Adsense, Advertisment and such

[Leanthar]

I just received this email and evidently somebody somewhere has been doing something that I am not aware of and have no control over. Whatever it was (or whoever) has just caused a source of income to disappear from the site. I give up.
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[SIZE=13]  It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.
  A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including but not limited to clicks generated by:
  - a publisher on his own web pages
  - a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads
  - automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software
  - a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason
  Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms and Conditions and program polices, which can be viewed at:
  [SIZE=13]https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_US[/SIZE][/url]
[/SIZE][SIZE=13]  [SIZE=13]https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US[/SIZE][/url]
[/SIZE][SIZE=13]  Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected advertisers.
  Sincerely,
  The Google AdSense Team
[/SIZE]

[Filatus]

Sorry to hear this Leanthar. Maybe you should request them for some details on what exactly happened. That way you could perhaps prevend it from happening in the future. And by the way, I actually liked playing Adventure Quest for what it´s worth. :S

[Emerald Skye]

That is so disapointing.  Sorry Leanther..please do not be discouraged.

[LoganGrimnar]

oh man.. thats a shame. When it says "Publisher" does it mean you (L)? If so then maby you clicked on it and that could be it. Or was the layout changed for out site, to better fit it? ive no idea if this is the original layout they gave or not.

See if we can find what the proablem is and fix it. Talk to them again and see if we cant get it back up. Ive clicked on it a few times, but only when i saw things of interest. I dont recall you telling us ever to click on it, i belive you said not to just click on it in one of your posts. Ive no idea how an auto clicking program works.. so i couldent guess if thats it or not.

Dont give up on it. Try to find the proablem and fix it, show the Google people what it was and that its fixed, then maby they will alow it on the site again. If there is anything i can do to help let me know.

-Michael

[Leanthar]

They were very blunt in stating I could not use them again. I have asked them for more information but it is likely it will go ignored. But if I find out who did it then I will have to solve that problem. It just cost me a lot of money and would have gone a long ways in keeping this world online.

[LoganGrimnar]

Is there possably another company you could use? MSN or something? I dont want to see the servers die becouse of a lack of funding, and it shouldent be your soul responsbility to keep them up.

See if you get a replay from them, but try looking for other companys to use as well. Im thinking that with a black mark Gogle wont come back, but there are more fish out there.

[Hellblazer]

That is bad news.  I personaly clicked on the add twice to see the add about the NWN2 that was on there and both time I was redirected to freepay.com which was not the link that was showing on the add, the link that was provided on the ad was something opnionconsumer.com.  I have no clues on how those things work and hope it is not by those clicks that this happen.
 
  could it be the fact that your forum autorefresh?
 
  Just remembered what the add wa about.  It said get NWN2 free and get paied for you opinion, something like that anyways. I have already went on freepay.com before and I'm almost certain they are a scam. If I only knew I was going to be redirected on that web site I would not have clicked on the add.

[Leanthar]

No, you are supposed to click on the ones that you are intersted in. But it seems somebody was running a bot or something like that. I have no idea what happened. Goggle certainly didn't give me any heads up or anything either. But we will see what they have to say.

[Hellblazer]

Well, I would hate to see this fine server and forum go down the drain so I will pledge 10 - 20$ monthly.  Its no much but its the least I can do to help and keep having loads of fun with all of you guys.

[Talan Va'lash]

I don't know how they expect the publisher to be accountable for users who may do the following:
 
  - automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software
 
  If they stonewall you they'll be getting at least one angry email (from me.) And then I'll post the address and anyone else that wants to send one can send an angry email as well.
 

[Hellblazer]

aye.

[Dorax Windsmith]

I'll second that Talan, there's got to be more to this story.....

Sorry L, I think you should tell us (the player base) often (like once a month) how much of a deficit you are running.  This will do two things:  1) Give us a target to increase our monthly donations, and 2)  Give us a greater appreciation as to your sacrifices (in addition to all the time spend allowing us to share your world).

If you ever get to the point that you are not running a deficit then the periodic financial update probably wouldn't be necessary any more. (and I personally think that would be awesome)

Thank you again for everything you do....I'm bumping my donation another $10/month too.

[Thak]

I dont think L wants you to send Angry Emails. That usually does more harm than good. So please refrain from that guys. Personally I never trusted these kind of ads, smells just fishy. I clicked on that NWN 2 ad , expecting to get something about NWN but it was a consumer questionary for a totally unrelated Product. To me thats just deceptive advertising.

So to be constructive I would encourage everyone who knows somebody with a cool website or a related topic to ask them if they want to advertise here for xy amount of $ per month (L could determine that) we have quite good hits as it is so there might certainly be interest.

[Talan Va'lash]

Thak - 7/12/2006  1:17 AM  I dont think L wants you to send Angry Emails. That usually does more harm than good. So please refrain from that guys.

 
  By "Angry email" I meant, "consumer feedback."  That such events lead me to choose to never advertise with them or purchase anything through their ads.
 
 
  oney talks and all that.
 
  Edit: of course I am going to wait to hear the outcome before doing any such thing. Advertising is a consumer buisiness just like... I dunno, a department store. I've acctually had much success getting things or being compensated by sending letters and/or making phone calls when I had a bad experience with a company or felt I was wronged in some way.
 
  to use another cliche, the squeaky wheel gets the grease... or gets a full refund... or gets out of paying for service visits to have their internet fixed... or... well, you get the point.
 

[Hellblazer]

Thak - 7/12/2006  3:17 I clicked on that NWN 2 ad , expecting to get something about NWN but it was a consumer questionary for a totally unrelated Product. To me thats just deceptive advertising.  So to be constructive I would encourage everyone who knows somebody with a cool website or a related topic to ask them if they want to advertise here for xy amount of $ per month (L could determine that) we have quite good hits as it is so there might certainly be interest.

 Well at least you got to the questionair i ws sent to a totaly unrealted website call freepay. And your idea of advertising from other websites is a good one.

[Stranzini]

Its been a while since I made a donation, I'll go do one right now.

Leanthar, I second the motion that you just communicate to us, say on a regular once a month basis, how much donation you received in the last month and how much you paid out. I think there is more than enough good will from the community here to keep this going, we just forget or don't have a perspective on what is needed and need a little more concrete hint to prod us...

Just a stickied topic where you post once a month the situation and that would jog us all when it came around once a month. I can't believe you would not get more than a good enough response.

Eventually maybe how many individuals donated and how many dollars, and how many people played in the last month...those would be the three numbers that should make everybody think just a second and do the right thing, based on their individual means but in recognition of how we can keep this going.

Then this annoyance about the ad click problem would just be an annoyance.

[darkstorme]

As a regular on the forums, I only encountered one ad that seemed interesting to me (ie. not about goldfarming) - and it was a link to a pyramid-scheme datamining scam.  Even so, I only clicked on the one link - I can't think who would've thought that running a bot on the site is a good idea.

On the plus side, if Google can point out a particular IP as being the perp, server logs should be able to tell you whodunnit.