

Is it ethically OK to take an advert out on a competitors website? - TomGullen

Our biggest main competitor runs a Google ad unit on their website.  It's possible for us to take out an advert on it which would probably be up for a little while before they blocked it.<p>Is this a dirty/back-door/unethical tactic?
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dholowiski
Your competitor has the capability of blocking you from buying ads on their
site (it's part of the adsense interface). If they're not, I would say fair
game. Honestly, if they're making money off of your ad they might not care!

It's a bit dirty, but I wouldn't call it unethical.

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ohashi
What's the difference between dirty and unethical out of curiosity?

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anujkk
I've seen ads of "Facebook Ads" in "Google Ads". I think there is nothing
wrong in it if your competitor don't care about it. If they care, they have
the option to remove it.

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tommccabe
If you had Google Ads on your own website, do you think that your competitor
would hesitate to buy keywords and try to take your business away? Probably
not. It's fair game.

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adrianwaj
You could always ask or warn them in advance, that'd be the polite thing to do
- it's what I'd do.

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lukevdp
Yes it's fine. Adsense is contextual, they know competitor ads will be running
in their ad unit.

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SamReidHughes
If you're a human and apparently incapable of answering this question, what
makes you think we are?

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pavel_lishin
Why ask any questions at all, then?

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SamReidHughes
Because most questions are not about whether something is morally acceptable.
You shouldn't have to ask the question "Is it morally wrong to do X?", you
should know, based on your own sense of things. Unless you're a utilitarian
and it's hard to calculate the side effects of doing X, but that's not the
case here.

So I believe the OP is being disingenuous with this question. One way this
thread could possibly affect the OP's behavior is by getting him to do
something he himself deems unethical. I have no wish to help that. The other
way is that he could behave in a way more restricted than his ethical
boundaries would allow, and he wants to know exactly how far he can go without
crossing the line. If that's his tack, I have no wish to give information
helping him there, I'd rather force simulators of scruples to have to play it
extra safe. Or maybe two people are in a disagreement and they decided to
resolve things by posting a thread here. In which case I'd say going by
majority decision is a poor way to resolve ethical problems. People should
have their own sense of ethics.

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antinome
By "your own sense of things" do you mean how you innately feel about it?

Speaking for myself: I have a strong innate moral sense that kicks in
automatically to make me feel good or bad about certain actions. So, my brain
puts in some effort and constructs a model of how to act in order to maximize
the good and minimize the bad feelings.

Like most (all?) models, this model can be generalized -- applied to inputs
other than those that informed its construction. The strange thing is, once my
brain has made such a model, I will then feel bad about doing anything that it
says I should feel bad about -- even if I wouldn't have cared before I made
the model.

Sometimes I feel conflicted -- this is either because it is unclear how to
apply my model to a situation or because my innate moral sense pops up and
contradicts my model. The only thing to do then (if I am to avoid the path of
ignoring and trying not to think about it) is to refine my model to account
for the new situation or new innate "moral data".

This can require some serious thinking. Sometimes it helps to consult with
other people who have already done some thinking along similar lines. It is
like when physicists consult with each other because they are not sure how to
apply their model in a particular situation, or because an experiment
contradicts their model.

