Google Blogoscoped

Friday, April 6, 2007

MegaUpload’s AdSense Integration

MegaUpload.com is a file upload website. You can browse for a file on your directory and then get a screen like the following while you’re waiting for the file to transmit:

During upload, there’s a Google AdSense spot on the page, as well as a softly blinking note at the top. According to information Michel sent me, the English note reads “if you are interested in visiting one of the sponsored links during your upload, please ’right click’ on the advertisement to avoid interruption of your upload”. But let me translate the German note I’m getting (other languages, like Spanish, are similar):

Open the advertisement in a new window with a right-click of your mouse, or else the upload will be interrupted.

Interestingly enough, this sentence is slightly ambiguous – it can mean two things:

  1. a “call to action” to click the ad, with a warning that your upload will be canceled if you don’t.
  2. a simple warning that your upload will be interrupted (for technical reasons) if you decide to left-click the ad.

In the case of 1), we’re talking about click-fraud... it is not allowed per the Google AdSense policies to tell people to click your ads (because advertisers would be ripped off of their money). In the case of 2), everything looks harmless. Indeed it may well be that this ambiguity was introduced only due to an innocent translation error...

Advertisement

 
Blog  |  Forum     more >> Archive | Feed | Google's blogs | About
Advertisement

 

This site unofficially covers Google™ and more with some rights reserved. Join our forum!