Google's ads pick up on keywords in NonSociety, a collection of egoblogs maintained by Allison and two friends, vapid handbag designer Mary Rambin and insecure Silicon Valley heiress Meghan Asha Parikh. The search engine's ad-placing algorithms are mercilessly insightful. The current selection:

Davos, debt, and digestion. Pretty much sums up the threesome, doesn't it?

The other day, Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson opined about Google on the Charlie Rose Show:

But one of the — Google — I mean, the harsh way of just defining it, Google devalues everything it touches. Google is great for Google, but it's terrible for content providers, because it divides that content quantitatively rather than qualitatively. And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content.

As much as we hate to disagree with Thomson, we think Google has made an excellent qualitative judgment on NonSociety.

I haven't heard of any cases of the opposite happening, but I wouldn't be shocked if some socially conservative bloggers were similarly offended by no-on-8 ads placed on their blog by Google. Which returns me to my original question about these ads: If Google's algorithms are so good at placing ads, why aren't they able to gather whether a blog's audience generally supports or opposes gay marriage, and target ads where they'll do the most good?

(Screenshot by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid)

Surely not Yahoo. Microsoft and AOL don't even play in the AdSense market; of Google's rivals, most have large pageview minimums which smaller publishers won't meet. Perhaps Scott is worried that small Web publishers will simply throw in the towel? Her memo:

Dear Publisher,
We understand that the recent economic turmoil has created a lot of uncertainty in the lives of AdSense publishers. During these difficult times, we're continuing to invest in innovations that improve publisher monetization and advertiser value in the content network.

We're focusing on further developing our product offerings and boosting ad performance for publishers. We recently announced advancements in AdSense for search and experiments to make ads more effective. We're bringing DoubleClick technologies to AdSense publishers, and we'll continue to launch new products and features. We're also continuing to improve our offerings for AdWords advertisers, making it easier for them to target the Google content network. Features for advertisers, such as the new display ad builder, are designed to improve ad performance on AdSense publisher sites.

We'll keep driving technological progress, but our best asset will always be our publisher partners. The strength of AdSense lies in the value of the content you bring to users and the quality of the sites you bring to advertisers. Our success is tied to yours. We look forward to partnering with you for the long term, and remain dedicated to helping you succeed.

Sincerely,

Kim Scott
Director AdSense Online Sales & Operations

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Naturally companies like Wu Yi Source, which had an placed by AdSense when I dropped by, would certainly be offended that their ancient Chinese weight loss secret might be associated with a display of svelte bodies. The blog is now looking for another advertiser, and have promised that their next photo compositing contest will feature Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in compromising — and AdSense-unfriendly — positions.

Because an appearance on a political blog was enough to surprise the New York Times's Saul Hansell into remarking on an instance he found "festooned with ads." Though the screenshot featured a video taken from television news and therefore the thumbnail itself was already overly busy with infographics, which contributed most to the impression of the "gaudiness of MySpace." The fact that one of the Times's technology bloggers took so long to take note of an AdSense video unit in the wild tells the real story — even with the promise of a slightly less pitiful revenue sharing check, nobody is using the thing.

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For a bit, we both thought we'd discovered a new advertising product for Facebook — contextual ads against messages similar to the kind Google runs against Gmail messages. Turns out we were wrong. The message came from one of the Web pages Blakeley linked to in his message and Facebook was trying to preview it for me as an attachment. Still, it got us thinking: Facebook will only earn revenues around $300 million this year. Why not serve contextual ads against Facebook messages. People plan a lot of nights out over Facebook. Wouldn't restaurants, movie theaters and bars pay to be a part of that conversation? And with all the talent the company is hiring away from Google, couldn't they poach a few engineers from the AdSense team? Check out Blakeley's note and its misleading attachment, below.

Likely because of the rumored privilege afforded to it by Google's search algorithm. Blogger blogs appear on the blogspot.com domain, which has high rank in search results, and Google makes it easy to run profitable AdSense text links on the site. That adds up to easy money.Researchers aren't clear if spammers have managed to compromise captchas through automation or simply by employing cheap labor, but if the latter, then even KittenAuth won't be able to stem the tide of spam blogs gaming keywords for clickfraud riches. Your move, Google.

Slide won't be running an IPO any time soon. The only way founder Max Levchin and Fidelity and T. Rowe Price cash out is by being acquired, perhaps for a hefty chunk of Facebook stock. Mark Zuckerberg's company already has a huge amount of eyeballs, but picking up Slide would give them even more — and most importantly, massive reach across the other social networks that Slide's widgets run on.

Zuckerberg has already said he wants to expand Facebook across the Web, looking ahead to the inevitable day when growth on his site stagnates, the way it already has on rival MySpace. Beacon, his first attempt to extend Facebook, flopped last year amid charges that the privacy-invading feature ruined some users' Christmases.

An ad network for widgets could be Facebook's answer to Google AdSense. Google makes a ton of money from ads placed on Google.com, but reaches thousands more sites by offering them a cut of ads it sells and places. It also helps track users as they move around the Web.

Combining Facebook's existing ad ventures with Slide's huge audience of drunken-party-pic posters would give Zuck a hedge against fickle users abandoning his site for the next new thing. As Google showed us, the advertising business is where the money is made. It would be smart for Zuckerberg to solidify his hold on the market while he still can. Of course, he'd have to buy Slide for inflated stock, not cash — but Web entrepreneurs like Levchin love to deflect reporters' questions about their wealth by saying it's all on paper.

Great post on Marissa Mayer. I can attest to its truth.

Second, the management within Google, especially AdWords and AdSense (the money making machines of the entire company...engineering gets the glory but advertising brings in the big bucks) are completely disorganized and chaotic (in a BAD way- because Google sometimes tries to spin the whole 'chaotic' thing in a good way).

I'm surprised that you guys don't shed more light on this, but AdWorders only make $45,000 base plus meager bonuses that are only a few hundred per quarter. It's the worst department because everyone hates their job "Hello, this is AdWords, how may I help you?" The dreaded phone shift, chat shifts, answering emails is the core job. They don't tell you that when recruiting and hiring kids from elite universities.

Managers that started as entry level and 'made it' to manager level are extremely paranoid and neurotic because they only have measly community college bachelor degrees and feel threatened (and rightfully so) by the new hire managers that are straight out of Harvard, Northwestern, INSEAD & Stanford MBA Programs. Yet they can't get the boot because they're well-connected and the people who suffer from their poor management are lower on the totem pole and could never risk the backlash that would undoubtedly result.

I know of one manager who everyone hated, yet nothing ever happened to her. Instead, her direct reports just prayed that they'd get to switch managers within the quarter. Her name is Tracy-Lee Blumberg. I know of at least 6 different employees who cried every single day that she was their manager. THREE were male. And other bad managers include Heather Huffman and Stacy Brown-Philpot.

It really is a crazy system because everyone is cut throat and if you happen to land a good project or get an opportunity (to work on a coveted project or work from a remote international office) people really try to bring you down.

(I happen to be an engineer and don't have a great manager but I can deal with him. I just keep hearing horror stories from my Adwords buddies).

I am an assistant manager at Google and I'm horrible at my job.

I'm a micromanager, I don't take criticism well (but I LOVE giving it out), and I am very manipulative and deceptive.

I believe that no one can tell me what to do. If I don't like you, you are screwed

I've been a super bitch lately and it's not just because I'm pregnant. I'm ALWAYS a bitch.... pregnant or not.

I've been at Google for several years, so I'm "well-connected"...Emily White loves me. So be careful...I know people and if you make me upset I will destroy you.

I'm pretty sure my bosses at Google are going to find out that I suck at my job and so I will need a new job once I'm let go....if anyone out there has a job for me, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Glam has a hefty publisher client list — websites it doesn't own, but for which it provides ads. (The list includes some sites which compete with Jezebel, owned by Gawker Media, the publisher of Valleywag.) Glam is also now the "largest women's network" according to ComScore, with nearly 45 million "readers."

Impressive? Not really. ComScore allows publishers to "assign" their traffic to another organization, letting ad networks pool the traffic from all client sites. If a widely used ad network like Google AdSense used this system, Google's network would be by far the largest. But, it's a disingenuous statistic, especially since Glam likes to pretend it's not an ad network.

Glam does have an argument that it's more than a network: That's because, like Microsoft has done with Facebook and Digg, and Google has done with MySpace, it buys up some sites' inventories at a guaranteed rate. That means the profit — or more likely loss — from those ad buys is entirely Glam's. But it's a very risky model. In a recent earnings call, Google executives complained that ads on MySpace weren't performing well. Google can afford that kind of risk. Can Glam? With only $84 million to play with, Arora hasn't raised the kind of bankroll that speaks well to that question.

In general, IU restricts the ability to place advertising on [university] websites. This policy allows IU to present a comprehensive and recognizable visual identity on the Internet without interference from external source providers.

Susan Wojcicki did not invent AdSense, Marissa Mayer wasn't really involved at all, and this dude is saying he's the "godfather" of the system? Perhaps true, but more in a distant-send-you-a-birthday-card definition of "godfather." Looks like Fortune realized the error. The title of the story now refers to Rajaram as an AdSense "developer," but look at the URL. The original headline "adsense-creator-leaves-google" is still up there. And Rajaram is still quoted as saying, "When we started AdSense ..."

AdSense was a product created by Applied Semantics, a company Google acquired after it hired Rajaram, so for him, starting AdSense would be an especially neat trick. Oh, Rajaram meant the in-house ad system Google claims it rebranded as AdSense after buying Applied Semantics? Well, why didn't he say so?

Although there's evidence of many fake press releases floating around the Internet, the scam first came to the attention of Silicon Alley Insider because one particular release mentioned Internet television, a must-cover topic on its beat. But "the world's first broadcast-quality Internet television service" raising an alleged $45 million, profitable and yet no one's heard of it? SAI managing editor Peter Kafka's eyebrows were raised.

Alas, no eyebrow raisings took place at VentureBeat or PEHub, which were suckered despite PaidContent's observation that the HD AmeriTV announcement was a ripoff of a Joost release.

The confusion was exacerbated when these bloggers contacted First Mutual Credit, the only real company listed as an investor for confirmation. Two separate sources initially confirmed First Mutual's investment, but the New Zealand company has since denied any involvement. (Maybe it was that strong Kiwi accent.)

Several other fake companies and fake press releases have been identified. But what is the scam in advertising a nonexistent company? Peter Kafka, who has been closely tracking the story for Silicon Alley Insider, is stumped, but we think he's already stumbled upon the answer: Fake press releases get picked up by a host of PR-aggregating sites that profit off of Google AdSense ads.

Fake blogs already remix existing blog posts to generate nonsensical pages that nonetheless turn up in Google search results and display Google-sold ads targeted to relevant keywords. Press releases filled with buzzwords make even more lucrative fodder for AdSense.

So who makes money here? Press release aggregators like PR Leap would never admit it, but their cash register rings whether or not their press releases are accurate. And the perpetrators of the HD AmeriTV press release? There's no proof, but we smell a search-engine optimization scam, where they get paid by clients to try to improve the ranking of websites by seeding the Web with fake pages.

There's a simple solution, of course: don't read press releases ... real or fake.

OK, so the leaked screen looks pretty much like any old Facebook page. But still, there's some new information here. SocialAds won't just be a distributed ad network like Google's AdSense. They'll also feed updates into users' news feeds. Let's say you click on an ad and buy a Vermont ski vacation package? Now all your friends will know you did. Great! Google's AdSense ads, targeted to the content of the Web page you were reading, were just creepy. Now Facebook's SocialAds promise to be creepy and embarrassing.