I’ve seen some whacked Google Ads but this one …… is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google has decided to take a stand against pirated material online, including thousands of spam blogs who use Adsense to monetize their reposted content.

The move against spam blogs is part of a broader attempt by Google to crack down of pirated content online, including acting on copyright takedown requests within 24 hours, preventing terms “closely associated with piracy” from appearing in autocomplete, and improving AdSense’s anti-piracy review.

As usual, the move has been condemned as not going far enough by the music industry, but will be welcomed by bloggers who regularly see their content republished.

So far, Google has all but ignored complaints about spam blogs using Adsense to monetize content, and the ad platform remains the most popular form of advertising on these blogs. The improved DMCA system will also allow bloggers to get their content taken down from Blogger blogs, still one of the most popular hosting options for spam bloggers.

For details on the Google Public Policy blog here.

Google Finally Cracks Down On Spam Blogs Who Use Adsense is a post from: The Inquisitr

Unless you happened to be a very popular blog network like I Can Has Cheezeburger the chances of making a living strictly from running Google AdSense is next to impossible. However the idea that earning a $1.30 a day from AdSense could cost you your unemployment benefits makes one wonder if being honest with the government is a wise idea.

Forbes has the story of Karin (she asked that her last name not be published) an unemployed lawyer who had recently graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law and decided to start up a blog in April to help keep her busy while she studied for the Missouri bar exam. She had moved there when New York got to be just too expensive. It is important to note as Forbes did that in the US it is common, and legal, for the unemployed to receive jobless benefits from the state where they last worked, even after moving to a new state as in the case of Karin.

Her blog, STL Meal Deals, was where she wrote about local restaurant promotions and like most bloggers figured it wouldn’t hurt to run some Google AdSense ads on it. The only problem is that it has cause Karin a very big problem. Knowing that when the check arrived that she was legally obligated to inform New York State of the income Karin did just that.

It was after Karin notified the Department of Labor of her AdSense income that the confusion started. New York cut her weekly benefits to $300 and sent her a form to fill out and send to her employer. Unsure whether Google was considered her employer, Karin called the DOL to get an answer. She says a state official told her she shouldn’t have claimed the AdSense payment as income because it was “residual,” meaning a payment made for services previously rendered. New York does not regard residual income as employment pay that could make someone ineligible for unemployment benefits.

The call prompted Karin to file another claim with the state and to attach a letter stating she was running a blog and that the Google AdSense revenue it generated was her only source of income. A few days later, she received a letter from the DOL informing her that it had launched an investigation of her “business” to determine whether she remained eligible for benefits.

So for now Karin remains without her jobless benefits and has pulled the AdSense ads from her blog.

“It’s frustrating that nobody seems to have a straightforward answer,” she says. “It’s even more frustrating that trying to work and generate additional income, while being straightforward and honest about that income, is treated with suspicion and punished.”

Oh, and her income from the AdSense ads: $238.75

Unemployed lawyer gets benefits yanked over $1 a day blogging is a post from: The Inquisitr

A blogger reading about Chrome noticed a bit of AdSense fail, for Google’s own product.

[Source: Intershame]

Adsense context advertising fail is a post from: The Inquisitr

For the most part online advertising has taken the form of contextual and placement-targets ads with some ad networks experimenting with what is termed as interest-based advertising. Google through its advertising program has stayed with the first two options but according to a post on the official Google AdSense blog this will be changing over the next few month to a year.

Over the next few months we’ll start offering interest-based advertising to a limited number of advertisers as part of a beta, and expand the offering later in 2009. Whether the advertiser’s goal is to drive brand awareness or increase responses to their ads, these capabilities can help expand the success of their campaigns and should increase your earnings as advertiser participation increases.

Source: Google AdSense Blog

According to Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land and the conversations he has had with Google’s Brad Bender there are currently 30 top line categories and an additional 600 detailed categories. As well users will have some control over which categories that what to see ads from by setting their preferences at google.com/ads/preferences.

As for when this part of their ad program will start it appears that over the next few months a select number of advertisers will be invited into the program. It will then be expanded over the course of the year.

Google getting into behavioral targeted ads is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the main things about Google AdSense ads is that the font has always been the same boring style with no way for us to change them. Well, no longer according to a post on the official Google AdSense blog. You can now choose between Arial, Times and Verdana fonts and while that sure doesn’t seem like a lot it is an improvement over a choice of one.

As well you can apparently select one of the new fonts to be a default for any new ads created as well as changing the fonts used in individual ads currently being shown. From their announcement on the new choices

However, you can also select custom font faces for specific ad units that you’ve created with the Manage Ads feature. When creating new ad units, you’ll be prompted to select between the default ‘Standard AdSense font family’, your new account-wide font face (if you’ve selected one), or another font face. You can also change the appearance of existing ad units, by visiting the Manage Ads page of your account and updating your font choices for specific ad units. Once you’ve changed the font face of an ad unit away from the default, those selections will be maintained even if you change your account-wide settings later.

AdSense now lets you change your fonts is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’ve seen more than one blogger whining about this invasion of their sidebar with ads that offend their sensibilities and declaring that they are taking down their only source of income until after Tuesday. Wow, that’s gonna accomplish a lot isn’t it. Take about cutting off your nose to spite your face. Instead of getting all outrage why not employee a little bit of guerilla advertising to the situation. Here’s one suggestion for you to try

Step 1 – see that graphic up on the right of the post? Right click on it and select to save to your hard drive.

Step 2 – upload that graphic to your blogging server where you have all your other pictures for your blog

Step 3 – Head into your blogging platform Admin area and add a widget to the sidebar.

Step 4 – Add an image link to the graphic to your text widget – to make it look nice put it in a div with alignment set to center.

Step 5 – Add a nice little caption to the widget thanking Google for giving you this opportunity to raise some extra money but you are morally outrage that they do it by serving up ads like to one for prop8 (either side of the coin). You can probably vary the text but you get the idea – right?

Step 6 – title the widget and then activate it.

Step 7 – now write up a post about what the new sidebar widget for and how you are really pissed at Google but rather than ripping out the ads you will take any money raised through any of the displayed prop8 ads and donate it to the local aids clinic or some similar local organization that supports your side of the coin.

Step 8 – Post it

Step 9 – make your donation – take pictures – post about it again thanking Google.

You accomplish a lot more doing stuff this way because if you really think that Google is going to really give a shit about what a bunch of whining bloggers have to say about how ads are being served up yer nuts. The fact is that when it comes to advertising Google is all about money and it has no conscience in where that money is coming from. So rather than sitting around whining your moral outrage over this do something constructive and help out your side of the pointlessness.

But whining to Google is just pointless.

Bloggers whining about political AdSense ads is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google bought ZAO Begun for $140 million, the company announced early this morning. Begun, as it’s called, appears to be the Russian equivalent of AdSense, with about 40,000 advertisers and another 140,000 in a partner site. Along with the deal, Begun’s parent company — Rambler Media — has agreed to use Google search and advertising on its own web site.

The deal is expected to be finalized by September.

Google Grabs Russian Advertising Agency is a post from: The Inquisitr

The company pulled in $5.37 billion — a number 39 percent higher than its second quarter in 2007. The vast majority — 66 percent — came from Google-owned sites. Another 31 percent came from AdSense-related income. Just over half of Google’s money came from outside the U.S.

Google says its operating expenses were $1.65 billion for the quarter — 31 percent of its total revenue. That’s down slightly from $1.53 billion this time last year.

Still, Google missed average earnings estimates by about 11 cents a share — the fourth time ever it has not exceeded analyst expectations. Google’s stocks dropped about 7 percent following the news.

Update: Numbers are also now out from Microsoft and IBM, if you’re interested.

Google’s Earnings Up, Expenses Down is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google’s first attempt at affiliate marketing first appeared in 2006 and launched in March 2007. The CPA (cost per action) network never really took off in a big way, being offered to publishers as a bolt on to the more popular, and far easier to implement Adsense program.

The email sent to users advised that all referral code should be removed prior to the closure, that users should substitute referral units with Adsense units, and reports will be available until the end of August. Also being chopped as part of the announcement is the Google products referral program, so users will no longer be able to run CPA ads for Google products such as Picasa or even Firefox. The help page would indicate that referral payments for Google products may already be suspended.

Although not mentioned in the email (or even linked from the Adsense help page), the likely reason for the closure is the launch of Google Affiliate Network, the rebadged DoubleClick Performics. There could never be enough room in Google for competing affiliate networks, and with Performics offering a superior platform and product choice (not to mention the $3.1 billion paid for the whole of DoubleClick) it was always going to be the winner. In usual lazy Google buys a company then doesn’t integrate it properly for years style, Google users have to apply for a separate account on the Google Affiliate Network, and despite the initial rebranding everything but the front page is still branded Performics. I’ve applied and I’ll report back if I get in so I can do a one to one comparison of the two offerings.

Google announces closure date for Adsense Referral program is a post from: The Inquisitr

The company will now run Google-supplied AdSense ads next to its search results as well as on some of its other Yahoo sites. Yahoo will retain control over where and how the ads appear.

Yahoo predicts the move will bring in $250 million to $450 million in extra revenue.

No word yet what this might mean for the future of Yahoo Publisher, which was originally seen as Yahoo’s answer to AdSense.

The complete announcement is below.

Yahoo-Google Deal Confirmed is a post from: The Inquisitr