Future of Adsense in Pakistan By Aamir Attaa · Tuesday, Oct 25, 2011
It’s dark, and you know it well – just in case if you aren’t aware of recent massacre by Google then the information for you is that Google has banned hundreds of Pakistani adsense accounts by giving odd reasons to each of them, majority of which didn’t make sense to a common man.
Like all businesses – at times Google plays unfair, and it’s fair on their part to save themselves and their stakeholders. Let me give you examples,I know of this Pakistani website which is displaying adsense ads and it should get banned by all definitions and terms of services, but it’s not banned. Reason: This website serves more than 100 million impressions a month.
I am sure this website in question would have a dedicated support engineer deputed to take care of the matters concerning to it.
On other hands, I know of this another website which recently got banned by adsense, just because the website was displaying ads below navigation bar. Which is weird because Google itself preaches publishers to place ads below navigation bar for high CTR.
Another ban reason for thousands of publishers, over the years, is fraud click. They ban the publisher for life, meaning that a publisher banned for fraud click can never participate in adsense for whole life.
I am just wondering, isn’t it possible for Google (a company that spends billions of dollars for research and development) to not to allow second click on adsense ads whenever it is done by same IP and/or same cookie?
Or can’t they cap clicks done in certain duration? For instance if I am given an option to not to allow more than one click from one IP in one week (even if it has multiple users on one network) – I would definitely go for it. I am sure many would opt for it – to avoid permanent ban.
I understand that there would be people asking their FnF including aunts and little cousins to click on their ads, sure go ahead and ban them. But what about those publishers who have been religiously following your TOS and one day someone from their competition comes in and starts click bombing their ads, assumingly from same IP?
Will you ban him/her? You sure will. I have seen such cases myself.
This is how exposed Google adsense is to exploiters.
So like any other business, adsense has loopholes, which can’t be filled. Google has purposefully kept these loopholes to keep itself secured.
Talking specifically about the recent mass-ban of Pakistani publishers – it was our fault too. Like we mentioned in our past post, we Pakistanis vigorously copied international blogs to setup websites. Then did hefty amount of SEO to bring in traffic and monetized it through adsense. Which isn’t legit in many ways.
So all those content lifters sank, not alone but drowned many legit publishers along with them.
Why Pakistan was Targeted?
Have you read my this article: Why Does a Pakistani Website Earn 32 Times Lesser than any American Counterpart?
If not – then please go ahead and read it to understand that Pakistani traffic is of not much value to advertisers.
To put it in simple words: Pakistanis can’t buy products online (due to lack of ecommerce infrastructure), the ads we see are for the free services or (product) information only. This equation translates into a situation where reader/website visitor won’t make money for advertiser.
For many this is fine, for others – this is just the loss of advertising budget, i.e. no return on investment at all.
Coupled with this if content is replicated over hundreds of websites, then why a network like adsense won’t target Pakistanis in particular? I hope you have the answer.
What’s next?
I know it’s ugly, but if Google was your primary source of revenue then you are done. You need to get over with it. You can’t convince Google that you are a legit blogger (even if you are) who puts plenty of effort for generating content. Google won’t listen to you – you need to believe this hard fact, they are least concerned.
I have spoken with some senior people at Google and they are not bothered with whatever perceptions we have got for Google.
There are chances that Google won’t even reply you, or if they do – it will be a pre-drafted email with meaningless and negative message.
So it’s better to re-plan your monetization policy, by either switching to other networks (just like Hamad explained here) or by giving up with it.
For many they deserved this – for others it’s bitter reality and hard luck, the unfortunate end that’s attached with online business models.
Can we Expect a Better Internet After This?
Considering that easy money is gone, all those content lifters will be go away with only legit bloggers left for quality content. This is somewhat better than it was before. Not that we are happy with the situation – but everything happens for good, that how I believe in Allah.
A Local CPM network
is what we need. We saw many local ad networks coming in with big claims, but no one could survive. I will discuss the reasons in a separate post – but to understand that survival of local digital industry, we must get a good CPM network up running in next 6-12 months. Or the local content that brag about will go down the drain.
