> Saying "clicking on these adds gets me money," could easily be considered indirectly encouraging people to click on ads
How many people believe otherwise? If you cater to any audience with a 3-digit IQ, they know you get paid when they click.
On my current arrangement I have payments on conversion (it's working well enough) but it requires a bit more work than AdSense did.
"How many people believe otherwise?"
That's kind of the point, I think. Stating an obvious fact is often used to suggest some kind of action. And it sounds like that happened here.
I feel bad for the guy, surely. He made a small mistake and paid disproportionately. But once you get branded as a cheater, even if by accident, then advertisers will run away from you.
TV isn't a good analogy, because it's a different business model, so this kind of cheating is impossible.
Re:Sacked by a Google algorithm
by FiddlerClamp on Thursday December 30, 2010 @12:26AM
(#2051339)
They may think you only get paid if a) they click and b) they buy...
I wonder if that part of the ToS would hold up in court. This guy could have achieved the same effect by simply publishing some of his financial records, especially if he was going for transparency; anyone would be able to see his revenue report with an itemized entry that looked like "Ad Click Revenue - 152,380 clicks @ $X per click = $Y (50% of total revenue)". Can you actually sign away your right to publish such reports without redactions?
I don't particularly like Google's lack of transparency, but all this stuff is in the terms you're required to agree to before you start using an AdSense account. Yes, it's a big scary legal document, but you can't say they didn't warn you.