See those ads on my site? Yeah–the ones from Google. Those are pretty unfair and yet we’re supposed to believe they are the key to surviving on the Internet as a content provider. The theory is that they’re just like TV commercials or print ads–advertisers pay you to advertise their products. Simple, right?

Wrong.

Google Ads (at least the ones on my website) pay webmasters per click.

How many TV advertisers pay TV networks based on viewers “clicking through” their TV commercials?

How many magazine or newspaper advertisers are paid based on how many people actually go to an advertiser’s website?

So, you get TV, newspapers and magazines getting paid big bucks just show ads.

But as a webmaster, I have to rely on the ability of a Google Ad to find it’s market in my audience. The thing is, I don’t want the ads to be obtrusive, so I go with text-only ads. Of course, it’s against the Terms of Service (ToS) to ask my site visitors to click on ads (even politely), so my only choice is be obnoxious to my audience by going with graphical ads or trust Google to do their job and display the best ads.

Not very fair since Google regularly misinterprets the words on this site. Back during the 2008 presidential election, I was slamming Bush and conservatives who would vote for him and what ads pop up on my site? Republican dating sites.

Well done, Google.

Now, to be honest, I don’t really pay attention to how many unique visitors I get per day. When I have checked I discovered it can range from a few hundred to a few thousand every day. Yet, do I get paid for every unique visitor who has a Google Ad downloaded to his or her browser? No.

Meanwhile, Google gets to traffic in my information, your information, and all the while they claim that their interest is in “not being evil.”

Sorry, G, but displaying your ads is a service I provide to you. Yet you only pay me when people click. You benefit no matter what because your logo is displayed to every visitor I get. Your clients benefit no matter what because their ads are displayed to my audience whether my audience clicks or not.

Does this seem fair to anyone?

So, claiming to not be evil and getting a service from people without paying for it?–that seems pretty evil to me.

Am I going to take the ads down? No way. I make a couple hundred bucks a year off of them and that’s a couple hundred bucks I wouldn’t get otherwise. But imagine how much I’d be making if I were paid based on how often an ad was displayed to a visitor…