
Ask HN: Google AdSense Still Bans Ajax. What are the Alternatives? - wikiburner
I looked into this many years ago, and Google had a beta going for running Adsense on ajax-loaded content.<p>The other day I was really surprised to learn that Google had actually killed this beta program a couple of years ago, and now it looks like they&#x27;ll never support ajax loaded content.<p>What good alternatives to Adsense are there for ajax-loaded content, or is there a way around this with Adsense that I&#x27;m not aware of?
======
onestone
There is actually pretty good support, but you have to use AdSense through
Google DFP - [https://www.google.com/dfp/](https://www.google.com/dfp/).
Things like creating ad slots dynamically / loading them later / refreshing
them dynamically work fine when you use GPT tags in DFP.

~~~
phoboslab
Afaik AdSense still explicitly prohibits refreshing through JS, but this
doesn't seem to apply when going through GPT. I'm not entirely sure what the
situation here is.

Case in point: I have an AJAX site where users spend about 18 minutes per
visit and refresh ads every two minutes. So far no complaints from Google.

~~~
relix
Interesting - is your site earning more than $1K a month? Just trying to gauge
if you're big enough to get in their (human) crosshairs for more specific
checks, or not.

------
hiphopyo
I prefer affiliate networks because they, unlike AdSense, give me the freedom
to design my own ads. Also there's this:

[http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-
discussi...](http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-
forum/606010-should-newbie-start-affiliate-marketing-adsense.html)

Who wants this eyesore on their websites anyway?

[http://adsense.blogspot.se/2014/05/a-new-look-for-text-
ads-o...](http://adsense.blogspot.se/2014/05/a-new-look-for-text-ads-on-
google.html)

I'm surprised the AdSense team is still toying around with amateur designs at
the expense of the whole AdSense programme. I've seen the past works of the
designers on the AdSense team and I'm not impressed. Plus it's quite naive to
think that one design will fit all websites. Why can't AdSense, like other ad
and affiliate networks, just open up an API so publishers themselves can be in
charge of how their ads look and behave?﻿

~~~
AJ007
Affiliate ads may work well for narrow topics, but you are not going to be
able to replicate the contextual ad earnings for larger sites. You have a lot
of management overhead, additional payment risk, advertiser legal risk, and so
on.

This is how Google is keeping their revenue moving up as desktop usage drops.
It is a combination of fucking around with the Adsense style (more clicks) and
advertisers (packaging tablet with desktop, now lumping in search with display
"select.")

Adsense ads might be ugly, so is display. Auto-playing video ads are even
worse. If your business model relies on advertising, either take it our build
your own ad platform (some companies have done quite well with this, like
Indeed and PlentyofFish.)

~~~
adventured
Affiliate networks (eg Commission Junction or LinkShare) solve pretty much all
of the problems you mentioned.

It's a large business now, and can cover broad and narrow topics. Major
affiliate networks can't compete with the scale of AdSense, but then no other
ad network can either.

------
PaulHoule
The world could really use a good competitor to Adsense, couldn't it? How
about some ad network that is based on contextual technology such as Facebook,
retargeting, etc.

~~~
vomitcuddle
(unfortunately) nobody cares about the desktop ad space anymore, "the future"
is mobile

~~~
yeukhon
Hmm... I don't see ads on my Gmail mobile client. I see ads on Facebook mobile
client or too small to notice (I do notice the "recommended posts" sometimes).
Free iPhone apps come with "ads". I personally don't see how mobile ads are so
effective as desktop.

~~~
Eridrus
People are saying the future of advertising is mobile, not because it presents
a good platform for showing ads, but because increasingly that is how people
are spending their time, so there is an expectation that advertising dollars
will follow.

------
radq
You can use BuySellAds units with Google Adsense as backfill.

For an example of this you can check out our Discourse instance:
[http://forums.hummingbird.me/](http://forums.hummingbird.me/) (ads may not
load on the initial pageview because of a timing bug I have not fixed yet, but
try clicking somewhere and back to the homepage).

This is the source code: [https://github.com/vikhyat/discourse-
bsa/blob/master/assets/...](https://github.com/vikhyat/discourse-
bsa/blob/master/assets/javascripts/ad_units.js) (Ember.js)

------
yanghan
It seems like you can give native advertising a try. I'm the cofounder of
[http://www.stackadapt.com](http://www.stackadapt.com) and you can load our ad
tag through ajax. You can also define ad formats using your site's HTML, so
the ads are completely native and responsive to your site.

~~~
luke-stanley
What do you think native means?

------
vkjv
AFAIK, your only option with Adsense is to implement a #! alternative
crawlable site.

------
chaddeshon
I run BromBone.com. We have several customers using it to make static versions
of their AJAX sites for Google Adsense purposes.

Email me at chad@brombone.com if you want to talk details.

------
ojr
An alternative way to make money online, is by removing ads and create a
subscription-based feature, Stripe has a nice developer platform

------
im3w1l
Maybe dynamically add iframes with ajax-content? Every iframe would be static,
and so could have adsense.

~~~
jacobkranz
I tried a year ago and they didn't allow ads in iframes

