Another Commandment of Control lesson...

**MJDeMarco** · Jan 31st, 2012, 11:02 AM

This was tweeted to me, thought I would share.

I can't imagine how frustrating this must be, especially if the expected income is paying to put food on the table.

ACME Updates - 30jan2012 Goodbye AdSense

**hackersmovie** · Jan 31st, 2012, 01:17 PM

The moral of the story is:

Google CONTROLS the internet. Search, advertising, advertisments, advertisers, just about everything. They now seem to be controlling individual search results based on social media (my opinion) interaction. If you plan on making money on the internet, be prepared to play Google's game and stay in their good graces. Otherwise, you just may find your adsense account revoked, you website bannished to the 'neverland' of websites and your individual search results skewed.

**Pinnacle** · Jan 31st, 2012, 01:35 PM

Another option is to simply sell directly to consumers (or businesses) and skip the ad-based revenue model altogether. Requires more skills, but the skills will be worth it and you retain control. Google is valuable enough to me that I'd be willing to pay to use it (Facebook, not so much). But the 4+ billion in expected FB revenue this year and the 28+ billion projected Google revenue this year are ad-based. The public is so accustomed to getting Internet-based services for free that web entrepreneurs are afraid to actually charge for something of value. This need not be so.

**JamesF** · Jan 31st, 2012, 01:35 PM

True. I think Google and internet searches (pretty much monopolized by Google) is a unique situation when it comes to control commandments. I think as long as you don't build off their APIs or try to build something 'on top' of Google per say, it should be okay. But at the end of the day, we will ALL need internet searches aka Google in some way, form, or fashion.

**CrysAk** · Jan 31st, 2012, 01:47 PM

I'm assuming there are other Ad agencies out there similar to Adsense, won't be too hard for the guy to find another surely?

This is a problem i may face in the early days of my website, however once i have a proven user base i hope to ditch adsense and in its place sell ad space directly to companies related to the target audience of my website. In fact i have a system in place to further target niche audiences within my user base

Will be a lot of work to get off the ground but hopefully will pay off in the long run

**Brander** · Jan 31st, 2012, 02:21 PM

The more data G has on you and your sites, the more it is likely they will play with you.

Have a look at the cpc rates for adwords. G has decided a few years ago by looking at their stats that only a few hundred of their advertisers are spending the vast majority of the money with them - i.e. they only need to target a very limited customer base with their adwords program. If 90% of their customers disappeared overnight and went some place else their revenues would not even register the drop.

Why would you think they would treat adsense any different. G wants brands that spend big money in adwords on brand awareness, not nickel and dime one-man-band operations that hard sell their visitors or put up auto blogs for the adsense revenue.

G has been into brands (social media is one of their signals of brand awareness) for years.

The question is - will you exploit or will you adjust, or both.

**dispin** · Feb 1st, 2012, 05:21 AM

Can someone explain this? Looks the site still uses adsense.

**healthstatus** · Feb 1st, 2012, 09:54 AM

I think this guys main problem was not having multiple ad networks on his site (his secondary problem is his site is ugly as hell). If you are on the Internet, you really don't have a level of total control, you are always dependent on ISP's, ad networks, payment processors. You just have to have backups for all of them.

**WalterBellhaven** · Feb 6th, 2012, 08:30 PM

According to another update - ACME Updates - 06feb2012 Welcome Back AdSense - after he posted about it on Google+, he got another review & reinstatement. Probably didn't hurt that he's a well-known programmer.