragon wrote: post #2

I’m just going to say … it’s fucking atrocious that Google can be in a business relationship worth 70k, owe another business seventy thousand dollars, and they can just go “you know what, we don’t owe you shit, and we’re not going to even tell you why”. This sort of shit should be illegal. Google for all intent except the legal obligation, in a legal relationship pertaining to the money you helped them make, they sho…

My first take is that making $50k your first month is pretty quick growth and looks suspicious. Also, something chatbot-based sounds a lot like spam content generation and that's something Google monopolizes for itself.

(I'd say at least half the time that somebody is complaining about unfair treatment by Adsense they are really guilty and trying to defend themselves like the murderer in an episode of Columbo.)

Re: Banned from Google AdSense – 70k gone, no explanation

#4

Post by naturalauction »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3
techdragon wrote: post #2

I’m just going to say … it’s fucking atrocious that Google can be in a business relationship worth 70k, owe another business seventy thousand dollars, and they can just go “you know what, we don’t owe you shit, and we’re not going to even tell you why”. This sort of shit should be illegal. Google for all intent except the legal obligation, in a legal relationship pertaining to the money you helped them make, they sho…

My first take is that making $50k your first month is pretty quick growth and looks suspicious. Also, something chatbot-based sounds a lot like spam content generation and that's something Google monopolizes for itself. (I'd say at least half the time that somebody is complaining about unfair treatment by Adsense they are really guilty and trying to defend themselves like the murderer in an episode of Columbo .)

For context our ads are run entirely on mobile (have updated the post to reflect that). We had an initial consultation with them before turning on ads and they even gave us an estimate. Our implementation was pretty simple too, we just sometimes showed the user an ad when before they could chat with a bot.

Re: Banned from Google AdSense – 70k gone, no explanation

#5

Post by is_true »

naturalauction wrote: post #4
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first take is that making $50k your first month is pretty quick growth and looks suspicious. Also, something chatbot-based sounds a lot like spam content generation and that's something Google monopolizes for itself. (I'd say at least half the time that somebody is complaining about unfair treatment by Adsense they are really guilty and trying to defend themselves like the murderer in an episode of Columbo .)

For context our ads are run entirely on mobile (have updated the post to reflect that). We had an initial consultation with them before turning on ads and they even gave us an estimate. Our implementation was pretty simple too, we just sometimes showed the user an ad when before they could chat with a bot.

I got banned for something than I think is related, showing ads with little content around.

Google loves to make people spend time skimming text to gather what they need.

Post reply on HN