Google Adsense discriminating against gay publishers
A notice to all our valued visitors:
PLU Blogs has been serving up useful articles for the GLBT community and acting as a link for the gay blogosphere for close to two years now. We hoped you have found our service useful, but a site like ours requires significant investment to keep operating, so you may have noticed we try and offset our costs by serving Google Advertisements on some of the pages.
Whilst the amounts we receive would never make us rich, they have been enough to cover our bandwidth and hosting costs, and the odd pack of crisps to munch on whilst we administer the site.
Over the last couple of months however, our current monthly revenue is less than a third of what it used to be - for no apparent reason. This has made it very hard to even cover hosting costs when our bandwidth comes up to hundreds of gigabytes and is steadily increasing every month.
Is Google discriminating against sites with gay content? Is there some homophobic middle manager pulling the strings? We're not sure. Some gay blogs who use Google Adsense have also found their revenue dwindling or even cut off. Some of these reputable sites include Scott-O-Rama, HomoMojo, UndiesDrawer, TreyCruz.com, GayTwoGether, and a lot more who are suffering silently.
We've read quite a few articles saying how good (and non-homophobic) the work environment at Google is, but we also wonder how accurate those claims are - considering what we're dealing with. We're not trying to make a profit here, we're simply trying to survive and give back something to the GLBT community. Someone, somewhere, obviously doesn't think that's fair.
After all, you don't have to look far to find Google ads on a straight blog with pictures of undressed women. Also, advertising by gay-themed businesses like RealJocks.com (Meet Fit Gay Men!) and GayDatingPortal is accepted by Google, yet publishers are being discriminated against. So it’s fine to take our money when we offer it?
This fight is not new, and we demand a satisfactory answer from Google. We would encourage you all to contact Google using the link below, and express your concern that they may be unfairly targeting gay blogs.
If you have an interest in supporting our fight, please feel free to reproduce this article for posting on your blog.
Yours sincerely, Louis (PLU Blogs Chief Editor)
Do a little evil, Google?
Another one of our editors also sent them the following letter - we'll let you all know how they reply:
Hi there,
I would like to know why my site (plublogs.com) is serving up Public Service Announcements (PSA's). It is not breaching any of your Terms of Service (TOS).
It serves as an information portal to the GLBT community, of which traffic-wise, it is fairly successful. However, the revenue from Adsense is poor, to say the least.
Also, over the previous month my income has halved from what it was a month earlier. This cannot be simply traffic related, as the income is less than half whilst the clicks and everything else is consistent.
I believe there is some manual modification to my account going on, perhaps by some homophobic employees.
I would hope it is not general practice within Google to discriminate.
I am also well aware of other blogs that have had their accounts 'tweaked' or cancelled, or the content deemed 'inappropriate' whilst heterosexual blogs continue to serve up much more inappropriate content, unhindered.
I look forward to your prompt reply.
Comments
Comment #1
(Posted by Trey Cruz) Rating
Any update to this?
Comment #2
(Posted by PLU Blogs) Rating
Here are the replies we got. Cut and pasted as far as we can tell.
Hi PLU Blogs,
We apologize for the delay in our response.
I noticed Google ads appearing on a few of your pages such as http://www.plublogs.com/articles/71/1/Online-Profiles-Read-Between-The-Lines/Page1.html.
Keep in mind, as stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with adult or mature content.
We currently do not run paid Google ads on web pages that are determined to contain potentially sensitive or mature content by our automatic contextual advertising system. On such pages, no ads or unpaid public service ads may appear.
We understand that not all pages automatically categorized as sensitive or mature will contain such content. At this time, we are unable to manually alter the page category in order to serve paid Google ads to these pages. However, please note that we are always working to improve our ad serving technology.
Our policy regarding adult/mature content may include any material that is not appropriate for all audiences. While this obviously includes full nudity or sexual activity, it may also include textually explicit sexual content, some treatments of topics such as sexual health and sex tips, and image or video content containing lewd or provocative poses, strategically covered nudity, see-through or sheer clothing, and close-ups of breasts, butts, or crotches.
While it's not a sure test, we sometimes suggest that publishers ask the following questions to determine if content is family safe: Would I be comfortable viewing this content in the same room with my mother or father? daughter or son? seven year old sister? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then it is likely that some advertisers would not be comfortable showing their ads on such content and we might consider it mature.
Therefore we ask that you only place Google ads on pages that comply with our program policies.
Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
Sean
The Google AdSense Team
To which we replied,
Hi Sean
You missed answering the bit about why my revenue for last month is less than half the previous month (and it's even worse this month so far), when impressions and clicks have increased.
Like I said, I think there is some manual 'adjustment' going on.
Also, from the pages that show ads on our site, I believe there are no pictures that are any more subjective than your 'Real Jocks' google picture ads that show up elsewhere - I assume that passes your quick test.
We don't show anything you couldn't already see at your local beach, anyway.
Another site that is showing google ads is fridae.com - again, there's nothing on our site you wouldn't find there.
Regarding the URL below, I don't see anything wrong with it.
And they replied with
It's not uncommon for earnings to fluctuate significantly over time. Since a number of factors influence earnings, it's difficult for me to pinpoint exactly why your earnings might have declined.
We constantly analyze the data in our network against several factors. If our data show that a click likely will not lead to a conversion for the advertiser (for example online sales, registering, a phone call, signup for a newsletter etc.), we'll reduce the price the advertiser pays for this click. This automatic system is constantly changing and is also impacted by the ad auction.
Our system takes into consideration factors such as what keywords and concepts triggered the ads, and also which ads that are shown. For example, a click on an ad for digital cameras on a page about photography can be worth less than if the same ad shows on a page where digital cameras are compared. Please note that the system is dynamic and can change with time. The goal of the system is to offer even more relevant ads with a better customer experience.
As for your second concern about the content of your site, I've gone ahead and escalated your issue to a policy specialist who can better assist you.
Thanks for your patience.
Sincerely,
Sean
So we replied, again
Hi again Sean
I understand that yes, over time pricing etc can alter, but it seems rather strange that one month we hit a hundred, then barely two months later we're scraping to get half that.
Making a whopping $1.20 a day if we're lucky - That's just pathetic.
Surely you're not telling me that's simply because your ad engine tweaked itself? Suddenly less than 1c a click?
I know in the adsense spiel you say that advertisers 'will pay the lowest price possible', but there is an expectation from the publishers' point of view that they'll at least get something that's not so.. insulting.
I also remembered that gaytwogether.com show google ads, and they even have photo galleries which seem to be more prominent than their news - they seem to be doing well off the google ads. (not to mention that Real Jock google photo ad too)
Whilst we're on the subject of the ad engine, how exactly does one of the current ads i'm seeing even remotely match our site? - "Ugly Betty Official Site"...
Thanks
Last reply.. still no joy.
Hi PLU Blogs,
We understand your frustration but there is nothing that I can find that is out of the ordinary. As you noted, your revenue will fluctuate over time. Please rest assured your account is not being manually adjusted. I suggest comparing your current reports to similar days in past weeks or seasons to help you identify any possible cyclical trends.
To provide some further clarification, AdSense is designed to maximize eCPM for our publishers, taking into account both the advertiser's cost-per-click (CPC) bid and the likelihood that the ad will be clicked. Some ads are attractive to a broad range of site visitors and will be
clicked on more frequently. While this can be great for your CTR, advertisers are often bidding less for these kinds of broadly targeted ads. Other ads are attractive only to a small niche of users. Advertisers will typically pay more for these tightly targeted ads, but those ads are
also less likely to get clicked.
In addition, if you see examples of pages which are not adult in nature and showing irrelevant ads please send a screenshot. You can find instructions for capturing one in our Help Center: http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=38066.
Your site may benefit from section targeting. Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you'd like us to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site's content. By providing us with your suggestions, you can assist us in improving your ad targeting. We recommend that only those familiar with HTML attempt to implement section targeting.
To implement section targeting, you'll need to add a set of special HTML comment tags to your code to mark the beginning and end of whichever section(s) you'd like to emphasize or ignore for ad targeting. The tags and instructions for adding them to your HTML code can be found at http://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23168 .
However, please understand we're not able to manually target your ads. Similarly, we're not able to guarantee that specific ads will be displayed on your pages.
To increase the effectiveness of Google ads on your site, I recommend experimenting with different ad formats and colors to find those that your users respond to best. In addition, the position of ads on your pages can increase the visibility and clickthrough rate of your ads. For more helpful optimization tips, I'd encourage you to visit https://www.google.com/adsense/tips .
If you haven't tried referrals or AdSense for search, you should consider tapping into this revenue source. Read more about these AdSense features: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?topic=8972
Finally, you can get more advice from other AdSense publishers at the AdSense Help Forum:
http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help?utm_source=txbd . AdSense publishers share their knowledge and experiences in this forum, where you can feel free to post your own questions and search or browse for answers.
I totally understand your frustration, and although I cannot judge your situation, I must say that I have had similar feelings of being discriminated in some way while I was paying myself to advertise my website on the internet with the google adwords system; I had to edit my little ad so many times because they were giving me all kind of reasons to not accept/publish it with the words I was using, i.e. the underlined title was simply the name of my website (which is mainly gay owned as I am myself featuring on it as the webmaster) and according to their rules I had to use big "penis" instead of cock or dick and could not even use the word "well-hung" etc... The trouble with that, is that I have seen many google ads online that were using all the adult vocabulary and were published ! the difference is that they were paid by straight website owners... and their response was at the end in the same way as they responded to you: "we are sorry, these other ads must have been accepted by mistake and we will take care of that, as we do everythng to satisfy our customers, bla bla, bla... in fact, these ads coming from larger and straight adult websites are today still running with the words I was never accepted to use; google won so far, because I stopped to want to pay for their unfair service.
