Banned AdSense Publisher Cries Foul After Receiving Encouragement From Google Reps

Business Insider has the story of an AdSense publisher who says Google owes him the $46,000 his account accrued before Google banned him from the advertising platform.

Stories of publishers claiming Google unceremoniously shut down their accounts and robbed them of ad revenue aren’t new. What’s interesting about this story is that Google’s sales team had contacted the publisher less than two weeks before his account was shut down to congratulate him on his revenue increases and offer further assistance. The publisher says he then spoke with an AdSense rep and was told his practices were fine.

Whether or not the publisher was at fault, this story underscores why it’s important to understand the disconnect between compliance teams and sales teams that exists at Google. As anyone who has tried to deal with policy issues can attest, Google account reps and policy teams don’t communicate all that well. This can be seen as a systemic or cultural problem that keeps advertisers and publishers in the dark about ways they can improve their compliance practices — or understand why apparent violations by competitors are allowed to persist.

There are good reasons why there is a wall between compliance and sales, of course. First, their objectives can be diametrically opposed as we heard from a voicemail left for an AdWords customer last year . Second, Google doesn’t disclose how it detects fraud and very often doesn’t share why publishers and advertisers accounts are banned in order to keep bad actors (of which there are many) from finding workarounds.

The lack of transparency and stories of bizarre situations like the one TechDirt found itself in recently lead to bad feelings and bad PR for Google. But, one lesson from this case is that encouragement from sales does not mean a publisher won’t be caught — fairly or unfairly — in compliance’s cross hairs, nor does it equal tacit approval of bad behavior.

Check out the full story at Business Insider.