How Google’s AdSense turned me into a supporter of Prop. 8
I don’t mind saying that on this election day, I find myself worried more about the outcome of the voting for Proposition 8 than the national election. As most folks know, Prop. 8 would ban gay marriage in California. It appears to have a good shot of winning, which I find to be horribly depressing.
My despair of that is compounded by the fact that I absolutely detest the whole system of proposition voting in this state. It’s a waste of money, and way too confusing for the average folks. Not because they are dumb, but simply because the issues are too complex and most of us don’t really have the time to research them deeply to make informed choices. Instead, we’re subjected to misleading ads and have to hope for the best.
So, all that said, I was even more outraged on Monday when I discovered that I had become a proponent of Prop. 8 against my will. How? On a project I run called The Next Newsroom Project, there is a box on the right for Google’s AdSense. On Monday, supporters of Yes on Prop. 8 apparently dumped massive amounts of money into buying ads through AdSense Google’s AdWords, and as a result, virtually took over the whole network for a day. Things have returned to normal today.
The result was that all day, anyone visiting my site saw a big “Yes on Prop. 8″ ad. And it wasn’t just me. Across the Internet, folks using AdSense experienced the same thing.
There are a number of ironies here. But as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, who also was hit with the ads, points out:
“Google CEO Eric Schmidt was one of the many Silicon Valley leaders to add his name to the NoOnProp8 advertisement that ran in the San Jose Mercury News a couple of days ago.”
Also, the Google boys made hefty contributions:
“Google co-founder and president Sergey Brin this week donated $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign, while co-founder Larry Page added a $40,000 donation, a Mercury News analysis of state campaign finance records show.”
It will be almost impossible to know for sure, but Google no doubt made a nice chunk of change from the big pro-Prop. 8 ad buy. It doesn’t appear to violate any Google policies. But it sure would be nice, given the support by Google’s leadership for No on Prop. 8 campaign, if they would disclose how much they made from the ads, and find a way to donate that money to a human rights cause.
Meanwhile, I’ve got my fingers crossed that wisdom will prevail today and that Prop. 8 will land on the trash heap.
Update: Commenter “Chris” below makes a correct distinction. I run AdSense on the site. But folks run ads on Google’s AdWords service. So Yes on Prop. 8 folks bought ads on AdWords.
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I have a blog where I write about gay issues and my latest posts were in favor of all voting NO on prop 8. The google adsense did piss me off because I was not a supporter of this at all and neither are my readers. I think that google had no choice money wise but to allow this to happen, but if I had known, I would have suppended the google ads for the day.
Amen. The ads also appeared on my fashion site. Obviously, the peeps behind Prop 8 figured out a way to hijack AdSense keywords. And, because Google doesn’t have safeguards in place to prevent this sort of thing, I’ve turned off my AdSense for good.
Actually you’re partly wrong. Customers don’t buy ad space through AdSense, they buy it through AdWords. As a customer of AdSense, you, the blog owner, are showing sponsored blocks that were purchased through Google AdWords. So really you can thank AdWords for providing the service, not AdSense.
By the way, I’ve shut off all of my AdSense banners on my site (which COMPLETELY unrelated to anything gay marriage or California, though they still made it on there somehow) until tomorrow. I urge others to do the same.
Thanks all for the comments and for sharing your stories here. And @Chris, thanks for the catch. You’re absolutely right about AdWords vs. AdSense. And I updated the post above to reflect that.
Ya, just go into your adsense and ban those ads, its not that hard.
Google is a business and can make its own choices, but they are a business first and foremost that must answer to their employees (who probably share a variety of opinions) and most importantly to their shareholders (who probably share a wider variety of opinions). It’s great that the management at least have taken personal stands and have donated not insignificant funds to back their words.
I rarely post, but I wanted to say thanks for sharing this information. Understanding the net better and better.
Dear Friends. What site pays more than Google AdSense or close to it?
I have Google Ad Sense Ads on my webpage but I do earn any money. Any suggestions how to make readers click on my Google AdSense Ads?..