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Google’s Misleading Ad Restrictions: We've Got Your Back! (42)

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Hello fellow STMers!

As you are probably aware, Google is becoming stricter in terms of what kind of ads are considered misleading. Many webmasters are updating their compliance rules accordingly and publishers are using TrafficStars' proprietary flagging technology to make sure they stay compliant.

This means that your ads may not be getting traffic from publishers who have updated their compliance rules and there’s a lot of confusion about what is acceptable or not in terms of banner ads. To help you, we prepared a guide to help you understand why banners that were acceptable until now are suddenly getting flagged and not getting traffic.

>>> DOWNLOAD THE "MISLEADING ADS GUIDE" HERE <<<


As always, the TrafficStars team are happy to help you. If you have any doubts, feel free to contact us at support@trafficstars.com or reach out to your account manager.

We hope you find this guide helpful.

Cheers!

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Nice share!

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As an advertiser, I think these restrictions go a little too far. (Strictest I've seen out of all major sources)

Im just hoping CPM prices come down to equal out these restrictions.

Oh and Page 9 should be revised. You can't have a blinking chatbox banner but it's ok to "Jerk off with random teens" lol

I guess I'll run some tests and see how it goes.

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"Google’s Misleading Ad Restrictions: We've Got Your Back!"

Might I suggest a change of title to "Google’s Misleading Ad Restrictions FOR DATING: We've Got Your ASS covered!

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Hi jabong82!

We understand these rules may seem very strict and we can't speak for other sources. This is exclusively our interpretation of the new abusive ad rules enforced by Google and what will be guiding our Compliance team when reviewing campaigns on our network.

Regarding the banner on page 9, the idea behind it is:
If the action described on the banner can be expected to happen immediately after the click (such as "chat", "see pictures" or "e-meet"), and the landing page doesn't deliver this promise, some sort of disclaimer is required. This is why many of the reviewed banners now state a sentence such as "registration required".
Banners using a call to action such as "jerk off", which obviously doesn't require any registration from the user, are considered acceptable

We hope this makes it a bit clearer!

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Thanks for the input, tbranley

In our experience, the banners which were most affected by the change in compliance regulations are commonly used for the Dating vertical, which is why we focused on those examples in this guide. But that doesn't mean that these limitations don't affect banners in other verticals.

Cheers!

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I tested these new restrictions over the weekend and it has dropped CTR quite noticeably for me. I am currently paying about 20-30% more per click now.

With these new restrictions against dating advertisers, I dont see how I can continue to advertise there at this point.

Currently Im only spending about $10-15k/month with you guys, but I was looking to expand this number soon.

I understand about the fake instant messages etc., but not being able to use things like "View Photos" or "View Profiles" and not being able to be a little aggressive is tough.

Remember we are advertising on adult sites, it takes a lot to get the user's attention.

I also would consider myself very conservative in my banners/landers (never get rejected ever), so it's not like I'm running crazy stuff.

Just my opinion though, maybe others here can give you feedback as well.

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Prices should in practice drop to coincide with the decreased CTR, at least in the short to near term. That is until advertisers adapt and come up with better performing creatives.

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Yes I do expect to be the case, but these restrictions tend to impact Dating advertisers (like myself) disproportionately.

There are still people in other niches and also the lunatic brand advertisers, so I guess we just have to wait and see what happens.

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I am suggesting, partly tongue in cheek, that if you are going to give only specific examples in Dating, that you change your headline to be congruent with your content.....that in itself is also a lesson in how to succeed on GDN.

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I also think these regulations are way to strict, right now we are trying to relaunch our campaigns with Traffic Stars too, uploading new banners and testing what could fly.

Not sure why they took it this strict, when for example Trafficfactory didn't do this, and they tend to be quite strict too.

As I told my TS rep already, they can expect a significant loss in revenue over this.

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This should happen, but will take time. Branding advertisers are slower when it comes to such changes ... so they will keep the bids high for a while, which will make the traffic source feel like they were not hit that hard... the surprise will come later on. Unless, we will find a way to keep the CTRs and stay in par with the regulations.

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At this point unless they loosen restrictions I don't really see a way forward.

I've even tried to comply to these new regulations but my ads are still getting rejected.

There's no room to "sell" with these new regulations.

I don't mind them getting rid of things like fake messages, blinking ads, play/download buttons, phone calls etc. but I think they are overreaching in what you can put in your ad.

Pretty much unless your banner says "This is an ad for a dating site. Register here to join our community" you won't get through.

Disappointing because I do like working with Traffic Stars, but I think this is too much and I will probably have to take my advertising dollars elsewhere if they do not compromise here.

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It's too much for now for sure ... I'm trying a few banner formats now, some show promise ... so let's see how it plays out.

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Yeah Im going to try to upload some new banners too today and hopefully they don't get rejected.

I guess we'll see how it goes lol

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It's getting tougher with Google insane Policies, Publishers will find a way around it with time...

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I don't think there's gonna be an easy workaround. Chrome has a global marketshare of 58% and google is strong enough to force everybody in an adapt-or-die position.
Really looking forward to see how this is going to play out but I recommend all pubs/ad networks to comply with the new standards so your ads don't get blocked in Chrome.

Just wrote an article about this on my linkedin (too long to copy/paste it here so here's the link): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-...018-brughmans/

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Hi Matuloo,

Thank you for your comments! We have a lot of insight into what gets flagged by Google through our partner xhamster.com which has been verified as fully compliant and we can tell you we are no stricter than required by Google.

Regarding TrafficFactory - We don´t want to comment on what competitors do but they usually have a strict compliance policy and will need to enforce the exact same rules soon or change to other ad formats. We can only encourage advertisers to start working based on those guidelines since step-by-step most sites will have to comply with them.

We are aware that there will be some drops in spendings but we offer nice alternatives such as native ads, video pre-roll as well as postitial ads which will be announced soon.

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Your network, your rules of course. I understand you have to go by the rules to stay in the business, as much as I hate what google is doing here ...

Just one thing please, keep the rules the same for EVERYONE. I took this screen on xhamster like 20 seconds ago...



No mention of registration, CTA button that is against the rules etc ...

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Hi Matuloo,

Thanks for sharing this.

We are currently checking over 250k banners manually, which is something that obviously takes time. Our team of compliance experts are working tirelessly to ensure all banners are flagged appropriately.

We too are working to adapt to the changes in the marketplace like everyone else, so we completely understand everyone's frustrations.

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We do completely understand everyone's frustrations on this topic.

It's also important to remember that we're all essentially on the same side in this "war" against misleading ads. Ad blockers are becoming an increasing issue for all of us in the industry, with technology becoming more advanced, and user numbers downloading such technology increasing daily. Google is trying to stabilise this shift in the marketplace by accepting that there is mistrust causing users to download such software in order to create a fair, level playing field with clear guidelines on how we can all work towards regaining this trust, industry wide.

Furthermore, with Chrome having such a massive marketshare, Google are enforcing these standards to everyone. Whether we want to or not, advertisers and publishers both have to adapt (as well as ad networks), and until then there are going to be some fluctuations in performance, pricing and CTRs.

Our compliance regulations are based on our interpretations of Google's standards and will change as and when we learn more about how the new guidelines are being enforced. TrafficStars is in a very powerful position to do this, working closely alongside our partner, xHamster.com. For now, we want to continue offering banner and popunder traffic to our clients, so are providing the best way to do so.

Our focus is, and always has been on quality and although we understand the new changes are frustrating for some, we are working closely with our advertisers and publishers to make the transition to the new standards as easy and pain free as possible.

We're also offering 50% off Native Ad RON campaigns for 2 weeks to provide a little extra help for those trying to keep their margins as high as possible during this time.

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I understand that this is going to take quite a lot of time, as you said, this is a major pain in the ass for all of us

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Could anyone confirm if this update will affect the backbutton funnel too? Perhaps it won't? Thanks!

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Backbutton is trigerred on the LP, so it's not directly on the web properties of publishers, so it shouldnt be directly affected by this new rules. However, knowing the history of google regulations and how anal they can get at times ... it wouldn't surprise me all that much, if they started to require ad network to police their advertisers more... traffic networks will get stricter now, no questions about that, so they might touch backbuttons too, at least on their premium inventory.

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Google is really annoying with this stuff lately. I really would like to see Chrome going down in usage.... They are trying to monopolize everything and behave like they own the Internet. Ask yourself, what is next after this?

I suggest all these big pornsites create a consortium, gather best programmers and make a browser called Sexium, or Hornium lol..... When person comes to pornsite with Chrome, limit them to viewing only 5 pages per hour or something.... So, have them view the pornsite, but limit them... That way you annoy the horny person, which is what you want. For the best experience they should use Sexium browser, whcih they can download right away. This browser can be used for the best viewing experience of pornsite, PLUS you can use it for anything else really - just like Chrome!. Unfortunately this browser will not be able to display Google Adwords ads and Google Adsense ads on millions of sites.

Really, all thes pornsites are the highest trafficked sites on Internet, and they should fight back. I'm surprsied that something like this hasn't been done so far (creating a browser). I mean it's the same principle: Google created a search engine and millions of people used it. THEN, they put a box in top right corner saying "Download our own Chrome browser".... Why can't pornsites do the same thing?

My point is that the biggest pornsites should have an attitude: "They want war? We'll give them one!" ... and not just "yes master, I'll do as you say".

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Big pornsites care about one thing only : TRAFFIC. And guess where the traffic comes from ... google

Many years ago, when google was just a minor player, traffic was distributed evenly across thousands and thousands smaller sites. There was nothing like these mega tubes that we have today.

These mega tubes effectively killed the adult business by completely ignoring copyright laws, they forced MANY companies to go bankrupt, dozens of productions closed shop because of them ... as a result, the adult industry is only a fraction of what it used to be.

And guess how these megatubes gained the millions of visitors they have now? It happened when google started to use social signals to build their index upon. Time on site, pages per visit ... try to compete with a large tube with ripped full length movies ... it's not possible. Photo sites, blogs, fan sites ... these all lost their traffic to these mega tubes and eventually went out of business from the most part.

So, google made these tubes by pushing all the traffic to them. And they surely want to retain that traffic, because if they don't follow googles rules, google will send the traffic elsewhere and you can bet that some other adult sites will gladly adopt google rules, no matter how annoying they are. Without traffic, there is no ad revenue.

So no, no coalition or united resistance WON'T happen

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After initial testing I've been forced to cut my spending by about 70%. Many of the spots I used to run are no longer profitable due to the decrease in CTR.

I have not noticed any drop in CPM prices (at least in the geos I run) due to the crazy brand advertisers lol. I do run in the larger geos though on Traffic Stars, so I can't comment on the smaller ones.

I understand their concerns, but other major traffic sources and sites like Pornhub, Redtube, Youporn etc. have not adopted such strict restrictions, so I guess in the meantime I have to take my advertising dollars elsewhere.

Disappointing because again I did like working with TrafficStars, but these restrictions are driving CPCs too high for me at the moment. In an industry where profit margins are thin, I can't pay 20-30% more for traffic than I previously was.

Hopefully others are having better luck than me lol

/rant

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I'm facing some problems on TS too, some campaigns work though. We're in a period when no-one knows what the new rules will bring ... I expect things to calm down a bit in the near future.

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So, Feb 15th went by, and what is happening? Is anyone seeing any negative sides so far? At my end, its pretty much the same as before, lol.

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Networks got more strict, that's the only effect I'm seeing right now ... it's a bitch to get any good banner approved now.

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I am getting all banners approved, I am just following the guidelines...... Yeah, it sucks that now we have to let users know that they need to register to a dating site, but still, it can work out, with smaller fonts etc.....

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Yup, I'm doing the same ... but it's harder now to get a decent CTR. I hope the branding advertisers will notice soon and the bids will go down a bit.

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But what about the cvr - is it going down too or no?

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CVR with less misleading elements generally goes up, but so far for me, the loss in CTR was higher than the gain in CVR ... still working on finding the sweet spot

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Oh I thought the new Chrome with built-in Adblock would come on March 15th. So are we already affected? Don't know about the others but my profit has doubled since a few days ago!

No pops = More clicks on banners

I was already compliant, I just see more conversions now... But I still see banners with misleading elements on different sites.

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For some reason my pop traffic is a lot less then Yesterday on some campaigns.. Seeing differences of up to 70%, not sure what it is.

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We should start seeing the chrome effect on POPs by now, so far nobody really complained so I was wondering what's happening. Did you check bidding etc? 70% is a bit too much even for the chrome update effect.

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I am going through everything now, so far bidding doesn´t seem to be the issue.

I did go through my campaigns this morning and removed a few browsers and carriers but this shouldn´t have too much of an effect.

Will wait for 24hr stats so that I can compare them to Yesterday.

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Is this one source only or more, how many placements ... trying to see how much isolated of a problem this is or you're seeing it on a large scale?

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I was a bit too early to draw a conclusion as it seems traffic has picked up throughout the day and there was some sort of a delay with my reporting.

Will keep an eye on things and report back if I see any noticeable differences.

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Hi Kian!
Banners with misleading elements might still be served on some websites if they haven't updated their compliance preferences.
Glad to hear your conversions went up

@Eurosen and Matuloo
regarding popunder volumes, there hasn't been a huge drop – at least not on the TrafficStars inventory
but if you experience issues in any specific campaigns, please let us know!

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