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Google: Correct Disruptions Quickly To Drive Success

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Don't alter text ad formats improperly in any way that violates the terms and conditions of Google's AdSense program. That's the message Google sent Friday in a clarification to publishers about what they can and cannot do with iframe coding in Web pages.  

The clarification posted in a blog after company employees noticed that the misplacement of some coding in iframes directs marketers to program policies reserving the right to disable ad serving to sites and/or accounts that fail to comply. To best adhere to Google policies and experience better targeting results, the company recommends pasting the ad code directly into the source of your Web page HTML.

Google's Cecelia Choi, on the AdSense Policy team, explains iframes as an HTML tag used in Web design that allows a page, picture, or graphic to display in a frame within another page. Google's policies have always disallowed the misuse of iframes, and the clarification of language explicitly prohibits the misuse or manipulation of standard behavior, targeting and delivery of ads.

Tweaking Google's conditions for the AdSense program can harm the efficiency of the ads. For example, misuse of iframes can lead to double ad serving. Improper iframe use also can lead to accidental clicks if hidden in ads placed at locations that consumers frequently click. It's not only the use of iframes, but also continuous attention to malware and malicious code leaking into Android applications.

Google acted quickly to remove 10 apps from the Android Market last week after Xuxian Jiang, assistant professor in the department of computer science, North Carolina State University, found the malicious code embedded into apps. This type of close scrutiny has enabled Google to generate a compounded average growth rate of about 29%, driving up revenue to $29 billion last year -- mostly from free tools, advertising clicks and the number of times ads appear on the Google Network. But with success comes failure.

Failure, however, quickly gets corrected, as once explained to me by Avinash Kaushik, co-founder of Market Motive and the Analytics Evangelist for Google. The Web allows for the quick correction. Apparently that's the secret to growth, even amidst a $500 million charge from a Department of Justice investigation, as well as higher operating costs that were a result of the recent 10% increase in companywide salaries.

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