Putting Images Near Adsense Ads
Images Above Adsense Blocks
There is a growing trend with adsense publishers where images are being put above or along side their adsense adverts in order to increase their click through rate. But is this against the Google Adsense terms and conditions? I would have initially said it was because the google adsense terms state "Web pages may not include incentives of any kind for users to click on ads. This includes encouraging users to click on the ads or to visit the advertisers' sites as well as drawing any undue attention to the ads."
I decided that their terms were a little too vague and i was unable to tell if the method of putting images around your adverts to attract visitors attention to them was allowed or not, So i emailed them.. Their reply was as follows.
Hello Matt,
Thank you for your email and your interest in upholding AdSense programme policies.
In general, you are welcome to place images near the Google ads on your site. However, some implementations are not permitted by our programme policies, so we ask that you exercise some caution when choosing or placing the images.
To be specific, we ask that publishers do not place misleading images near Google ads or use images that appear to be directly associated with the advertisers and their offerings. Such images may draw undue attention to the ads and prompt unintentional user clicks, thereby artificially inflating advertiser costs. As you may know, drawing undue attention to ads is in violation of our programme policies, so we are unable to approve the placement of all images next to Google ads.
If you choose to experiment with placing images directly next to the ads, I would strongly encourage you to maintain a visible border around the ad units to reduce the possibility of confusing users.
While their answer does clarify it further, it doesn't clarify it fully.
Their reply says "we ask that publishers do not place misleading images near
Google ads or use images that appear to be directly associated with the
advertisers and their offerings". From this sentence it doesn't seem we are allowed to use images that look related, Or images that are misleading (unrelated). So exactly what kind of images are we allowed to use?
Sadly i don't feel confident in being able to tell you if adding images around your adsense is really in compliance with adsense terms, But if you do decide to ad images around your adsense make sure you include a visible border in your ads so they definately look seperate to the images..
This entry was posted
on Monday, August 07, 2006 at 8/07/2006.
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Posted byMatt,
I've seen many say the technique itself work and I've also seen many sites that look like they are in violation of the AdSense Program Policies.
The reply to your email looks very familiar to something I once found on the AdSense site, though I've never been able to find it again. I should have bookmarked it I guess.
It does sound a little vague and I think there's something of a blurry gray line you want to steer clear of when placing ads.
My interpretation is that to be in compliance you need to have something that physically separates the ads from the images. A border around the ads, or a line between the ads and images, or even enough white space between the two would qualify.
Where I think the line gets blurry is in the mention of images that appear to go with the ad. What qualifies. If I run a site that shows ads selling auto parts and I place images of auto parts above the links I've probably crossed that line. What if on the same site I place images of fish. Clearly those images don't match the ads, but if they are so close to the ads would it really matter. Wouldn't people still be led to click on the ad because of the image.
Sadly I think the closer you get to the gray blurry line of what's acceptable and what isn't and the closer you get to the unacceptable side the more effective the images are.
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