Google Pulled Ads From Two Conservative Websites
Two conservative sites had their AdSense ads pulled from their sites. Lost amid the cries of censorship was the real reason the ads were removed: Failure to understand Google’s terms and conditions they agreed to.
That failure led to content violations which caused their advertising to temporarily be removed by Google.
User Generated Content and Advertising
User generated content (UGC) is content that is created by site visitors and not the website publisher themselves. On news sites this kind of content takes the form of comments.
News sites in the past focused on presenting current events. The Internet changed not only how content is consumed but it also changed what kind of content is consumed.
Publishers grew to understand that certain kinds of content that makes readers outraged or angry tend to attract more visitors.
Even mainstream news sites craft articles designed to provoke outrage in order to encourage social sharing and high readership.
The downside of that is that commenters are in an agitated state and that can lead to problematic comments being posted, including hate speech.
ADVERTISEMENT
CONTINUE READING BELOW
Why Advertising and User Generated Content Can be Problematic
Google has been criticized in the past for showing advertising on pages that are advertisers might not want associated with their brands.
That’s why Google has policies that forbid showing advertising on pages that feature hate speech, speech of an erotic nature, and content that is graphic and violent.
Many brands do not want to be associated with offensive content.
Showing their ads on pages with offensive content sends the signal that the advertisers approve of and support that offensive content.
Advertisers generally prefer that their content do not appear on pages with problematic content.
Publishers are obligated by their agreement to show Google AdSense ads to be mindful of that kind of negative content.
But that doesn’t always happen. Failure to understand AdSense policies is what caused The Federalist and Zero Hedge to become the object lessons of the day.
ADVERTISEMENT
CONTINUE READING BELOW
Google Did Not Ban the News Publishers
The action Google took appears to be what Google calls a Publisher Restriction.
A Publisher Restriction is a TEMPORARY halt to ad serving until offensive content is removed.
The Publisher Restriction system gives publishers a notice that their ads have been temporarily suspended until the policy violation is corrected.
The intent of this system is to give publishers a chance to correct the issue and continue providing ad space that advertisers won’t be upset about.
This is meant to be a gentler approach than an outright lifetime ban.
What happened was not censorship. It was a failure by the publishers to be aware of the AdSense terms and conditions that they agreed to when signing up to show AdSense ads.
This kind of action happens to all kinds of sites. It has ZERO to do with politics and everything to do with violating Google’s policies against problematic content.
Any site that allows user generated content has to keep their comments in line with Google’s terms of service in exchange for the privilege to display AdSense ads.
The Federalist fixed the issue and had their advertising restored.
Google then issued a statement about content that is problematic:
How to Deal with User Generated Content
There are several ways to deal with UGC. The first is to moderate content. One way to accomplish this is to either pay someone to moderate the commenting community or to enlist responsible users to become moderators.
A good way to prevent problematic UGC is to publish a content policy.
Adding a “Report a Thread” function gives users the ability to report problematic content.
Takeaway
Being an online publisher means having to wear multiple hats. One of the hats is managing advertising on a website. And that means someone needs to be responsible for understanding Google’s AdSense Program Policies.
ADVERTISEMENT
CONTINUE READING BELOW
None of this would have happened had someone at the Federalist and Zero Hedge been on top of the issue of problematic content. All publishers are obligated to understand these policies in order to show advertising because it’s what they agreed to when they joined the AdSense program.
Google Releases Incomplete Version Of Its Sellers.json File
Google released a beta version of its sellers.Json file last week, just before the Q2 deadline it promised at the beginning of this year.
Sellers.Json is a transparency tool to help buyers distinguish between direct sellers versus intermediaries and resellers.
Yet, only 5% of Google’s sellers.Json files are complete, according to data from programmatic consultancy Jounce Media, even though it comes seven months after its smaller competitors released their largely complete files.
“Google has been a blind spot for a year. The day came for Google to finally embrace transparency, and 95% is missing,” said Jounce Media founder Chris Kane.
Google said that the size of its publisher base, which includes more than 2 million AdSense publishers, made it difficult to post a complete file.
“It’s a non-trivial effort for us,” said Per Bjorke, Google senior product manager for ad traffic quality. “We have to make sure we respect publishers’ security and safety.”
Bjorke said adding more publishers to its sellers.Json file would require Google to update its help center documents and its user interfaces to gain publisher consent, a time-consuming process. Account managers also need to be trained and take time to communicate the change to publishers.
“Given the size of the ship, these things do take longer than we would like them to,” Bjorke said.
But it’s still frustrating that a large, well-resourced company would take so long and post an incomplete file.
Kane has been using sellers.Json files to do supply-path optimization for large marketers, which has been challenging without Google’s file.
And other buyers have been waiting for Google to post its file before embarking on granular supply-path optimization. Now, they’ll have to wait longer for Google to fill out its file beyond the beta version.
A tale of two specs
Google’s lagging is particularly vexing to the digital ecosystem because it often moves at an accelerated pace for initiatives it supports.
Back in May 2017, Google spearheaded ads.Txt, a transparency spec designed to root out domain spoofing. Google raced ahead of the industry, and its DSP stopped buying inventory without ads.Txt files that November, when only half of its publishers had posted ads.Txt files.
In contrast, sellers.Json was announced in April 2019, and The Trade Desk was an early champion, pushing exchanges to adopt it in the fall. But Google objected to sellers.Json, which categorized Google itself as a reseller, and unlike ads.Txt, its DSP DV360 doesn’t require exchanges to adopt the spec nor does it prioritize inventory that does.
Bjorke said Google isn’t as demanding about sellers.Json because it’s mostly used to detect invalid traffic behind the scenes and because Google “may provide some capabilities for advertisers [around supply-path optimization].”
Bjorke added that the need for “security, consent and accuracy,” not past disagreement about the spec, was the cause for the delay. “We are very supportive of industry efforts,” he said.
So what’s missing?
The 5% of Google’s sellers.Json file that is complete contains all information needed to do supply-path optimization: the business name and the domain name.
But of the remainder, 53% list the business name as confidential, and 42% are missing the domain name, according to Jounce Media analysis.
Some of those accounts are confidential because Google doesn’t yet have consent to share a publisher’s information, Bjorke said. As more publishers give their consent, that number will go down.
But Google said that confidentiality remains an option to protect small AdSense bloggers’ safety and security.
“If you are in a location where freedom of speech is not as protected, and you are posting content that is critical of certain things, that could be a potential risk,” Bjorke said.
The other portion of publishers, listed without domain names, is also a question of consent and verification. Google already knows the domain is being monetized, but not necessarily the business name that belongs in the sellers.Json files.
For instance, the sellers.Json file for publishers such as Vice, Axel Springer and The Economist includes the formal business names, but is missing the domain name of the site. Without a URL, DSPs can’t ingest and match these files without doing manual work on their end – or might not be able to make a match at all.
“We had to collect it from people, and it takes time,” Bjorke said. “We want to make sure it’s accurate too.”
Despite the disappointment over Google’s incomplete sellers.Json file, Kane credited Google for prioritizing listing sellers.Json files for intermediaries. Buyers doing supply-path optimization care more about this data, because it helps them cut low-value intermediaries.
“The vast majority of intermediaries – by spend – have domains listed,” Bjorke confirmed.
Learn From The ‘Godfather Of Google AdSense’ On What Gets Investors To Fund A Startup
Entrepreneurs and startups on the lookout for investors and funding is a perpetual, ever-lasting cycle – the kind that has even spurned reality TV shows!
However, much like the spirit of entrepreneurship itself, which rests on going down the offbeat path, is the phenomenon of reverse pitching. The core idea is to flip the script and have investors pitch to startups instead, with the former sharing their operational experience, sector focus, investment thesis, ticket sizes, portfolios and the value propositions that they bring to the table. This is followed by a Q&A Session where founders can ask the investors questions.
Organisations like Amazon AWS, TiE, The Circle.Work, Network Capital, Headstart, etc. Are the marketing partners for this series.
Leading the way in making reverse pitching mainstream, and in the process, demystifying startup funding for founders, is Delhi-based Favcy — a venture building platform providing ready-to-assemble digital applications to convert ideas into a venture — with a bi-weekly digital Reverse Pitch session.
The Favcy Reverse Pitch series of webinars have so far featured several big names from the VC space, including Vinod Shankar (Partner, Java Capital), Shashank Randev (Founder VC,100x.VC), Rajul Garg (Founding and Managing Partner, Leo Capital), Satveer Thakral (CEO, SGAN) and Pinaki Aich (CEO, Forward Investments), among others, to conduct successful, engaging sessions on reverse pitching.
Raising the bar higher this coming week, the Favcy Reverse Pitch is now set to host the ‘Godfather of Google AdSense', Gokul Rajaram on Monday, June 8 at 10 am. To register for this webinar, click here.
Gokul currently serves on the executive team at DoorDash where he leads Caviar — a premium food ordering service. He was also instrumental in getting Facebook Ads to go mobile-first, and has served as a senior figure across some of the largest tech companies in the world, namely Google, Facebook and Square.
“This is a great opportunity for founders to understand investors’ investment thesis, ticket size, what makes them invest into companies new trends and much more in a 25 minute chat. They also have the opportunity to ask the investors critical questions in a 15 minute Q&A Session,” said Nischaiy Pradhan, Founding Partner at Favcy.
Here’s why you shouldn't miss this session
Learn about Gokul Rajaram’s investment thesis
Gokul has made a broad spectrum of investments from Shape Security, People AI to Faire (an online wholesaler catering to resellers), while tech-play is a Business Model Innovation. In this session, he will delve deeper into what makes hand out a cheque.
Critical Startup Evaluation
Gokul will be sharing mental models on how a founder can rate and evaluate themselves and their startup at an early stage on metrics like Product Market Fit, Founder Market Fit, Timing the Market, etc.
Uptrends in the Post-Covid World (Both American and Indian Context)
Gokul will be sharing his views on sectors and opportunities that he thinks will be on the positive side of COVID from the perspective of both the American and Indian markets.
Don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity to help kick-start your startup’s growth and make use of the seed money to bear much fruit. You can find out more and register for this special session here
Want to make your startup journey smooth? YS Education brings a comprehensive Funding Course, where you also get a chance to pitch your business plan to top investors. Click here to know more.
Two conservative sites had their AdSense ads pulled from their sites. Lost amid the cries of censorship was the real reason the ads were removed: Failure to understand Google’s terms and conditions they agreed to.
That failure led to content violations which caused their advertising to temporarily be removed by Google.
User Generated Content and Advertising
User generated content (UGC) is content that is created by site visitors and not the website publisher themselves. On news sites this kind of content takes the form of comments.
News sites in the past focused on presenting current events. The Internet changed not only how content is consumed but it also changed what kind of content is consumed.
Publishers grew to understand that certain kinds of content that makes readers outraged or angry tend to attract more visitors.
Even mainstream news sites craft articles designed to provoke outrage in order to encourage social sharing and high readership.
The downside of that is that commenters are in an agitated state and that can lead to problematic comments being posted, including hate speech.
ADVERTISEMENT
CONTINUE READING BELOW
Why Advertising and User Generated Content Can be Problematic
Google has been criticized in the past for showing advertising on pages that are advertisers might not want associated with their brands.
That’s why Google has policies that forbid showing advertising on pages that feature hate speech, speech of an erotic nature, and content that is graphic and violent.
Many brands do not want to be associated with offensive content.
Showing their ads on pages with offensive content sends the signal that the advertisers approve of and support that offensive content.
Advertisers generally prefer that their content do not appear on pages with problematic content.
Publishers are obligated by their agreement to show Google AdSense ads to be mindful of that kind of negative content.
But that doesn’t always happen. Failure to understand AdSense policies is what caused The Federalist and Zero Hedge to become the object lessons of the day.
ADVERTISEMENT
CONTINUE READING BELOW
Google Did Not Ban the News Publishers
The action Google took appears to be what Google calls a Publisher Restriction.
A Publisher Restriction is a TEMPORARY halt to ad serving until offensive content is removed.
The Publisher Restriction system gives publishers a notice that their ads have been temporarily suspended until the policy violation is corrected.
The intent of this system is to give publishers a chance to correct the issue and continue providing ad space that advertisers won’t be upset about.
This is meant to be a gentler approach than an outright lifetime ban.
What happened was not censorship. It was a failure by the publishers to be aware of the AdSense terms and conditions that they agreed to when signing up to show AdSense ads.
This kind of action happens to all kinds of sites. It has ZERO to do with politics and everything to do with violating Google’s policies against problematic content.
Any site that allows user generated content has to keep their comments in line with Google’s terms of service in exchange for the privilege to display AdSense ads.
The Federalist fixed the issue and had their advertising restored.
Google then issued a statement about content that is problematic:
How to Deal with User Generated Content
There are several ways to deal with UGC. The first is to moderate content. One way to accomplish this is to either pay someone to moderate the commenting community or to enlist responsible users to become moderators.
A good way to prevent problematic UGC is to publish a content policy.
Adding a “Report a Thread” function gives users the ability to report problematic content.
Takeaway
Being an online publisher means having to wear multiple hats. One of the hats is managing advertising on a website. And that means someone needs to be responsible for understanding Google’s AdSense Program Policies.
ADVERTISEMENT
CONTINUE READING BELOW
None of this would have happened had someone at the Federalist and Zero Hedge been on top of the issue of problematic content. All publishers are obligated to understand these policies in order to show advertising because it’s what they agreed to when they joined the AdSense program.
Google Releases Incomplete Version Of Its Sellers.json File
Google released a beta version of its sellers.Json file last week, just before the Q2 deadline it promised at the beginning of this year.Sellers.Json is a transparency tool to help buyers distinguish between direct sellers versus intermediaries and resellers.
Yet, only 5% of Google’s sellers.Json files are complete, according to data from programmatic consultancy Jounce Media, even though it comes seven months after its smaller competitors released their largely complete files.
“Google has been a blind spot for a year. The day came for Google to finally embrace transparency, and 95% is missing,” said Jounce Media founder Chris Kane.
Google said that the size of its publisher base, which includes more than 2 million AdSense publishers, made it difficult to post a complete file.
“It’s a non-trivial effort for us,” said Per Bjorke, Google senior product manager for ad traffic quality. “We have to make sure we respect publishers’ security and safety.”
Bjorke said adding more publishers to its sellers.Json file would require Google to update its help center documents and its user interfaces to gain publisher consent, a time-consuming process. Account managers also need to be trained and take time to communicate the change to publishers.
“Given the size of the ship, these things do take longer than we would like them to,” Bjorke said.
But it’s still frustrating that a large, well-resourced company would take so long and post an incomplete file.
Kane has been using sellers.Json files to do supply-path optimization for large marketers, which has been challenging without Google’s file.
And other buyers have been waiting for Google to post its file before embarking on granular supply-path optimization. Now, they’ll have to wait longer for Google to fill out its file beyond the beta version.
A tale of two specs
Google’s lagging is particularly vexing to the digital ecosystem because it often moves at an accelerated pace for initiatives it supports.
Back in May 2017, Google spearheaded ads.Txt, a transparency spec designed to root out domain spoofing. Google raced ahead of the industry, and its DSP stopped buying inventory without ads.Txt files that November, when only half of its publishers had posted ads.Txt files.
In contrast, sellers.Json was announced in April 2019, and The Trade Desk was an early champion, pushing exchanges to adopt it in the fall. But Google objected to sellers.Json, which categorized Google itself as a reseller, and unlike ads.Txt, its DSP DV360 doesn’t require exchanges to adopt the spec nor does it prioritize inventory that does.
Bjorke said Google isn’t as demanding about sellers.Json because it’s mostly used to detect invalid traffic behind the scenes and because Google “may provide some capabilities for advertisers [around supply-path optimization].”
Bjorke added that the need for “security, consent and accuracy,” not past disagreement about the spec, was the cause for the delay. “We are very supportive of industry efforts,” he said.
So what’s missing?
The 5% of Google’s sellers.Json file that is complete contains all information needed to do supply-path optimization: the business name and the domain name.
But of the remainder, 53% list the business name as confidential, and 42% are missing the domain name, according to Jounce Media analysis.
Some of those accounts are confidential because Google doesn’t yet have consent to share a publisher’s information, Bjorke said. As more publishers give their consent, that number will go down.
But Google said that confidentiality remains an option to protect small AdSense bloggers’ safety and security.
“If you are in a location where freedom of speech is not as protected, and you are posting content that is critical of certain things, that could be a potential risk,” Bjorke said.
The other portion of publishers, listed without domain names, is also a question of consent and verification. Google already knows the domain is being monetized, but not necessarily the business name that belongs in the sellers.Json files.
For instance, the sellers.Json file for publishers such as Vice, Axel Springer and The Economist includes the formal business names, but is missing the domain name of the site. Without a URL, DSPs can’t ingest and match these files without doing manual work on their end – or might not be able to make a match at all.
“We had to collect it from people, and it takes time,” Bjorke said. “We want to make sure it’s accurate too.”
Despite the disappointment over Google’s incomplete sellers.Json file, Kane credited Google for prioritizing listing sellers.Json files for intermediaries. Buyers doing supply-path optimization care more about this data, because it helps them cut low-value intermediaries.
“The vast majority of intermediaries – by spend – have domains listed,” Bjorke confirmed.
Learn From The ‘Godfather Of Google AdSense’ On What Gets Investors To Fund A Startup
Entrepreneurs and startups on the lookout for investors and funding is a perpetual, ever-lasting cycle – the kind that has even spurned reality TV shows!
However, much like the spirit of entrepreneurship itself, which rests on going down the offbeat path, is the phenomenon of reverse pitching. The core idea is to flip the script and have investors pitch to startups instead, with the former sharing their operational experience, sector focus, investment thesis, ticket sizes, portfolios and the value propositions that they bring to the table. This is followed by a Q&A Session where founders can ask the investors questions.
Organisations like Amazon AWS, TiE, The Circle.Work, Network Capital, Headstart, etc. Are the marketing partners for this series.
Leading the way in making reverse pitching mainstream, and in the process, demystifying startup funding for founders, is Delhi-based Favcy — a venture building platform providing ready-to-assemble digital applications to convert ideas into a venture — with a bi-weekly digital Reverse Pitch session.
The Favcy Reverse Pitch series of webinars have so far featured several big names from the VC space, including Vinod Shankar (Partner, Java Capital), Shashank Randev (Founder VC,100x.VC), Rajul Garg (Founding and Managing Partner, Leo Capital), Satveer Thakral (CEO, SGAN) and Pinaki Aich (CEO, Forward Investments), among others, to conduct successful, engaging sessions on reverse pitching.
Raising the bar higher this coming week, the Favcy Reverse Pitch is now set to host the ‘Godfather of Google AdSense', Gokul Rajaram on Monday, June 8 at 10 am. To register for this webinar, click here.
Gokul currently serves on the executive team at DoorDash where he leads Caviar — a premium food ordering service. He was also instrumental in getting Facebook Ads to go mobile-first, and has served as a senior figure across some of the largest tech companies in the world, namely Google, Facebook and Square.
“This is a great opportunity for founders to understand investors’ investment thesis, ticket size, what makes them invest into companies new trends and much more in a 25 minute chat. They also have the opportunity to ask the investors critical questions in a 15 minute Q&A Session,” said Nischaiy Pradhan, Founding Partner at Favcy.
Here’s why you shouldn't miss this session
Learn about Gokul Rajaram’s investment thesis
Gokul has made a broad spectrum of investments from Shape Security, People AI to Faire (an online wholesaler catering to resellers), while tech-play is a Business Model Innovation. In this session, he will delve deeper into what makes hand out a cheque.
Critical Startup Evaluation
Gokul will be sharing mental models on how a founder can rate and evaluate themselves and their startup at an early stage on metrics like Product Market Fit, Founder Market Fit, Timing the Market, etc.
Uptrends in the Post-Covid World (Both American and Indian Context)
Gokul will be sharing his views on sectors and opportunities that he thinks will be on the positive side of COVID from the perspective of both the American and Indian markets.
Don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity to help kick-start your startup’s growth and make use of the seed money to bear much fruit. You can find out more and register for this special session here
Want to make your startup journey smooth? YS Education brings a comprehensive Funding Course, where you also get a chance to pitch your business plan to top investors. Click here to know more.
Good article
ReplyDelete