Just Got Google Policy Change Email... No More Rebills?

Bevo Ryan

Bevo Ryan

Banned
May 31, 2009
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California
Just got this via email. I'm pretty sure this means shits about to hit the fan in the rebill game.


Dear AdWords Advertiser,

We’re writing to let you know about a change to Google's advertising policies that could affect your AdWords account.

Beginning in the coming weeks, we'll no longer accept ads that promote Unacceptable Business Practices. This includes, but is not limited to, negative option or unclear billing, the sale of normally free items or services, and false celebrity endorsements.

Our system identified your account as potentially affected by this policy change, specifically as it relates to negative option or unclear billing. Negative option billing specifically relates to sites that offer free trials, services, or other offers in conjunction with a subscription service. Sites in violation of this policy automatically enter users into a subscription if they do not cancel within the pre-determined trial period. In order to comply, these pages must contain an opt-in checkbox that contains the price and billing interval of the subscription service on the page where a user enters their billing information.

When we make this change any URLs in violation of this policy may be submitted for Landing Page Quality disabling. Once this has been completed you will have 10 days to make any necessary changes to your website in order to comply before the disabling will take effect. We ask that you make changes to your ads and/or website to comply, so that your campaigns can continue to run.

As a business, Google must make decisions regarding the advertising we accept. We've given much thought to our stance on this content, as well as the potential effect our policy decision could have on AdWords advertisers, and we apologize for any inconvenience it may cause you.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team
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Will this eventually trickle down into SERPs rank for organic pages pimping rebills? I'd hate to convert all my rebill LPs into legit CPS offers just so they will stay at the top of the SERPs.
 
netflix is a negative option. I wonder how consistent they will be.

edit: didn't see that its ok with an opt in box, nvm
 
To follow up - Not quite sure if they are saying they are not allowing rebills, rather - the offer being promoted must have the checkbox on the checkout page (which many have done for quite sometime now). Maybe this can clean up the shady offers and turn out to be a move for the better in the industry (maybe even no more slaps! :) )
 
Bevo Ryan said:
In order to comply, these pages must contain an opt-in checkbox that contains the price and billing interval of the subscription service on the page where a user enters their billing information.
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Did u read this sentence? These are the types of rebills they will allow from now on.
 
Yeah, but after you do that they still can fuck your account just for running rebill even if you comply with some policy
 
It may be a good thing in the way that it forces the free trial model to add transparency. It is a challenge to the advertiser, but Google said what they have to do in order to stay in the game.

Also it will be very interesting how the CPA world will react to this, which is largely driven by free trials. There is the option to ignore this and lose Google for advertising or to comply and live with possibly much lower conversion rates. Maybe we will see two types of landing pages in the future for each offer ...
 
It's the exact same policy that they rolled out for mobile subscriptions a while back. I was wondering what was taking them so long from moving that policy to all rebills.
 
Bevo Ryan said:
To follow up - Not quite sure if they are saying they are not allowing rebills, rather - the offer being promoted must have the checkbox on the checkout page (which many have done for quite sometime now). Maybe this can clean up the shady offers and turn out to be a move for the better in the industry (maybe even no more slaps! :) )
Click to expand...

Many have a checkbox that says "I agree to the terms and conditions" but not "I understand that I will be charged $xx.xx every month if I don't cancel after x days."

If advertisers add the latter, conversion and roi go down. Seems like there will always be some company to assume the risk of non compliance and the customer being unaware of the billing cycle unless banks and processors start checking up on things constantly.
 
Thumoney said:
I didn't follow that closely, how did mobile subscriptions adapt to it?
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I am not so aware as well, but you need to be clear that it NOT FREE and not even post free (unless right before it will be paid: ), and you must state price and billing cycle.
 
Hey, but....doesn't that mean they allow rebills ? If done in a way they want.

Cause...they may simply ban you or giving low score and ban after, etc.
 
hear ye, hear ye, google's against rebills, hear ye, hear ye.

dude, googles been cracking down on rebillers since the start of january, same applies for these mails that have been around for a few weeks now. just cloak them.
 
You can clearly see that this is a different level and I'm pretty sure that Google will follow through with this policy. You can probably try to play the hide-and-seek game with cloaking links on your landing page and so on, but that might get you banned rather sooner than later now. Also cloaking won't work if you direct link which seemed to be a solid option lately. Probably the best way is to go along with the policy!?
 
go along with the policy, lmao. dude, the most money is made by people who game the actual system.
 
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