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I use AdMob for a mobile game I made. After successfully using it for years I got a notice that Google had bought the company and that my account would now be a

by fara 12y ago

I use AdMob for a mobile game I made. After successfully using it for years I got a notice that Google had bought the company and that my account would now be an AdSense account. I started earning money there and when I reached the 100usd amount, with no explanation at all I got banned. I filled up contact forms but not reason was given to me. They just said that I was not going to have my money since it was going to be refunded to advertisers. After a while, for some strange reason my account was luckily reverted to a classic AdMob account and now I'm back again getting my money through PayPal. I'm really disappointed on Google support on this matter, there are no email addresses or real people to talk to. Amazon and even DX have given me better customer support for 2usd items.

alandarev 12y ago
You are the product, sorry to hear your story. I think situation would be better if there was a competition.
- beambot 12y ago
  Wow, that's cliche (and wrong). Webhosts are not the product in this situation. This is a supplier-distributor relationship, where Google is the supplier (of ads) and you are the distributor (to end consumers).
  - dfabulich 12y ago
    No, I think OP has it right. The paying customers are the advertisers. Websites supply "inventory" of impressions. (That's certainly what Google calls it in my Doubleclick dashboard.) Google is a distributor, and they sometimes decide to cut off certain suppliers.
mandlar 12y ago
I had a very similar issue. I signed up for AdMob and right before I was payed out they banned my account for "click fraud". This was a legitimate app, no tricks to try and get people to click the ads. I just displayed an ad banner at the bottom of the Android app. I ended up just rolling my own custom in-house ad system and just cross-promote my other apps. I make more money from selling pro versions of my apps anyways.
- watwut 12y ago
  Is that completely legal for them to do? I know nothing about ad business, but I would expect that if you provided service (shown ads) they should not be able to withhold your money without explanation. How is that different from refusing to pay for, say, rented car?
  - colechristensen 12y ago
    There are solid differences between renting cars and serving ads. In the end, it's would be a civil legal matter and probably not worth anybody's time for $100 coupled with the high chance of losing considering the terms of service agreed to.
    - ensignavenger 12y ago
      In my state (Missouri) Small Claims Court seems to work fairly well for these types of things. It does take a lot of time, so it probably isn't "worth" it in a purely monetary sense, but it is worth it to me in an ethical sense. It is fraud, pure and simple.
      - colechristensen 12y ago
        It isn't fraud. The legal requirements for such are subtle and numerous, but basically require knowledge and intent which are difficult to prove and unlikely in most or all of these scenarios. Google has to do it's best to serve it's customers on both sides, those who display ads and those who pay for advertisers. Cheating exists, the mechanisms to mitigate that cheating aren't perfect, and each side loses some as a result. To claim that their imperfect anti-cheating mechanism is fraudulent is quite a stretch, and you'll be hard pressed to find a advertising facilitator which provides better customer service for such small sums of money.
        justizin 12y ago
        "each side loses some as a result" Side 1: advertisers, budget: millions Side 2: small content providers, revenue: hundreds There's no way that's balanced.
AhtiK 12y ago
> "They just said that I was not going to have my money since it was going to be refunded to advertisers." Has anyone ever seen that their AdWords or any other Google-related ads spending got partially refunded? I wonder how's this feasible given the delay between the ad spending and account asset freeze. This can take years if the freeze validation occurs close to an actual payout. Is Google sending the amount back to my adwords-associated credit card or does it go as a budget for future ads? I find it hard to understand how this kind of refunding works full scale to make sure all the account freezes will distribute the spending back to the advertisers.
- Ryan_Jones 12y ago
  I work in an agency with several fortune 500 clients. Yes, I've seen ad spending refunds on several occurrences because of alleged fraud.
PaulHoule 12y ago
It's definitely true that accounts above some threshold ($1000?) get extra scrutiny, not just from a adsense perspective but also from an seo perspective. In the long term, Google would be happy to replace the open web with Android or Google+. In the short term if you compete with Google images or other Google properties it is open season.
- poopsintub 12y ago
  From what I've read, they do a manual review at certain times right when payout is due. I've seen bank transfers for months on a certain day or within a day or two. But when I had a jump in earnings, it took 3-4 days longer.
  - tomkarlo 12y ago
    That's a fairly common anti-fraud pattern for lots of systems: if a particular account's performance exceeds its long-term trend by a large amount (say 100% or more), it gets flagged for manual review. Once a payment goes out, it's not economic to retrieve it, so you want that extra review to happen before it's issued. Ideally this would cause a delay in the payout, but if an account doesn't break the threshold until just before the payment date, the review might cause a delay. This is common on ad platforms, credit card processors and even auction platforms like eBay. I would guess that it's a "standard practice" for risk mitigation.

by fara 12y ago

alandarev 12y ago

You are the product, sorry to hear your story. I think situation would be better if there was a competition.

beambot 12y ago
Wow, that's cliche (and wrong). Webhosts are not the product in this situation. This is a supplier-distributor relationship, where Google is the supplier (of ads) and you are the distributor (to end consumers).
- dfabulich 12y ago
  No, I think OP has it right. The paying customers are the advertisers. Websites supply "inventory" of impressions. (That's certainly what Google calls it in my Doubleclick dashboard.) Google is a distributor, and they sometimes decide to cut off certain suppliers.

mandlar 12y ago

I had a very similar issue. I signed up for AdMob and right before I was payed out they banned my account for "click fraud". This was a legitimate app, no tricks to try and get people to click the ads. I just displayed an ad banner at the bottom of the Android app. I ended up just rolling my own custom in-house ad system and just cross-promote my other apps. I make more money from selling pro versions of my apps anyways.

watwut 12y ago
Is that completely legal for them to do? I know nothing about ad business, but I would expect that if you provided service (shown ads) they should not be able to withhold your money without explanation. How is that different from refusing to pay for, say, rented car?
- colechristensen 12y ago
  There are solid differences between renting cars and serving ads. In the end, it's would be a civil legal matter and probably not worth anybody's time for $100 coupled with the high chance of losing considering the terms of service agreed to.
  - ensignavenger 12y ago
    In my state (Missouri) Small Claims Court seems to work fairly well for these types of things. It does take a lot of time, so it probably isn't "worth" it in a purely monetary sense, but it is worth it to me in an ethical sense. It is fraud, pure and simple.
    - colechristensen 12y ago
      It isn't fraud. The legal requirements for such are subtle and numerous, but basically require knowledge and intent which are difficult to prove and unlikely in most or all of these scenarios. Google has to do it's best to serve it's customers on both sides, those who display ads and those who pay for advertisers. Cheating exists, the mechanisms to mitigate that cheating aren't perfect, and each side loses some as a result. To claim that their imperfect anti-cheating mechanism is fraudulent is quite a stretch, and you'll be hard pressed to find a advertising facilitator which provides better customer service for such small sums of money.
      - justizin 12y ago
        "each side loses some as a result" Side 1: advertisers, budget: millions Side 2: small content providers, revenue: hundreds There's no way that's balanced.

AhtiK 12y ago

> "They just said that I was not going to have my money since it was going to be refunded to advertisers." Has anyone ever seen that their AdWords or any other Google-related ads spending got partially refunded? I wonder how's this feasible given the delay between the ad spending and account asset freeze. This can take years if the freeze validation occurs close to an actual payout. Is Google sending the amount back to my adwords-associated credit card or does it go as a budget for future ads? I find it hard to understand how this kind of refunding works full scale to make sure all the account freezes will distribute the spending back to the advertisers.

Ryan_Jones 12y ago
I work in an agency with several fortune 500 clients. Yes, I've seen ad spending refunds on several occurrences because of alleged fraud.

PaulHoule 12y ago

It's definitely true that accounts above some threshold ($1000?) get extra scrutiny, not just from a adsense perspective but also from an seo perspective. In the long term, Google would be happy to replace the open web with Android or Google+. In the short term if you compete with Google images or other Google properties it is open season.

poopsintub 12y ago
From what I've read, they do a manual review at certain times right when payout is due. I've seen bank transfers for months on a certain day or within a day or two. But when I had a jump in earnings, it took 3-4 days longer.
- tomkarlo 12y ago
  That's a fairly common anti-fraud pattern for lots of systems: if a particular account's performance exceeds its long-term trend by a large amount (say 100% or more), it gets flagged for manual review. Once a payment goes out, it's not economic to retrieve it, so you want that extra review to happen before it's issued. Ideally this would cause a delay in the payout, but if an account doesn't break the threshold until just before the payment date, the review might cause a delay. This is common on ad platforms, credit card processors and even auction platforms like eBay. I would guess that it's a "standard practice" for risk mitigation.