Unnatural attention to ads | AdSense Program Policies

JOHN: Hi, everyone. My name is John, and I lead our external outreach efforts, representing the Trust and Safety Team. My role is to help you, our publishers, better understand publisher restrictions and policies.

 And, importantly, I work with our internal teams to help them better understand the challenges you face. Today I'd like to talk about Google Publisher policy around implementing ads in a way that draws unnatural attention to ads. 

 Why do we have these publisher policies? We are always working to facilitate a healthy digital advertising ecosystem. Importantly, this means that we create policies and publisher restrictions considering the needs of users, advertisers, and publishers so that all can feel protected and have trust in the ecosystem.

 This works best when users click on ads from genuine interest on sites with great content. When publishers implement ads on a page where they draw unnatural attention to ads in hopes of making money, the users' clicks are not out of genuine interest in the ads.

 What do we consider implementations that violate our unnatural attention publisher policy? This could include flashy animations that draw a user's eye to ads, arrows or symbols pointing to ads, language inciting to click, emoji hands pointing at an ad, basically any attention given to an ad other than simply implementing in a way as outlined in our guidelines. Simply put, a user with genuine interest should choose to click on a relevant ad without any prompting to click. 

 Why is this important? We have these publisher policies in place in order to help ensure that users are not tricked by clicking on ads they did not intend to click on and advertisers don't waste money on clicks that weren't generated from genuine interest. 

 The health of our industry depends on trust. When publishers place ads on pages with the intention of deceiving users, it erodes trust. If we determine that publishers have pages designed to draw unnatural attention to ads, we can impose restrictions on the ability of the publisher to receive sources of advertising. 

 If your content is labeled with a Google Publisher policy violation, Google may block ads from appearing against your content or suspend or terminate your account. Therefore, it's important that publishers follow our posted Help Center policies, restrictions, and best practices. All of our policies and publish restrictions are designed and enforced to build trust in the digital advertising ecosystem. 

 The future of Google and our partners are linked, and we believe in fostering an environment where users, advertisers, and publishers can all thrive in a healthy digital advertising ecosystem. And by valuing each party, we help ensure the sustainability of our industry. We hope this video helps you to better understand our unnatural attention content restrictions. 

 You can find more videos explaining our policies and publisher restrictions within the playlist on our channel. Thank you.