AdWords: No Tobacco but Pornography OK... why?

[tabsy]

I was wondering whether anyone had any information on why Google prohibits advertising of tobacco and tobacco related products yet allows ads for pornography?

I am trying to write a paper on Google about their Content Policy selection criteria but am struggling to come up with answers.

Thanks in anticipation.

[seobook]

well, if I had to guess, many people buy cigarettes onlline with intent of skipping out on taxes.

I do not think there is a specific porn tax though.

[AussieWebmaster]

So I am sure you know about this page:

https://adwords.google.com/select/contentpolicy.html

The reasons for the tobacco ban are not stated but I guess the search engine is like the laws that are spreading throughout the world banning smoking in public places... why risk a lawsuit down the line.

I am amzed noone has yet to try go for the advertising venues that pushed the smoking on an unsuspecting world.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

It is often very difficult to find any logical reason why Google reject certain products in AdWords. In Denmark we recently had a case in the media with a completely legal local company that sells bear online. Google won't accept ads for that. But they do accept ads for wine. Reason? Google never cared to reply in public! Result: Google was made a fool in public yet again.

[mcanerin]

why Google prohibits advertising of tobacco and tobacco related products yet allows ads for pornography?

It's because tobacco gives you cancer and porn only gives you hairy palms... :eek: ;)

Kidding aside, we talked about the wine vs beer issue a while ago: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2666 and still don't have an answer.

Ian

[NFFC]

I think it comes directly from the views of the company founders, I don't think there is an logic in it as such, its an emotional thing.

[dannysullivan]

Covered this a bit in an article for our paid SEW members:
http://searchenginewatch.com/_subscribers/articles/article.php/3411101

Indeed, it remains true that Google can largely choose to accept or deny whatever ads it wants. For example, gun and tobacco ads are out, but peddling porn in Google ads is OK. Some may not agree with these choices, but they remain Google's to make.

"We have the right to choose who we do business with," said Sandberg.

See also:
http://www.restoringamerica.org/archive/second/no_guns_at_google_porn_ok.html

When asked to qualify Google's policy of accepting porn ads but refusing those for guns and "vices," Krane fell back on the First Amendment.

"[The company] believes strongly in freedom of expression. Therefore, we offer broad access to all ranges of content across the Web without censoring our results," he said.

So short answer? Google thinks tobacco is a bad thing and doesn't want to make money off those pushing it. Otherwise, it would carry those ads. Same too for guns. But porn? Google's cool with earning money from porn. Plus, they probably make a heck of a lot more money off porn ads than gun or tobacco ads combined. Might make it harder for them to take a stance against porn, if they really did have a moral problem with it.

[randfish]

I think that despite Ian's joking, it really does come down to a question of morality and this is Google's way of showing theirs. It may not agree with typical American morality, where sex is taboo and evil but violence is promoted in every commercial endeavor possible, but it's still a logical form of morality.

I think we'd find it much more common in countries like Germany and Italy where guns and violence suffer harsh censorship, but nudity is regarded as more natural.

I, personally like the fact that they are taking a moral stance on this issue, even if it is by proxy. This isn't the place to say whether I agree or disagree with their politics, but it's refreshing to see a major company show some 'cajones' in our current political climate.

[David Wallace]

This is simply my own opinion and observation but I think sadly enough we live in a day and age where pornography is becoming more socially acceptable than smoking.

[AussieWebmaster]

This is simply my own opinion and observation but I think sadly enough we live in a day and age where pornography is becoming more socially acceptable than smoking.
Hey porn won't kill you!!! Maybe go blind but won't kill you.

[The Generator]

Generator sez:

I remember back in the day when they took the Marlboro Man in Times Square down. In the US, it's now illegal to advertise tobacco on billboards and on TV, hence we never see any stogie commercials. I guess that Google followed suit, though I'm not knowledgable on laws governing tobacco and the Internet.

[The Generator]

Hey porn won't kill you!!! Maybe go blind but won't kill you.


This is the quote of the day and will perhaps go down in Internet history as a classic.

[AussieWebmaster]

This is the quote of the day and will perhaps go down in Internet history as a classic.
I wouldn't go that far.....

[seobook]

I wouldn't go that far.....
yeah, usually your closing lines are much better. ABC :cool:

[sootledir]

So according to Google, porn is "good" for society and guns are "bad".

I tend to really doubt this is a morality issue with them. It seems more likely that their lawyers and accountants weighed the 2 business and made the decision.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

So according to Google, porn is "good" for society and guns are "bad".

I personally agree very much with that. So to me that would be perfectly moral.

[hardball]

I think you have to ban something just to avoid an amoral appearance, you can always point to it (bans) as a badge of morality, a conscience. It fools a lot of people.

[projectphp]

I don't think that is fair. There is a heck of a lot of ground between bad and good. If you have only to two categories in life, you are stuck with all the stuff that is neither. A quick example: if giving to charirity is good, and stealing is bad, what is reducing your tax via legal deductions? Good and bad are simple terms best left for children's fairy tales.

So my unjustifiable take: tabacco is unadulterated evil. Tabacco is addictive and a known killer. Pornography, while morally questionable, is not evil or bad in the absolute sense.

I think Google probably feel that promoting a product that gets its users addicted and then kills them is as close to evil as could be, breaking their do no evil policy. I don't think anyone thinks pornography is "good", but it certainly is not as indefensible as smoking.

Of course, the fact porn is worth a bazillion times more than tabacco probably doesn't hurt ;)

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Good and bad are simple terms best left for children's fairy tales.

Maybe I am still a child then :)
I think Nazi's a bad. I think child molesters and pedophiles are even worse (and one dosen't exclude the other) and I think dictators in general are really bad. I would not, personally, promote any of them. In my mind they are simply too bad to have anything to do with - or even worse, help them spread their ugly words. But thats just my childish mind, I guess ....

[projectphp]

I think your post proves otherise Mikkel.

I think Nazi's a bad. I think child molesters and pedophiles are even worse
See? A scale. Good and bad and two simple camps is for kid's fairy tales. The world is too complicated to ever reduce to two terms. Not everything is good or bad, and good and bad really don't do justice to all the ills in the world, nor all the good or neutral.

Having just two camps, good and evil, and putting things in only those two is what all fairy tales are absed on. Evil step sister. Wicked witch.

To carry such logic further and have porn and tobacco put into only good or evil categories is nigh impossible, and over simplistic.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

You are off course free to believe that child molesters, Nazis and dictators are not just bad. I think they are. If you can find any good in that please go ahead but don't expect me or many others to agree with you.

[projectphp]

You are off course free to believe that child molesters, Nazis and dictators are not just bad.
I think I will just chalk this up to a language misunderstanding. I don't remember ever saying either camp was anything, or, indeed, even thinking that. In fact, my position on Nazis or child molesters is, based on anything I have written here, unknown.

To clarrify, my argument is that, short of child molesters and Nazis, and the good of saints, are a bunch of things that are neither evil nor good, and that even in the two big camps of "evil" and "good", there are degrees.

The original question was why no AdWords for tobacco and guns, but a big yes to porn? Perhaps the fact I replied after you, Mikkel, due to the vagaries of time delays and wandering attention made my reply appear to be debating either your or hardball's answer. It wasn't meant to. My issue and original reply was to the summing up of this statement:
So according to Google, porn is "good" for society and guns are "bad".
I don't think that statement is valid because of the way it is phrased. While the "guns are bad" probably has some merit, the "Porn is good for society" is very broad way to sum up this issue, and way off base. It is very different to saying "porn is acceptable for Adults should they so choose to indulge in it", which is a far more valid understanding of Google's position.

I think that whenever lines are drawn in the sand, there are inconsistencies. So Google allow porn but not guns. Where is the line in what is and isn't acceptable? Why is a person 18 years old allowed to drink and buy alcohol in my country, but one of 17 years, 364 days, 23 hours and 13 minutes not allowed to? Do they suddenly grow up immensely in that next few minutes?

To say that it is "evil" for a person 1 minute younger than another to drink is just rediculous. To say it is "good for society" for the other to drink is equally silly.

So, back to the point of the thread, why porn and not guns? Simply because someone decided the line was right of porn, and left of guns. Not that one was "good for society" and another evil.

That said, what I really want to know is, what about a naked picture of a girl holding a gun and smoking? Can I advertise that on AdWords ;)

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

You where the one that simplyfied it with your statement: "Good and bad are simple terms best left for children's fairy tales." I don't agree to that and that was just my point. But lets leave it with that and get back to the tobacco vs porn issue.

As I said before, to me it's easy: Yes tobacco and guns are bad - porn is good. You may have a different view. I know the "official" USA have. And Google might have their own. But that dosn't change my view. If Google chose to follow my view on this so be it.

Within the limits of the law, this is all about what kind of media you want. If Google don't want guns and tobacco I for one can respect and understand that. They do send out a strong signal to the general market if they do so. I am just personally glad they picked to boycutt tobacco and guns - not erotics, sex and porn. After all, I personally believe we would have amuch better world (well, maybe even "good") if we had much less guns and more sex :D ... but thats just me ...

[AussieWebmaster]

If I had a choice of which of the two would kill me I would be chosing porn...

[projectphp]

So were else is the line?

Pepper spray, http://www.google.com/search?q=mace, BB guns http://www.google.com/search?q=air+gun are apparently seems to be Ok, but guns aren't. I wonder where the line is drawn.

Still don't see that "Good" and "bad" are good ways to decide much of anything, and I don't even understand what the words mean anymore!

[mcanerin]

I've noticed most issues with things like "good vs bad" "BH vs WH" etc often have the most controversy around definitions, rather than "true" meaning - if indeed such a thing can be described in English (or any human language).

Did you know that there is a culture that has no concept of "green"? What we may call green is simply a dark "yellow" to them. In most western cultures, it is assumed that when you look at something (even inanimate) it's "looking back" at, or facing, you. So if you look at a table to the north of you and someone said that the chair was "behind" the table, you would assume that it's on the far north side of the table. However, there are several cultures that assume that if you are looking towards an object, the object is looking in the same direction as you, and therefore you are looking at it's "back" not face. So to them the chair is "in front" of the table.

I also had several very interesting experiences in China during contract negotiations, where there is apparently no difference between "thousand" and "ten thousand" and "million" in the language. Imagine the results of that during a verbal handshake deal. Also, If you say "april" it will often be interpreted as "the 4th lunar month" which actually could be March, depending on the year.

And if you ever hear a Brit and American talk about a "billion" of something, there is a VERY good chance that they are not talking about the same number to each other - not even close...

The point is, a lot of disagreements and confusion in the world revolve around people defining things differently and not acknowledging the possiblity that someone elses definition may be different. Or acknowledging it's different but not acknowledging that they have a right to have a definition different from yours.

For example, what is "good"? There is a difference between the meaning of good in "the fight between good and evil" in a religious tome and "high definition TV is good" in a commercial and "different opinions are good" in a founding statement. Same word, different meanings.

In context, when you say "different opinions are good", you are not usually implying that someone agreeing with you must therefore be evil (I assume). It's not a binary usage. Same with HDTV not being the salvation of mankind and standard resolution being the tool of the devil. Though there may be some stereo heads that might agree with that...

Likewise, I think that fast food would be "bad" for me. When my son hides my daughters toys, I tell him that it's "bad". This is not the same "bad" that is being used in the context of Nazi's or terrorism or murder being bad. And different still from me saying I had a "bad" day, or that the service was "bad". Same word, different context.

Can "good" and "bad" be binary? Sure. Can they be a field of grey? Yup. How about marketing speak with no moral connections at all? Of course. To take the wrong "good" and then assume that "evil" is the opposite of it is totally missing the point.

As long as you are arguing about words instead of the intended meaning behind the words, you are truly arguing about NOTHING.

My opinion,

Ian

[mcanerin]

One additional thought, hopefully to get the thread back to Adwords rather than Nazis...

I remember reading a fantasy story once about a race of wise creatures that would never do anthing unless they could come up with at least 3 totally different reasons to do so.

That struck home later in my life when I worked for a large corporation that did a fair amount of charity work. Many people in the public assume that the charity work is done only for the purposes of publicity or possibly a tax write-off.

It turns out that it's not true, at least not totally. The corporate culture is such that the specific charity works were simply done, whenever the funds were available and there was an opportunity to do so. There was no "hee hee, now we get another tax write-off" thinking at all - it was simply done because it was the right thing to do.

I have absolutely NO doubt that the accountants looked for tax write-offs, and I'm sure the marketers considered publicity to be a good thing. But that's not the whole story. It was also done because senior members of the company beleived in the cause, and there was a corporate culture of "giving back to the community". The benifits of tax-write-offs and publicity were simply additional (good) reasons to do so.

There are many ways to get a tax write-off, and many ways to get publicity. And probably more effective ways, too.

The point is, that not just sometimes, but often, there is more than one reason for a decision to be made. Sometimes if you ask the CEO, CFO and VP Marketing why a decision was made, you will end up with 3 different answers. It doesn't mean that 2 of the answers are wrong and only one is "right".

In short, I think assuming that Adwords content decisions are *only* a financial or *only* a moral or *only* a legal issue is probably short-sighted and incomplete.

If there were a dozen people at the boardroom table when this was decided, there could well be a dozen different reasons for the decision. There may also have been dissenting votes and negative reasons that were carefully considered, but over-ruled by the other reasons. That doesn't mean that those negative reasons don't matter, or don't exist. Or won't show up in the future as people gain and lose responsibilities and positions within the company. A negative view by a junior member today may looked at differently tomorrow when that member is more senior.

Bottom line, I think that assuming that "Google thinks X is Good and Y is Bad" just from the resulting rule probably does not do justice to the decision-making process, or the opinions of those involved in it.

Ian

[Branoic]

Side-stepping the whole Good VS Bad debate currently raging, in answer to the OP, my understanding of Google's policies is that they are based on the moral views of the founders, and as others have said, these don't have to be totally logical. Most people's moral views, when scrutinised and examined, can be seen to be condratictory or inconsistent.

However, my guess about the Porn VS Tobacco thing is that it has something to do with the fact that porn is merely adult entertainment and smoking is a form of drug taking. Tens of thousands die the world over each year from smoking related illnesses, but the death toll from porn is effectively nil.

Somebody also mentioned wine VS beer earlier on. Wine has a more socially respectable image associated with it. Beer can have conotations of under-age drinkers, drunkeness and so on. Wine appears more civilised.

[AussieWebmaster]

I agree wine has a different image, and is also collectible etc.

[projectphp]

...and is also collectible etc.
I wondered that about antique guns, pistols, old rifles etc. I don't think anyone would put those in the same category as a a semi-automatic, and it is aimed a pretty different audience.