PubMarketplace PubTools

“PubMarketplace PubTools” are a series of small, easily configurable elements that can be used to feature PubMarketplace.com ads on blogs, websites and social networking pages. Users can easily build their own customized PubMarketplace PubTool in as little as one minute.

Basically another name for widget

Payment

adMarketplace will pay you within 45 days after the end of each month in which you served clicks by the payment method you selected in your pubMarketplace account

Minimums: $25 by check or $10 by PayPal

Screenshots (click to enlarge):

I can’t count how many posts I’ve read about peoples’ poor experiences with AdSense regarding their high minimums. Many a blogger can tell you that they’ve had $80 or $90 sitting in their account but may never see it because of recent market conditions’ effect on PPC and other advertising methods. There are also more than a handful of posts by similar folks that have had even worse experiences such as mine where the big G has essentially stolen large sums of money from hard working bloggers and others. I have high hopes for pubMarketplace, so much so that I’ve already applied and placed a nice little tag cloud ad box in my sidebar.

… And to make sure that somebody sees these ads it goes pretty far. For example, it opens the changelog webpage (full of ads of course) on every single update of the extension, even though the NoScript FAQ claim that it happens only on major updates (yes, if you dig into it you will find the preference to disable this behavior – but how many people do that?). And updates coming roughly each week ensure that this page is opened fairly often. A problem is of course that NoScript will usually disable scripting and consequently also most advertising. That problem is being worked around by putting NoScript’s domains, Google AdSense and a few others on NoScript’s default whitelist (again, the overwhelming majority of users won’t go hunting for bogus entries in their whitelist). Given that NoScript proudly calls itself a security extension this means putting users at risk — for example, a while ago I demonstrated how an XSS vulnerability on a NoScript domain can be used to run JavaScript from any website, despite NoScript. This was countered by implementing anti-XSS measures rather than removing anything unnecessary from the whitelist.

As a web guy with more than a few ads, I can fully understand where the NoScript guys are coming from. What I don’t understand is the lengths they are going to make money here. They aren’t paying for the extension download bandwidth, in fact the only costs they are incurring are from forcing the update page to load…. Basically, they are just being greedy here.

And it gets worse:

What followed was a small war — the website would add various tricks to prevent Adblock Plus with EasyList from blocking ads, EasyList kept adjusting filters. Then, a week ago a new NoScript version was released. A few days later I noticed first bug reports — apparently, Adblock Plus “glitches” were observed with this NoScript version, especially around NoScript’s domains (but not only those). When I investigated this issue I couldn’t believe my eyes. NoScript was extended by a piece of obfuscated (!) code to specifically target Adblock Plus and disable parts of its functionality. The issues caused by this manipulation were declared as “compatibility issues” in the NoScript forum, even now I still didn’t see any official admission of crippling Adblock Plus. Clearly, NoScript is moving from the gray area of adware into dark black area of scareware, making money at user’s expense at any cost.

NoScript released an update as I wrote this:

v 1.9.2.6
NoScript now automatically removes the controversial “NoScript Development Support Filterset” deployed with NoScript 1.9.2.3 and above on startup, permanently and with no questions asked.

Amazing what a few hundred Diggs will do for your cause, eh?

I am currently comparing the accuracy of Google Analytics against old fashioned log mining using an app called Splunk. I’m starting to get a little fanboyish about Splunk and I’ve even started using it to monitor logs on my own home boxes. Description:

With a variety of flexible input methods you can index logs, configurations, traps and alerts, messages, scripts, and code and performance data from all your applications, servers and network devices. Monitor file systems for scripts and configuration changes, capture archive files, find and tail live application logs, connect to network ports to receive syslog, SNMP and other network-based instrumentation.

The inherent problem with remote Javascript based tools like Google’s is that not everyone uses JS. With the advent of plugins such as NoScript for Firefox, I figured that there would be a considerable margin of error between the two methods. From what I’ve seen so far, I would estimate as much as 20% difference in overall hit numbers. Your results will vary of course. It’s all about your audience.

Though, I must say that these web based tools have their uses. For instance, the typical blogger will likely start their site on a shared host, which generally have either limited or disabled traffic analysis without forcing the customer to pay an additional fee *coughgodaddycough*

For my sites, Splunk gives me what I need most. I want a quick way to view errors, breach attempts, and traffic info. If I feel curious about geographic info, there’s even a Splunk Globe plugin that plots hits on a globe in near real time. As if that’s not enough, some intrepid devs made a replay plugin (screenshot above):

Splunk Replay is a Flash-based, data visualization tool which “replays” your Splunk’d logfile activities in an animated layout. You can click on the image below to see an early version of Replay running on anonymized event data from our internal wiki system.

Splunk

Splunk Globe

Splunk Replay

#splunk on efnet (Amazingly helpful, a breath of fresh air.)

I don’t represent Splunk in any way, they didn’t pay me a dime. Here is the real agenda:

We don’t know a thing about what JS tools like Google’s are doing with your data. They could be selling it to their advertising customers or anyone else for all we know. The point is, if you can do something better, locally, then do it.

Their canned “Content related” Disabled Account email:

Hello Me,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage
our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in
advance for your understanding and cooperation.

- Adsense

My response (I didn’t save it):

Dear Google,

(~2 pages of me whining)

Sincerely,

Me

Here’s their canned response to my appeal:

Thanks for providing us with additional information. However, after
thoroughly reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into
consideration, we’ve re-confirmed that your account poses a significant
risk to our advertisers. For this reason, we’re unable to reinstate your
account. Thank you for your understanding.

As a reminder, if you have any questions about your account or the actions
we’ve taken, please do not reply to this email.

This may not sound like a big deal, I mean it happens all the time right? My main issue is that they don’t want you to create multiple accounts for separate websites. They tell you to create channels for each site, then when you hit $200 or so, they go through each one with a white fucking glove. Then they don’t have the common courtesy to tell me why, or which content violated their TOS. I sent another letter back to them explaining that my sites contain 3rd party and user generated content, and that I work hard to keep it clean, but cannot always remove shit instantly.

Hello,

I recently received a response to my first appeal to get more information regarding the actions taken against my account. I would appreciate your feedback so that I may troubleshoot this issue. Due to the nature of dynamic/user generated content (IE: forum posts, comments, etc), my sites may temporarily contain content that is not suitable, though it is often removed within a matter of minutes or at least the first opportunity I have. I work very diligently to maintain a clean and friendly environment for my users, but as with any website offering user access and posting privileges, I often have to deal with negative users and content posted by them.
Again, I use one account to manage ads via channels for multiple sites and I require specific instances wherein damages were incurred. Instances should include dates, times, and links to the pages containing said damaging content. in order to narrow down the possible violation. This information may also be vital in determining whether or not my account was the victim of so called “Adsense bombing” by a disgruntled user or malicious person.
Also, according to your FAQ, “… publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed any further participation in AdSense. For this reason, these publishers may not open new accounts.” If you are unable to reinstate my account, can you confirm that I will be able to create a new account as this one was not disabled for invalid click activity?

Thank you for your time,
Me.

No response. I sent it again a few days ago. Today, I sent it to adsense-support-aff@google.com (ads for feeds, in desperation). Maybe their customer service sweatshop got hit by a typhoon… Or maybe they just don’t care about their users who generate ~$6 billion per year (though their payout is 85%).

So, I’ve been to a few other blogs and read about how their accounts were disabled for what ever reason (they seriously never tell you why, but most likely Scientology related). The story is always the same. Ads do well, Google’s “advertiser” doesn’t like your content (or they found “suspicious activity”), Goodbye money.

So, long story short. I don’t support Google in any way. If you are a publisher looking for an advertising system that lets the advertiser choose whether or not they like your content PRIOR to it appearing, I suggest Project Wonderful. These are the guys that Enturbulation turned to after PedoGoogle stole their candy and gave it to Tom Cruise.

Use Firefox (it costs Google money), install Scroogle SSL in your searchbar, and click every Adsense you see five thousand times. Once enough accounts start getting disabled, and enough high traffic sites go down, maybe they will start paying better attention to their users and revise their mafia policies. Or not, who cares.

Prior to putting AdSense ads on my site whoring myself out to AdSense for free, I removed a bunch of old posts that may have been deemed inappropriate. I’d just like to let you know that I have re-published all the old content. You can check em out in the archives!

Note, I am not affiliated with any of the companies/projects mentioned above, they didn’t pay me a dime. Google, however, may be asking themselves what the price of bad PR is. At what point do they lose more money by stealing from honest publishers than losing customers with their Scientological practices? Let’s help them find out.