AdSense Gone Bonkers?

[G_C]

I was recently thinking of running a campaign on NamePros to promote some of my minisites. The idea was to pay people NP$ to post on relevant forums with links to my website in their signatures. Just to be on the safe side, I decided to check with AdSense first to ensure that my campaign was in compliance with AdSense TOS.

Now, here's the reply I received after about a week of waiting:

"Hello George,

Thank you for your email.

Please not that it is against our policy for a publisher to offer
incentives either monetary or point-based to users or third party
beneficiaries for online activities.

Please note that we monitor all sites displaying Google ads or an AdSense
for search box to ensure compliance with our program policies. Any site
that is in violation of our policies will be contacted and asked to remove
the Google code."

Now, insofar as I am concerned, that statement is utterly ridiculous. If this AdSense person is to be believed, no sites running AdSense code can organise contests and giveaways, since both are arguably incentives for online activities. In fact, technically, member of the month award (as featured on NamePros) is also against AdSense rules. Finally, if you interpet the statement strictly, you'll discover that, technically, using AdSense is against AdSense TOS, since using AdSense effectively offers me a monetary reward for an online activity!

I did send them an e-mail asking for clarification and stating that their original statement is unrealistically broad and overly exclusive. In the meantime, I thought I'd share the story with you and see if you have any feedback.

Crazy, huh?

George

 

[armstrong]

using AdSense is against AdSense TOS, since using AdSense effectively offers me a monetary reward for an online activity!

Adsense TOS prohibits publishers from offering incentives, but Google can offer anything they like.

offer incentives either monetary or point-based to users

That is where they might get forums like NP that use a point system, if they wanted to. To strictly adhere to this part of the TOS, it may be necessary to remove adsense ads from all but guest users. Is this what Google wants? As far as I know, Google is ok with this setup, as even the revenue-sharing scheme passed their ok. But Google's opinion might be different tomorrow.

 

[G_C]

That's exactly the problem - a lot of sites use some form of incentives that reward users for online participation. Even if you exclude revenue-sharing, there's still the matter of competitions, giveaways, NP$ trading and exchange and even reputation points, all of which are directly or indirectly token rewards for participation. This is why I believe that the customer representative whom I worked with must have made a mistake with his reply (note that he made a typo and wrote "please note" instead of "please not", which leads me to believe that this was a customised response, not a canned e-mail).

Question is, is there a way to contact his supervisor or to somehow move one step up the AdSense customer support team hierarchy? I'm stuck right now, because while I refuse to believe that the customer service person was correct, I cannot very well do something against his e-mail, even if I believe that it was completely erroneous. This is particularly annoying as I was really looking forward to start a campaign to promote my minisites - a campaign that would only grow in size (and, consequently, in NP$ rewards to participants) as my AdSense revenues increase.

 

[G_C]

Well, I just got a reply from AdSense, thought you might be interested:

We apologize for the clarity of our incentives policy. Please note that
AdSense does not allow incentives (monetary or point-based) to users or
third-party beneficiaries for online activity including, but not limited
to, clicking on ads or links, performing searches, surfing websites,
reading emails, or completing surveys.

So I'm afraid this kind of leaves those who pay people to post on their forums in a rather difficult position (unless they aren't running AdSense code there).

George

 

[Epic]

Well, I just got a reply from AdSense, thought you might be interested:

We apologize for the clarity of our incentives policy. Please note that
AdSense does not allow incentives (monetary or point-based) to users or
third-party beneficiaries for online activity including, but not limited
to, clicking on ads or links, performing searches, surfing websites,
reading emails, or completing surveys.

So I'm afraid this kind of leaves those who pay people to post on their forums in a rather difficult position (unless they aren't running AdSense code there).

George

That almost sounds like they just don't want you to have incentives for clicking on the ads.