$400K spent with Google Adwords, now Banned.

Yahoo, Bing, banner placements on related sites, Myspace, Facebook, others...
Some good info here:
Advertising Newspaper | Marketing News | Advertising Industry | Ad News | Advertising Trends

and here

ClickZ - News and expert advice for the digital marketer since 1997 - ClickZ

Why did you get banned might I ask?

They wont tell exactly why I was banned. Probably because of the latest change in the mmo regulations. I cant be sure but probably a fake google cheque in one of the offers I promoted.

Google and it's policies.... god I hate micro management with policies.
I asked Matt Cutts one time why Google always answered so briefly with no details except to say you screwed up.
He responded by saying that Google had policies it had to follow

I have had some success with Yahoo. You just have to deal in larger quantities with them, but that is made up for with cheaper placements.

If you're coughing out over $100K yearly you might benefit by getting some consulting by ClickZ or someone of that nature. I worked closely with them in my Gambling.com days when Google decided gambling was bad and they directed us correctly and developed us a massive opt in mailing list....though they were bit pricey.

PS: It's not that ClickZ knows more than others, but rather they have some good connections

wow. crazy

Thats nothing to Google. They like to play the secrecy game.

What you can do of course is form a new company and start over... but it's not like they wouldn't know about the same sites you are already promoting. You could register new domains with GoDaddy and use their registration proxy service. Then Google will not be able to verify site ownership.

But if you are using personal credit cards and not business cards it's not like they won't figure that out.

So you would need a whole new payment method as well.

I am not suggesting anything unethical, as it is not unethical to create a new business entity. This is how business works.

^^^ Listen to the dude above. He knows what he's talking about.

These days it seems like Google is after us all. (I guess giving them thousands is a crime now.)

Opening a new Adwords account is as easy as pie and I, personally, know several marketers with several Adwords accounts. (Google doesn't really care if you sign up again; they just like slapping ya around.)

PPV is a great source of traffic, although un targeted, it is cheap.

You may want to try Yahoo! while you still can also. (I don't think they'll ever become as "strict" as Adwords.)

Zach

P.S- Remember to always take anything said on this forum by any member with a grain of salt. Everything that's said is simply helpful advice and it should not be interpreted as something you "should do or have to do".

I had the same problem with my Google Adwords accounts. Got suspended because of the new "Google Money Tree" policy.

As far as I was concerned, the ads were ethical - all of them Clickbank products.

The crazy thing about it all was that there was no warning at all about the new policy... they just suspended my accounts.

When I spoke with them and found out why they suspended my accounts, I told them that I would be happy to remove the offending ads (only making up about 10% of my revenue) and never place them again.

They didn't care. They said that they wouldn't reverse their decision! Unbelievable!

Spent two years advertising with them and hundreds of thousands but they threw me away like a piece of rubbish.

Yes, I could open a new account under a different name with a different credit card if I really wanted to, but I don't. I don't want to do PPC business with them again.

Fortunately, I had already set up PPC accounts with Yahoo and Microsoft Adcenter and they are both working fine for me.

You could always go with their competitors and let them know it. The traffic can convert better... since most msn users are out-of-box pc users.

Or.. if you have a corp. just sign up again with a new name, ein, bank account, ect. I personally hate Google. They do more evil than we see.

Here's how Google treats their favorites.
You know how you are not supposed to have duplicate sites? Google policy and all....
Google buy video games
The first two sites should be EBGames and Gamestop. Both the same company.

Notice they are the exact same sites with the same content with different names? EBGames even says powered by Gamestop.
Tell me, how is that right? That is flat out blatant Google policy violations.
Yet they are everywhere like this.

Well I know someone that was banned from Adwords. If you were banned then you most likely did not follow their TOS at one point. The FTC is cracking down on Google so Google is cracking down on advertisers.

Also if you promoted a site with a Google trademark in it at one point, you were against Google TOS. Promoting sites like GoogleCash or AdsenseSecrets can get you banned. And since they are cracking down, they will ban you even if you promoted the site 5 years ago.

This is the reason why I don't use adwords and very careful dealing with adsense.. We are struggling to earn but sometimes it is turning into a big loss when situations like this one happens..

Nothing new in your post, its a old news.

alternatives,
1) New ad words account somehow.
2) Other Search engines they are behind google but catching up,
3) SEO traffic
3) Media buy
4) PPV
5) Offline advertising

Thanks for the tips guys. I am now trying Microsoft AdCenter and Tried opening a new adwords account. So far my adwords ads are not running and are "pending review". Adcenter ads are running but no conversions yet.

I'll keep you posted...

Good luck.

Try looking into PPV stuff too.

Zach