10 days ago there were lots of rumors flying around about toolbar based social network StumbleUpon getting acquired by eBay. On the same day Google released their own version of StumbleUpon with their Google Dice feature (Searching Without a Query). Many people looked at this as a way for Google to rain on the StumbleUpon parade and also possibly usurp them at their own game. So you can imagine my surprise today when it came to light that StumbleUpon was running Google ads on their user pages. Here is a screenshot that a user grabbed:
I’m not sure if this has been going on for awhile but its the first time I have ever seen it. The ads only appear if you aren’t logged into your StumbleUpon account. The other interesting note is that it simply says “Ads by” not the typical “Ads by Google”.
It says “Ads by” because they’re cutting the Adsense block off (most likely against the ToS). It’s a 728×90 pixel block, but look how large it is in the layout: http://johannesmueller.com/temp/2007-04/stumble-over-adsense.jpg
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=48182 says:
“Elements on a page must not obscure any portion of the ads.”
Oops.
Stumble will eventually put a lot of pressure on Google