5 ms·

Google Bans Adwords use for Facebook

64 points by bapter 15y ago

dangrossman 15y ago
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 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.
- jcampbell1 15y ago
  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 http://www.justice.gov/atr/contact/index.html
- SeoxyS 15y ago
  This is why you don't stake the well-being of your company on the good intentions of another's.
  - vaksel 15y ago
    Google controls something like 97% of search traffic. if you aren't with them, you essentially get knee capped
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    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.
- chc 15y ago
  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.)
- Natsu 15y ago
  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
samdalton 15y ago
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.
- ohashi 15y ago
  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.
Terretta 15y ago
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-google-ad/ 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&p=2 http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=91182&... More: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Facebook+bans http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Facebook+ba...
gavinballard 15y ago
Anyone with a US legal background know if this raises any antitrust issues? It would certainly raise some red flags under Australian competition law.
- thedragon4453 15y ago
  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-search-market-share-narrows-comscore/ 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.
  - vaksel 15y ago
    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
    - thedragon4453 15y ago
      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%.
  - mckoss 15y ago
    I remember hearing that Google is making well over 50% of all Internet Advertising revenue in the US.
mikeknoop 15y ago
Facebook removed Adsense from their list of "approved ad providers" earlier this year. http://developers.facebook.com/adproviders/ http://developers.facebook.com/adproviders/ This may be a response to that.
scarmig 15y ago
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.
darylteo 15y ago
As with the Apple TOS issue, I also call shenanigans on this. Sigh whatever happened to just competing fairly?
byrneseyeview 15y ago
One potential reason for this: http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/a-clever-adwords-hack-how-to-get-your-advertorial-on-marketwatch-com/ 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.
- captainshamo 15y ago
  > These ads are also growing in popularity. It looks like they doubled between April and June. Source?
  - byrneseyeview 15y ago
    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.
nostromo 15y ago
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?
- fpgeek 15y ago
  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.
  - byrneseyeview 15y ago
    Screenshot? I see FB as the top organic result, but not as an advertiser.
    - slipstream 15y ago
      Screenshot from just now http://i.imgur.com/7r1Lt.png http://i.imgur.com/7r1Lt.png
      - byrneseyeview 15y ago
        Thanks! Are you in the US?
imaverickk 15y ago
Legal battle? I thought Google and Facebook haven't sued each other yet. Have they?
flocial 15y ago
This feels just like the prelude to WWII with all these conflicting alliances or maybe the Cold War is more appropriate.
magicalist 15y ago
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.
brg 15y ago
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.
necenzurat 15y ago
payback time!
reso 15y ago
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 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.
gcarswell 15y ago
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.
byrneseyeview 15y ago
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=facebook+blog http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... "Facebook Blog" is still showing me AdWords ads for Facebook Advertising. (facebook.com/ads/)
justinbieber 15y ago
Can anyone say Bing? I can't http://clayscottbrown.biz/kindle/2011/07/26/gi-jane/ http://clayscottbrown.biz/kindle/2011/07/26/gi-jane/
justinbieber 15y ago
facebook sucks anyway
mckoss 15y ago
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.

64 points by bapter 15y ago

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 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.

jcampbell1 15y ago
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 http://www.justice.gov/atr/contact/index.html
SeoxyS 15y ago
This is why you don't stake the well-being of your company on the good intentions of another's.
- vaksel 15y ago
  Google controls something like 97% of search traffic. if you aren't with them, you essentially get knee capped
- dangrossman 15y ago
  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.
chc 15y ago
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.)
Natsu 15y ago
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

samdalton 15y ago

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.

ohashi 15y ago
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.

Terretta 15y ago

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-google-ad/ 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&p=2 http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=91182&... More: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Facebook+bans http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Facebook+ba...

gavinballard 15y ago

Anyone with a US legal background know if this raises any antitrust issues? It would certainly raise some red flags under Australian competition law.

thedragon4453 15y ago
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-search-market-share-narrows-comscore/ 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.
- vaksel 15y ago
  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
  - thedragon4453 15y ago
    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%.
- mckoss 15y ago
  I remember hearing that Google is making well over 50% of all Internet Advertising revenue in the US.

mikeknoop 15y ago

Facebook removed Adsense from their list of "approved ad providers" earlier this year. http://developers.facebook.com/adproviders/ http://developers.facebook.com/adproviders/ This may be a response to that.

scarmig 15y ago

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.

darylteo 15y ago

As with the Apple TOS issue, I also call shenanigans on this. Sigh whatever happened to just competing fairly?

byrneseyeview 15y ago

One potential reason for this: http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/a-clever-adwords-hack-how-to-get-your-advertorial-on-marketwatch-com/ 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.

captainshamo 15y ago
> These ads are also growing in popularity. It looks like they doubled between April and June. Source?
- byrneseyeview 15y ago
  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.

nostromo 15y ago

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?

fpgeek 15y ago
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.
- byrneseyeview 15y ago
  Screenshot? I see FB as the top organic result, but not as an advertiser.
  - slipstream 15y ago
    Screenshot from just now http://i.imgur.com/7r1Lt.png http://i.imgur.com/7r1Lt.png
    - byrneseyeview 15y ago
      Thanks! Are you in the US?

imaverickk 15y ago

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

flocial 15y ago

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

magicalist 15y ago

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.

brg 15y ago

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.

necenzurat 15y ago

payback time!

reso 15y ago

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 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.

gcarswell 15y ago

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.

byrneseyeview 15y ago

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=facebook+blog http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3... "Facebook Blog" is still showing me AdWords ads for Facebook Advertising. (facebook.com/ads/)

justinbieber 15y ago

Can anyone say Bing? I can't http://clayscottbrown.biz/kindle/2011/07/26/gi-jane/ http://clayscottbrown.biz/kindle/2011/07/26/gi-jane/

justinbieber 15y ago

facebook sucks anyway

mckoss 15y ago

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.