All Adsense are now anti-SOPA

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3478593

by cloudwalking • 15 years ago

53 19 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've noticed that all of the Adsense I'm seeing are anti-SOPA, rather than ad content. For example, see TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/

cloudwalking2• 15 years ago

Here is a screenshot: http://reedmorse.com/tmp/sopa-adwords.png

aw3c22• 15 years ago

I have no idea what I am supposed to be looking at. What in that screenshot is the important bit?

sli• 15 years ago

Right side, under "Got a tip? Tell us."

ytadesse• 15 years ago

What's also intriguing about aw3c2's message is how his/her question clearly demonstrates how our brains have trained themselves to ignore banner ads.

I read TC every day and it took me a little bit before I realized that the huge banner ad at the top and the one on the right were a) there and b) anti-SOPA.

fpp• 15 years ago

Try cleaning your browser cache and Flash local storage - most likely you've been browsing a lot of anti-sopa content (not completely unrelated ;) - http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geoip.png )

The best anti-sopa ad I've seen this morning (12h ago) when following a link to Forbes and there was an overlay ad covering the whole browser window in dark gray (marked as Advertisement in the title but no further text, only gray) - either Forbes did this themselves or somebody is spending some money to get the message around to Average Joe.

MarkTraceur• 15 years ago

> Forbes

> Average Joe

???

cloudwalking2• 15 years ago

Not actually sure if this is true. I'm trying to find more websites that use Adwords, but I don't actually know who uses which ad platform...

TeMPOraL• 15 years ago

And suddenly I can't recall any site that actually uses AdWords from the top of my head, so that I could check if it's true :(. Any links to verify?

doobie• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure Google search results included ads at one point in time. It's been so long since AdBlock Plus came out I don't know if they still do.

chintan100• 15 years ago

I dont see the same ads on TechCrunch in India. My guess is Google is running an Adwords campaign in US to make people sign the petition. I have seen them run campaigns for chrome, gmail etc. before.

Edit: I do see the ads on www.Wired.com though.

dholowiski• 15 years ago

Same here - I'm in Canada. No anti-sopa ads on techrunch but they are on wired.

sbisker• 15 years ago

Click on any article on TechCrunch, and you'll see that they're not showing the anti-SOPA ads against actual content pages. I'm guessing that they're only doing this at the top level pages of these sites; possibly paying the sites for the space themselves.

joelrunyon• 15 years ago

Title should be changed to Adsense since it's only properties on the Google Display network.

Also, a very possible explanation could be that they're only showing those ads by targeting pages that show SOPA content. The display network is HUGE and it would be a big ticket purchase for Google to buy-out the entire network themselves (they still have to pay the sites). Are there any examples of this showing up on non-tech, non-sopa related sites? If so, please include them. If not, you're probably just seeing Google buy targeted ads around a subject (SOPA) and paying for them on their own network. Not unheard of, as they've done similar things with Chrome, etc

handzhiev• 15 years ago

Not true, visit any random site, preferably non-tech. Most Adsense ads are normal.

dangrossman• 15 years ago

They bought some ad space on tech blogs, that's all. I don't see SOPA-related ads from Google on any other sites.

tbod• 15 years ago

Could this be 'remarketing' http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html?

creativeone• 15 years ago

This is probably the right answer.

All Adsense are now anti-SOPA

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