Once again, Google Adsense mistakes lingerie for "mature content" on Adland

We've been here before, last February Adland was banned from Google Adsense due to a seven year old post protesting the sexist Sloggi posters. The ad tradepress in Sweden, such as Dagens Media wrote about the strange ban. Strange considering the topic of Adland is advertising, and Google Adsense is essentially the largest advertising company in the world, quite willing to run racy banner ads when they get the chance but apparently unwilling to run them on a site that god forbid shows you the occasional underwear-set. Back then, Google changed their tune and un-banned Adland from Google Adsense despite the many bare bottoms in advertising by June. Now we're without adsense ads again, which ironically is the only reason I keep feedburner around. This time it's the news 4 years ago about the Lindex lingerie pitch, and probably the Helmut Newton image in the comments, that have turned an adnews & fine art discussion into what Google calls "mature content". Google are also as inconsistent as Paypal, as George Parker of AdScam points out there are advertising and other "newsy" websites out there serving adsense ads that pepper their posts with full-frontal nudity and risque images at any and all times. Yet they're not labeled "mature".

Hello, During a recent review of your account we found that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our program policies (https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-1pp-en).

-------------------------------------------------- EXAMPLE PAGE: https://adland.tv/content/ad-agency-sues-client-15-million-after-lost-pitch

Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites in your network. VIOLATION(S) FOUND: As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with adult or mature content. In addition to photos and videos which contain nudity or sexual activities, below are some other examples of unacceptable content: * Lewd or provocative images * Crude or indecent language, including adult stories * Sexual tips or advice * Sexual fetish sites (e.g. foot fetish content) * Adult toys or products * Ads or links to external sites containing adult content * Adult links and/or adult keywords within the meta data in the source code of your site.

As I told the nice person from Google Ireland who phoned us up after the last ban, Google adsense (and feedburner by extension as I only use it to adsense the RSS feed) is a lot more trouble than it's worth if they keep mistaking Adland for a mature content site. But what is worse is that their oversensitive trigger, the way it's written above, can quite easily be used to shut down discussions in certain health forums & young adult communities where "Sexual tips or advice" is often discussed - but not in a kinky fashion. Just like the lingerie in the ad depicted above is simply displayed to be sold, not displayed to arouse. I suggested to the person from Google Ireland who phones me that they should allow websites to label themselves "mature", for some of us advertising is porn, for others it's just a job. For most people however, it's the annoying billboard-blights on their landscape and apparently, I can't write a post complaining about Sloggi' ass-posters if I wish to defray the server-costs by using Adsense in my RSS feed. I can however write about Kim Kardashian's ass as much as I want. And on Google adsense, you may runs ads that look like this, holding the publishers at a much higher standard than advertisers. These Evony ads ran on Google Adsense.

Previously our little tiff with Google made headlines in Metro - "Called ads sexist, was chided for porn distrubution" and Dagens Media - "Ad blog banned by Google who accused it of spreading pornography".