Duncan Riley> The storm whipped up by comment spammer David Naylor (who I’d note is also making threats to sue the Blog Herald) over Weblogs Inc blogs running more than the standard 3 Adsense ads on various Weblogs Inc sites, which some have alleged is a breach of the Google TOS, can be explained quite easily: Calacanis has a private agreement with Google to display more ads. The agreement has a privacy clause that prevents Calacanis from speaking about it.
Well that’s my theory anyway.
But a number of questions are then raised if the theory is correct:
1. What does Calacanis get in return in the agreement (other than extra ad spots)?
2. Is it fair or just that Google discriminates in favour of one publisher over the many others who cumulatively contribute more to their bottom line?
3. Does Calacanis risk damaging his image by appearing to sign his right to speak about issues of interest to the public away for a quick buck?
Now, I’ve got a lot of time for Calacanis, and I write these words with a heavy heart, but I know Jason if your reading this, that if it was somebody else you’d expect similar questions to be asked as well.
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Sued by David Naylor? Do tell, Duncan!
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Andy,
I agree with you on this one, on one hand he’s demanding disclosure, where as on this one there is a deadly silence, which is why I think he’s signed a non-disclosure or privacy type clause that prevents him from speaking on it, because its pretty out of character for him.
On the suing side, nothing but a few glib comments about lawyers from Naylor in the comments of my Google-Naylor story. I think he thinks that scraping is different to content theft and I’ve some how hurt his feelings by suggesting that he’s a content thief. Perhaps I should have just left it at cretin :-)
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The bottom line is that in this business the interests of the provider (Google) are the same as the consumer (publishers). There’s always going to be a tacit conspiracy going on between them. The provider will only step in large scale when things get out of hand, so it’s in their interests to keep a lid on it. Talking to the publishers, even having private agreements, makes sense to them. You can be sure that the MO will be defined as that which gives maximum returns to both sides – with very wide margins of tolerance, especially for the big hitters. The little fry will carry the can to prove the provider is on the ball.
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The bottom line is that in this business the interests of the provider (Google) are the same as the consumer (publishers). There’s always going to be a tacit conspiracy going on between them. The provider will only step in large scale when things get out of hand, so it’s in their interests to keep a lid on it. Talking to the publishers, even having private agreements, makes sense to them. You can be sure that the MO will be defined as that which gives maximum returns to both sides – with very wide margins of tolerance, especially for the big hitters. The little fry will carry the can to prove the provider is on the ball.
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Google give many of their biggest publishers ‘premium publisher’ status – Jason is just one of many who get better deals like this. He’s just one of the few to be put under the spot light I suspect.
I don’t have a problem with it – in fact I can’t wait for the day when my networks are big enough to go premium – most Adsnese publishers see it as an incentive to grow what they do.
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What is the difference between a scraper and a content thief? One might say that Google is a scraper whereas copying and pasting content from someone elses site into your site without your permission is content theft
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Just like regular publishers in the Adsense program are not supposed to divulge details about most aspects of their arrangement with Google as per their TOS, I’m sure the premium publisher arrangement with them is similar and probably more strict.
Would anyone here sacrifice $1M a year in the name of transparency?
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Darren is right. It seems if your a premium publisher you can get all sorts of tweaks made on your behalf, including custom ad formats and running more than 3 ads. It’s been around for ages. I don’t even get why there is a stink about it, all the major ad players make special provisions for their biggest earners. Who wouldn’t?
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Is it just me?
It seems like bringing in 1 Million a year in AdSense over 100 blogs isn’t really doing all that well. Particularly if you’re paying 100 bloggers to write content. I’m not trying to be a naysayer at all…just asking an honest question.
$1,000,000 divided by 100 blogs, then divided by 12 months = $833/month per blog.
Not exactly stellar.
Am I missing something?
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Cary: Many of those 100 blogs represent a pretty small amount of the overall money. I think the bigger blogs are bringing in the bulk of that money. Also, AdSense is but one of the Weblogs, Inc. revenue streams.
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Perhaps if anyone cared to read about the “Premium AdSense” program Google offers to large publilshers, This little spat wouldn’t have started in the first place.
I think its more than fair to say that the Weblogs, Inc. network receives more than 20 million+ content page views a month.