Fooled by Google Adsense?
On my other site I have Google ads. It’s a nifty way to recover some of the costs of running the site. It wasn’t until recently that I started to use the “channels” feature. Basically you can set up different sets of ads that you can track so you can see if certain pages, or ad positions, or ad types bring in more revenue than others.
I recently unveiled a redesign of my other site. Along with the new site came a different set of Google ads and a special component to help insert them in the new site. The add-on was necessary because of the software running the site.
So for several days now, the channel for the ads contained in the add-on was not logging any clicks or any activity. Huh? I can see the ads, and if my other ads are any indication, they’re getting clicks. What is going on?
Well as it turns out, I had them set up wrong. So people were viewing and clicking the ads, and because they LOOKED fine, I didn’t realize anything was wrong until I looked at the reports for the site.
So here’s my question… Who got the ad revenue for those days that the ads were running but not hooked up with my account? Sounds a little sneaky to me… Who gets the money from ads that are set up improperly? My guess is Google keeps it. I wonder how much money that is each day? Just imagine how many people might set up their ads incorrectly on a daily basis… Sounds to me like Google has found a cool new way to generate some extra revenue.
This is interesting. What new software are you running on Pink Truth?
(Hey, try to find a plug-in for “subscribe to comment” so people don’t have re-visit the site to see if their comment has been answered.)
Is this really “consumer fraud” or consumer negligence?
With google ads, all of the following can and does happen:
-people have sites with the wrong code, so money goes to someone else’s account. (this is also a way to screw up someone else’s adsense acount, by putting their account # in your ads on a site with content that violates the adsense TOS.)
-people set up adsense but not their payment settings; ignore google notices of payment that can’t go anywhere (google will pay, they just need to be given a way to do so.)
-people receiving adsense checks by mail do not cash the checks or have the checks going to a bad address (google gets the checks back or notices they are not cashed; google then re-credits the adsense account and tries again.)
Good point Dan. The way I had it set up there wasn’t even a real account attached to the ads. I’m surprised any ads came up at all with that being the case!
Michael – I’m using Joomla and the way I wanted to insert the ads I need a module to do it. Are you familiar with Joomla? It has been fantastic to work with.