Many Kossacks are buying lifetime subscriptions (or being given them) which will (amongst other benefits) hide the ads. I didn't buy one because it wasn't in my budget. Those ads are provided by Google Adsense/Adwords--- and until this month I enjoyed seeing them there. I had Google ad placements on my own website, TimothyHorrigan.com since 2004, and maybe I will have them in the future, hopefully the near future. (At the moment, they are not being displayed, for reasons which are not entirely clear.)
January is coming up soon, and that is the kickoff of Tax Season. Google reminds me a lot of the IRS. Like the Federal government, Google is a pervasive part of our society. (Google does its job much better than the feds do.) Like the IRS, Google is a powerful yet secretive organization, whose rules are obscure. Actually, most of Google's rules are totally secret, which makes sense given that there are tens or even hundreds of millions of small-time operators worldwide trying to game its system.
One of the their so-called help pages states this, just to show how secret their rules are (italics added):
Why was my account disabled? Can you tell me more about the invalid click activity you detected?
Because we have a need to protect our proprietary detection system, we're unable to provide our publishers with any information about their account activity, including any web pages, users, or third-party services that might have been involved.
Google treats invalid click activity very seriously, analyzing all clicks and impressions to determine whether they fit a pattern of use that might artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. If we determine that an AdSense account might pose a risk to our AdWords advertisers, we may disable that account to protect our advertisers' interests.
The current political debate centers around Big Corporation vs. Big Government, which ignore the fact that corporations are a form of government and government agencies are corporations. The distinction is especially nonexistent, when, as is the case with Google, the entity has a monopoly over vast areas of the internet. There are other search engines, but even those partner with Google. There really are no good alternatives to Google Adsense/Adwords. (The way Adsense/Adwords works on DailyKos or any other member site is basically: Kos gives Google a few square inches on each page, e.g., the "leaderboard" at the top of this page. Google leases the space to advertisers, choosing the ads through a variety of secret algorithms, and he and Kos split the proceeds. I live in NH, so right now most of the space is leased by Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.)
There is this conception that corporations are more democratic, more responsive and less impersonal than government, but this is not always the case. In the case of Google, it is virtually impossible to even contact the company. They cannot be telephoned or even emailed. Their dedicated staff is totally anonymous. There are a few web forms set up which usually (in my experience) have no result whatsoever, sometimes (rarely) elicit a human response, and all too often results in scary responses like this one:
Hello,
Thank you for your message. Our policy support team will not be able to
assist you through the channel you've used to contact us.
To contact us, please visit our Help Center:
https:/www.google.com...
You can also view information on our program policies:
https:/www.google.com...
Thanks for your understanding.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Even the IRS would give you a less frightening reply than that.
I don't want to complain too much about what happened to me and TimothyHorrigan.com, because it may be just a random glitch which will be resolved. I know, however, that lots of other web publishers have had similar problems which were never resolved. Basically, on December 16, I got a message warning me about adult content on some blog which I have never seen before and have nothing to do with. I tried as best I could to explain, and I even got what appeared to be a somewhat relevant response from a human being. I also made some changes to my own web site. Then on December 29, the ads abruptly stopped showing up on my web pages, with no explanation.
