Wow ... two in one day may be a new record and if Google doesn't step up with answers, they'll end up scaring everyone away. I completely understand their perceived need for secrecy, but is there some critical mass that once reached will cause business to decline?
their customer support it pretty bad, but their ad tech, and hence their profitability, is so much better than anyone else they have no real competition
i have agents approach me directly with ad networks specifically targetting my niche, and the best I've seen is off by more than a factor 10 when it comes to revenue
it's like the guy at the newspaper cannot read. google sent him a link to a list of issues, and he doesn't address them at all.
if you look at the link, it was shut down for bad clicks, incitement to users to click, or similar. at the very least he could have said in the reply something like "we don't think we have people clicking on links, but if you could provide some IPs we might be able to track down someone at the paper who's being over-enthusiastic".
even if he knows nothing like that has happened he could have added to the reply (talking about XML uploads, copyright issues) something like "these don't seem to fit into the ilicit activities listed. we don't have incitements to click on ads (see ...) so if the above isn't relevant we suspect there has been some mistaken clicking locally. we have educated the users and we've put in place the following measures to track ..."
instead, he shows no sign of having understood the issues and no inclination to help solve the problem. he just whines.
this is basic psychology. you need something from these people. so you try to act like you understand and want to help, even if you think they are incompetent assholes.
[edit: maybe i come across as unsympathetic. i can understand how maddening this must be. but surely that's more reason to get it fixed? and to get it fixed you need to cooperate, not act like a victim. at least, that's how i would play it (it's his job to make this work).]
Am I reading something different than you? Perhaps my reading comprehension is as poor as "the guy at the newspaper".
The "list of issues" Google provides is a generic list of possible reasons. Essentially, "Thanks for choosing Google. Your account has been disabled. Here is a list of reasons we normally disable an account with no warning. You may or may not have directly or indirectly done any of the activities listed, but we're not going to tell you either way. Feel free to figure it out. If you think you know and have taken steps to remedy the issue(s), then please let us know by submitting an appeal. However, you only get one chance and our single response to your appeal is final."
So this guy and every other person that has to go through this terrible experience has a right to be mad and express their anger.
And it's not a matter of being able to read. It's a matter of Google's terrible customer service.
First of all, this has been going on for a month and I have been trying to figure it out. I have spoken with people across Google and no one seems to no how to fix the issue or even be able to access what the issue is.
I am not asking for sympathy, I am asking if anyone has experienced this and if so what they did.
Even our YouTube Account Manager said, "I have honestly never seen anything like this before"
I filled out the online form stating my case and received a reply in less than 4 hours. Stating that the account was still disabled.
i'm sorry you're in the mess you are in. i think my reply contains suggestions for how you could manage things better. and i do not think that the link above conveys the message "has this happened to you; what can i do to fix it?". it reads a lot more like "google sucks".
even your response here is purely defensive. you don't mention anything about local clicks at all. i don't know what more to say except that you really do not convey the message that you seem to think you are sending.
No offense but you don't seem to know what you are talking about, you are making the assumption that Google is some nice guy trying to do things right. Many of us went through this here, so it is common knowledge that Google has no support, and they even purposely take advantage of it just because they can, exactly like other comments here say.
I feel for you. Our account was shutdown with no warning in July. We got the same brick wall of canned responses, and no answers to our questions.
We were finally able to get to the bottom of it with some help from someone within Google - in our case, they had decided to shutdown the product we were using (adsense for ajax), and had just forgotten to mention it, instead opting for closing our account, leaving us wondering what the hell we'd done wrong.
If you have contacts in youtube, adwords, etc, they should be able to find out what has gone wrong in your case if they dig enough...
"We migrated all of our videos from the expensive Brightcove platform in August and went live on YouTube in August and on our site with YouTube on August 22, using the embedded player."
I am wondering if anyone has yet connected "expensive" vs "cheap" to "Has customer support" vs "Has no support" ?
It isn't exactly a zero sum game. Youtube seems to work really well for indie publishers who put up cat videos and large partners with deep pockets like Vevo and the music labels, and for people in the middle, it seems to be hit or miss. And if you have issues, it is all miss.
Adsense does this 99% of the time when the content provider clicks on the Adsense links on their page. Basically, you can't even test the adsense links, especially if you aren't sending a lot of clicks.
There are 5 videos with viewership over 5,000. The rest? Most have less than 500 views.
The innovationmedian blog links to a few sites that make my neck itchy, in that "I'm sure these people are doing something unsavoury with online ads or reviews but I have no idea what it is". I know I'm over critical of advertising stuff.
This personal blog post is referring to one of the top 100 local newspapers in the country. You may not like advertising, but this paper is 130 years old and has won a Pulitzer prize. It's the paper of record for the Riverside community.
It's most likely that "invalid clicks" have occurred. If you clicked a few times on your own ads, this is why. It could also be a competitor intentionally trying to take you down. They just simulate automated clicks from the same IP on your ads. In this case you would have no control, and Google would yet be justified in destroying your account because of the activity that your participation in their network is generating - even if it is through no fault of your own.
This is one of many reasons why Adsense is not recommended. Another reason is that fact that they take so long to pay. No one pays on Net-60 anymore, except Google, because they can get away with it.
You are lucky though. In many cases, they wait until you've sent them a ton of traffic for 60 days - just before payday. They then tell you that you aren't being paid, close your account, and refuse to provide a reason for it. There is no indication about how much (if any) of the traffic you aren't being paid for is being refunded to the advertisers. I'd suspect it's not anywhere near 100%.
I'd suggest you join a CPA network that pays weekly and then choose advertisers from their inventory.
"We migrated all of our videos from the expensive Brightcove platform in August and went live on YouTube in August and on our site with YouTube on August 22, using the embedded player."
That is all. Google is free and nice but it is not really smart to run business based on company which essentially has no support.
I'd love to see some competition, but it's a tough nut to crack. Yahoo gave it a try for a few years, but ended up shutting their offering down. Google has millions of paying advertisers, billions of page views and the ability to match them up in real time. All the while providing analytics to both sides. You're not going to beat them at efficiency.
I get pitches from ad networks all the time, but they are almost never able to beat AdSense. Google never had to set up a conference call to win my business, they just do a better job,
You went from something you paid for (Brightcove) to something free (Youtube).
Questionable Decision #2
You put all your eggs in one basket with a platform (Youtube) that's known to have horrible support AND act unilaterally in its own favor with totally automated systems.
You have somewhat low view counts. (Based on what's stated in the HN comments page, I'm too lazy to look)
I'm not sure what you expected, but it looks like old media jumping on a new media bandwagon and expecting it all to just work.
Man, I could write pages about how badly Google executes on AdSense customer service.
You'd think that for all of the smart people who work there they'd figure something out that makes sense and is fair for all involved.
I mean, without thinking too hard, things like:
- Probation periods starting at zero revenue and ramping-up based on various criteria
- No account cancellation but rather revenue throttling WITH good feedback for site/content owner to fix problems
- Paid account verification. I'm sure most of us would not mind paying a one time or annual $1,000 fee to be verified and have real customer service. If you have a real business this is nothing.
Think about the revenue throttling idea. You do something they don't approve of and your revenue is throttled down. Some feedback is provided. You make some changes. If they are adequate, revenue throttles back up. Conceptually simple.
One argument against this is that you could be teaching scammers how to work around the rules. Not so. You are teaching scammers to work within the rules. If Google is smart enough in guidance and feedback they stand to turn questionable sites into "law abiding" sites. Those who don't play by the rules get to host ads and make no revenue or nearly nothing. I think this would be a far better approach.
They also need a learning mode. I worked with someone who implemented AdSense and didn't really understand it all. He didn't really do anything violently bad. I don't remember the details, but the account got shut-down within a week. This was a case of an honest business person who probably doesn't have a single molecule of malice in his body that got treated like crap by Google for not knowing what they want. The problem is that you can't know what they want, not all of it.
There needs to be a "learning mode". Maybe the throttling period is exactly that. Make it a smoothly rising function that is driven by quality criteria that is communicated clearly and effectively. As long as you develop your site you get flags to guide you into compliance. This, to me at least, makes too much sense.
And the thing is, Google aren't losing free users or pennies with this crap. I know of one SINGLE case where Google's silly Adsense banning policies lost the Big G 6 figures a year - because they couldn't be bothered to have a human get in touch and just auto-banned. As I've mentioned elsewhere, they've dropped low 5 figures a year by disabling my Adsense account with no clear explanation why.
I really, really cannot see what the business case here is. Can anyone enlighten me?
I run a moderately successful chat site , and have been utilizing Adsense for almost 5 years, with an average revenue of around $8000/month. For no apparent reason our site was removed from Adsense.. Apparently Google has recently purchased Meebo, and as a result have been shutting down and have added 'no chat sites' to their policy..
29 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 36.2 ms ] threadThe other HN link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4585043
not when you own the market
i have agents approach me directly with ad networks specifically targetting my niche, and the best I've seen is off by more than a factor 10 when it comes to revenue
if you look at the link, it was shut down for bad clicks, incitement to users to click, or similar. at the very least he could have said in the reply something like "we don't think we have people clicking on links, but if you could provide some IPs we might be able to track down someone at the paper who's being over-enthusiastic".
even if he knows nothing like that has happened he could have added to the reply (talking about XML uploads, copyright issues) something like "these don't seem to fit into the ilicit activities listed. we don't have incitements to click on ads (see ...) so if the above isn't relevant we suspect there has been some mistaken clicking locally. we have educated the users and we've put in place the following measures to track ..."
instead, he shows no sign of having understood the issues and no inclination to help solve the problem. he just whines.
this is basic psychology. you need something from these people. so you try to act like you understand and want to help, even if you think they are incompetent assholes.
[edit: maybe i come across as unsympathetic. i can understand how maddening this must be. but surely that's more reason to get it fixed? and to get it fixed you need to cooperate, not act like a victim. at least, that's how i would play it (it's his job to make this work).]
The "list of issues" Google provides is a generic list of possible reasons. Essentially, "Thanks for choosing Google. Your account has been disabled. Here is a list of reasons we normally disable an account with no warning. You may or may not have directly or indirectly done any of the activities listed, but we're not going to tell you either way. Feel free to figure it out. If you think you know and have taken steps to remedy the issue(s), then please let us know by submitting an appeal. However, you only get one chance and our single response to your appeal is final."
So this guy and every other person that has to go through this terrible experience has a right to be mad and express their anger.
And it's not a matter of being able to read. It's a matter of Google's terrible customer service.
I am not asking for sympathy, I am asking if anyone has experienced this and if so what they did.
Even our YouTube Account Manager said, "I have honestly never seen anything like this before"
I filled out the online form stating my case and received a reply in less than 4 hours. Stating that the account was still disabled.
even your response here is purely defensive. you don't mention anything about local clicks at all. i don't know what more to say except that you really do not convey the message that you seem to think you are sending.
We were finally able to get to the bottom of it with some help from someone within Google - in our case, they had decided to shutdown the product we were using (adsense for ajax), and had just forgotten to mention it, instead opting for closing our account, leaving us wondering what the hell we'd done wrong.
If you have contacts in youtube, adwords, etc, they should be able to find out what has gone wrong in your case if they dig enough...
"We migrated all of our videos from the expensive Brightcove platform in August and went live on YouTube in August and on our site with YouTube on August 22, using the embedded player."
I am wondering if anyone has yet connected "expensive" vs "cheap" to "Has customer support" vs "Has no support" ?
It isn't exactly a zero sum game. Youtube seems to work really well for indie publishers who put up cat videos and large partners with deep pockets like Vevo and the music labels, and for people in the middle, it seems to be hit or miss. And if you have issues, it is all miss.
(https://www.youtube.com/user/pe?feature=watch)
I'm guessing that's the channel.
Their website (http://www.pe.com/)
The subscription link on the website, which takes you to this page: (http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=pe)
There are 5 videos with viewership over 5,000. The rest? Most have less than 500 views.
The innovationmedian blog links to a few sites that make my neck itchy, in that "I'm sure these people are doing something unsavoury with online ads or reviews but I have no idea what it is". I know I'm over critical of advertising stuff.
This is one of many reasons why Adsense is not recommended. Another reason is that fact that they take so long to pay. No one pays on Net-60 anymore, except Google, because they can get away with it.
You are lucky though. In many cases, they wait until you've sent them a ton of traffic for 60 days - just before payday. They then tell you that you aren't being paid, close your account, and refuse to provide a reason for it. There is no indication about how much (if any) of the traffic you aren't being paid for is being refunded to the advertisers. I'd suspect it's not anywhere near 100%.
I'd suggest you join a CPA network that pays weekly and then choose advertisers from their inventory.
"We migrated all of our videos from the expensive Brightcove platform in August and went live on YouTube in August and on our site with YouTube on August 22, using the embedded player."
That is all. Google is free and nice but it is not really smart to run business based on company which essentially has no support.
I get pitches from ad networks all the time, but they are almost never able to beat AdSense. Google never had to set up a conference call to win my business, they just do a better job,
I currently run ads through Media.net, and they're responsive and good to work with (so far). I'm quite excited by this new development.
You went from something you paid for (Brightcove) to something free (Youtube).
Questionable Decision #2 You put all your eggs in one basket with a platform (Youtube) that's known to have horrible support AND act unilaterally in its own favor with totally automated systems.
You have somewhat low view counts. (Based on what's stated in the HN comments page, I'm too lazy to look) I'm not sure what you expected, but it looks like old media jumping on a new media bandwagon and expecting it all to just work.
Film at 11.
You'd think that for all of the smart people who work there they'd figure something out that makes sense and is fair for all involved.
I mean, without thinking too hard, things like:
- Probation periods starting at zero revenue and ramping-up based on various criteria
- No account cancellation but rather revenue throttling WITH good feedback for site/content owner to fix problems
- Paid account verification. I'm sure most of us would not mind paying a one time or annual $1,000 fee to be verified and have real customer service. If you have a real business this is nothing.
Think about the revenue throttling idea. You do something they don't approve of and your revenue is throttled down. Some feedback is provided. You make some changes. If they are adequate, revenue throttles back up. Conceptually simple.
One argument against this is that you could be teaching scammers how to work around the rules. Not so. You are teaching scammers to work within the rules. If Google is smart enough in guidance and feedback they stand to turn questionable sites into "law abiding" sites. Those who don't play by the rules get to host ads and make no revenue or nearly nothing. I think this would be a far better approach.
They also need a learning mode. I worked with someone who implemented AdSense and didn't really understand it all. He didn't really do anything violently bad. I don't remember the details, but the account got shut-down within a week. This was a case of an honest business person who probably doesn't have a single molecule of malice in his body that got treated like crap by Google for not knowing what they want. The problem is that you can't know what they want, not all of it.
There needs to be a "learning mode". Maybe the throttling period is exactly that. Make it a smoothly rising function that is driven by quality criteria that is communicated clearly and effectively. As long as you develop your site you get flags to guide you into compliance. This, to me at least, makes too much sense.
And the thing is, Google aren't losing free users or pennies with this crap. I know of one SINGLE case where Google's silly Adsense banning policies lost the Big G 6 figures a year - because they couldn't be bothered to have a human get in touch and just auto-banned. As I've mentioned elsewhere, they've dropped low 5 figures a year by disabling my Adsense account with no clear explanation why.
I really, really cannot see what the business case here is. Can anyone enlighten me?