Google Bans Adwords use for Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Google Bans Adwords use for Facebook

techblog.willshouse.com

64 pointsbapter35 comments

Google recently suspended all my ads for advertising services (AdWords competitors) and for ad tracking services (Analytics competitors). These are sites Google had advertised for as long as 6 years without issue. The reasons all seem a stretch (http://www.w3roi.com is suspended for 'misleading claims' - what claims?).

Someone's rewriting policies and cracking down over there, and it's a big problem for any business when the largest display and search advertising service in the world decides they won't allow you to be a customer anymore. Sleepless nights for me, as I had just mortgaged a new house before my ads turned up suddenly suspended.

There are quite a few fraudsters that use names beginning with "W3" to suggest a connection with the W3C. Dollars to donuts that's the "misleading claim" they were alluding to. (I'm not saying you were trying to defraud anyone, but you've found yourself in kind of a "bad neighborhood," and Google tend to be a little bit prejudiced when they find you hanging out there.)

This is why you don't stake the well-being of your company on the good intentions of another's.

Monopolistic market share makes that difficult. Every store stakes their business on their electric company providing service.

Poor analogy, but for internet businesses whose prospects find solutions through search, Google refusing service is going to impact you no matter where else you advertise. They're too big to easily substitute competitors.

Google controls something like 97% of search traffic.

if you aren't with them, you essentially get knee capped

Wow, this really looks like an ugly antitrust issue. Since the feds already have an open investigation, it is probably worth letting them know directly about this specific issue.

http://www.justice.gov/atr/contact/index.html

Weird. I still see lots of ads for "alternatives to adsense" and similar things whenever I open up Gmail.

I get them almost every day for some reason

And this wouldn't have anything at all to do with Facebook first banning adverts for Google+?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20080054-71/facebook-bans-...

Or Facebook banning Adwords in all Facebook apps?

http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=91182&...

More: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Facebook+ba...

The article is a second-hand account of a discussion with a low-level call center employee. I hardly think we should extrapolate Google's corporate policy from this account.

Interesting to note the parallel with the post which claimed Facebook was blocking G+ ads a few weeks ago. Many jumped to conclusions, bit in the discussion on HN [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2770237], it was determined this was more likely a trademark issue than a competitive action.

Don't jump to conclusions.

Before we jump to conclusions, it's equally possible Facebook is behind this. Google gets lots of nastygrams from companies who view ads containing their name as trademark violations.

A few years ago I had trouble running an iPod related ad on Google, not because of Google but because of Apple. Is there any indication this is Google and not Facebook's doing?

Interestingly, a search for "find friends" on Google still returns an ad promoting Facebook from Facebook itself. That's one data point in favor of the Facebook-initiated trademark hypothesis.

Screenshot? I see FB as the top organic result, but not as an advertiser.

Screenshot from just now http://i.imgur.com/7r1Lt.png

Thanks! Are you in the US?

One potential reason for this:

http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/a-clever-adwords-hack-how-to...

When people run ads pointing to a site they don't own, it's often in an effort to get an implicit endorsement from that site. Note: I have no evidence that this is going on, but it is a risk with any site that has a recognizable URL and allows user-generated content.

From what I can see, it looks like ads pointing to FB were a) big brands advertising on their own brand names in order to promote social sites (e.g. 'windows 7' or 'hennessy'), b) big brands advertising on generic terms (e.g. 'hummus' ads taking you to the Athenos Facebook page), or c) house ads for navigational searches, including one for the notorious "Facebook login".

These ads are also growing in popularity. It looks like they doubled between April and June.

> These ads are also growing in popularity. It looks like they doubled between April and June.

Source?

I buy lots of data sets on this stuff. My company analyzes SEO and SEM campaigns to help investors understand what they're getting into.

Anyone with a US legal background know if this raises any antitrust issues?

It would certainly raise some red flags under Australian competition law.

IANAL, but in the US whether you actually hold a monopoly is the key. I think it would be bough to show that Google holds a monopoly in this space. They definitely command the biggest market share, but I'm not sure it would be enough to show that they have a monopoly. 65% (as reported here: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/02/11/googles-lead-s...) is certainly the lion's share, but not quite a monopoly by US standards.

I remember hearing that Google is making well over 50% of all Internet Advertising revenue in the US.

it's in google's best interest to get studies to show them with lower market share. I'd bet if you tallied up the stats for 100 biggest sites, Google would have at least 90, if not 95% of all search engine traffic

I doubt that just for the fact that IE comes with bing as default. I don't think enough people actually care to change it. I would not be surprised to see it higher, but I highly doubt greater than 80%.

Facebook removed Adsense from their list of "approved ad providers" earlier this year. http://developers.facebook.com/adproviders/

This may be a response to that.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

"Facebook Blog" is still showing me AdWords ads for Facebook Advertising. (facebook.com/ads/)

Google "Facebook ads" and check out the Adwords ads. Facebook themselves advertise directly via Adwords. I'm going to transcribe myself talking to a brain-dead call centre rep about alien life and give it a catchy article headline to complete the troll.

Touché. It all seems rather petty, though. They can either both allow ads, or both ban ads, and the public probably doesn't care which scenario happens.

Perhaps not directly, but they result will indirectly affect them when developers resort to shadier monetization practices because they can't use one on the other.

This feels just like the prelude to WWII with all these conflicting alliances or maybe the Cold War is more appropriate.

I wonder if it is simply Eric Schmidt's ties to Google preventing a DOJ anti-trust suit. Owning the largest advertisment platform, owning the advertising adjacencies, and using that leverage against your competition is very much rubbing up against illegal use of a monopolistic position.

Facebook did the same thing to me when I tried to advertise my social networking service on Facebook. This is anti-competitive - on both counts. But it's illegal if you are deemed to have monopoly power.

I'd be curious to see some real numbers on this. How much is this costing Google directly? How much does the offensive damage Facebook in the pocketbook?

Unless there's a genuinely huge advantage at play, I think this is a bad move by Google. They're supposed to be the good guy against Facebook, and they're just pissing that competitive edge away.

Legal battle? I thought Google and Facebook haven't sued each other yet. Have they?

humorously, if you search for "facebook ads", the first ad (at least for me) is an ad for facebook.com/ads. If you search with the quotes, that is followed by two sites that promise to optimize your social media ad presence.

Those might be from existing contracts or something, and after the whole email contact "reciprocity" spat I could believe some form of this is happening, but it would be nice to see some actual confirmation.

As with the Apple TOS issue, I also call shenanigans on this.

Sigh whatever happened to just competing fairly?

payback time!

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