Admob stealing money from publishers??

Hello,

A few days ago, I commented in another post, that Ive been trying to contact AdMob support since a month because they haven’t paid me the complete revenue for earnings of the corresponding month (the payment is lower than the revenue specified in the reporting for that month).

Finally, today they responded to my “ticket”. This is what they say:

[i]Hello,

Please understand that pending earnings, which are used in your reports, typically reflect close estimates of your recent account activity. These estimates are intended to give you a rough idea of your recent account activity as soon as possible, but do not necessarily reflect the amount you will be paid.

Finalized earnings, shown on your Payments pages, are accurate earnings amounts that include all revenue you will be paid for valid clicks. Once our records are processed and verified at the end of each payment cycle, finalized earnings are paid out.

Since you’re seeing a significant difference between your reporting estimates and your finalized earnings, it’s possible that your account has been receiving a high percentage of invalid clicks. If you believe this is the case, please visit our Help Center topic regarding invalid clicks for more information: http://support.google.com/admob/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1307237 .[/i]

Since January (corresponding to november earnings) they haven’t paid me a total of $1276.83, because they consider that money was made with “invalid clicks”. Their definitions for invalid click is this:

[i]Invalid clicks and impressions

Publishers may not click their own ads or use any means to inflate impressions and/or clicks artificially, including manual methods.[/i]

And I am pretty sure, that’s not my case. Definitely I’m sure I did not click my own ads 50000 times just to make that money. And if I did, I would probably be banned from AdMob long time ago.

What could I do from here?

Please, forgive my english :frowning:

I have a bad experiences with admob last year.They never paid me for 4,500 USD and baned me.
They claim I have a invalid clicks or activities.I’m asked for reason in support pages.
They reply me 3 months later to confirm they’r not unbaned.So late.
Now i was changed ads to another company for 5-6 months ago.
A lot of happier.Someone told me Admob is good cpm. but big problem is one day They’ll banned you without reason.

Please forgive my English too.

admob is not banning everyone for no reason. and they also do not steal any money … because it is THEIR money.

If an ad is clicked 5 times in a row - than that are surely invalid clicks. If that happens very often, than it’s surely a fraud against their ToS in some way.

Maybe (not sure) if anyone accidentally clicks the banner but was instantly leaving the site - that could(!) also be counted as an invalid click.

admob just cares about their service quality concerning ADVERTISERS - they are paying money, without advertisers noone of you would get a single buck, so they have some sort of right to get the best service possible.

admob also states that they will correct actual numbers for each month it’s hard to detect fraud just in time.

Look at leadbolt (appwall) - you also get not paid for every click.

Does anyone know if they correct also the stat? Or only the earnings in payment screen?

I’ve heard of a lot of people with AdSense accounts getting “randomly” banned - probably the same thing would apply with AdMob, as they’re both properties of Google. The thing is, Google has a lot of advertisers, and a lot of people running their ads, so they can’t afford to individually follow up every case. They’d have automated algorithms with detect repeated click fraud, and take action.

It could be you’ve been the target of an organised campaign designed to ban your account. But it’s also possible that the system was just working as designed, and a high level of repeated clicks in your app(s) resulted in these deductions.

As reiti says, LeadBolt (and probably every advertiser out there) do a similar thing. I panicked a little bit the first time I saw the LeadBolt stats showing how much money was being deducted from my earnings. But you just have to get used to it. Click fraud is a big problem with any online advertising solution, and Android isn’t an exception. There will always be deductions for fraud, and it’s usually not your fault.

If AdMob have banned you, and you can’t get a response from Google, I recommend using another advertising network. There are quite a few good ones out there, all with a smaller user base so they should be able to respond to your queries directly.

I just got the payment notification from admob for february.

Indeed, the payment was a very little bit less than what my stats are showing for the feb period. I am not sure if admob payment is truely from 01.02.2012 - 29.02.2012 but it seems so and also there is some sort of “correction”. But for me I don’t care, it’s just some dollars I don’t cry for :slight_smile:

So it seems, that my clicks are very valid.

The notification said ( Payment for $223 by Paypal on 2012-04-02, complete)
and i have $295 in my account for february month so why admob deduct $72 from my payment ?

false clicks gets filtered out - don’t know how they are determined exactly, but there are some easy to check things like 5 clicks in short time … which are clearly false clicks (for example)

Just another question: Are you an US resident or did you get any W-9/W-8 form request - have you entered your tax id?

I ask this because many US Companies have to withhold federal tax as long as you haven’t stated that you are not an US resident (with W-8).

So maybe this COULD be a reason - I know that from some other companies (I think amazon will withhold that too)

I have another big deduction this month too. It seems that the correction is normal for everyone, some more than others. But this deduction or correction is new, last year I never got any correction.

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