Engadget Runs More Than 3 AdSense Ads Per Page

August 17, 2005 @ 11:10 pm · Filed under AdSense

There have been several reports (see AdRants and David Naylor) of Engadget having 5 or 6 AdSense ads per page. Engadget is a part of Weblogs, Inc. Network.

This is against the AdSense Policies, so there are three possibilities here.

  1. Weblogs is blatantly violating the policy
  2. Weblogs is a premium publisher and has negotiated the right to put more than 3 ads per page, or
  3. Weblogs is participating in some kind of beta test for Google

Jason Calacanis, who runs Weblogs Inc, has this to say:

I can not comment on this beyond on the statement below, but I can assure you that we are not breaking any rules with Google and we are in constant contact with the fine folks over at Google.

Very official statement from Jason: If you would like information on Google Adsense running on our sites please contact Google’s press or Adsense departments. I can assure you we are not violating any terms with them. I can not discuss the issue beyond on that.

Given this statement and the fact that Weblogs, Inc. is making around 1 million dollars a year from AdSense and has a lot to use, I highly doubt that they are violating their terms of agreement. It remains to be seen if this is something available only to premium publishers or a beta test. I hope its the latter.

Also see: ProBlogger

2 Comments

  1. Jon Henshaw Said,

    August 18, 2005 @ 12:16 pm

    Indeed, if they’re making about a million dollars a year from Adsense, I doubt Google cares in the least, and I’m sure they’re also behind it.

    Their ToS for all of us regular folks probably has more to do with maintaining some control over smaller publishers. There’s no way they can police thousands and thousands of small publisher sites.

    So, even though a good percentage of Adsense publishers would stay under control with their ad placements, many wouldn’t. It’s basically a case of the bad seeds dictating the policy. Meaning, because they’ve had some abuse, they have to be more controlling with their ToS, and as a result, everyone loses (except for the big players).

  2. Arun Said,

    August 20, 2005 @ 4:21 am

    Perhaps if anyone cared to read about the “Premium AdSense” program Google offers to large publilshers, This little spat wouldn’t have started in the first place.

    I think its more than fair to say that the Weblogs, Inc. network receives more than 20 million+ content page views a month.

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