#mv -v

Google have updated their AdSense terms and conditions.

They have updated 2 sections:

• Future products and features
• Privacy requirements

The first one is about terms used in TOS. They were updated to make them applicable “across a broader array of media and formats anticipating, that future products may be priced, paid, or managed differently than current ones“.

Google with this move confirm that new tools will be soon available for all webmasters including some tools in strictly beta stages. We can speculate that the last ones will be initially reserved for just a little group of testers as we have already seen with Google Referrals. In their announcement they explicit talk about Gadget Ads

The second one is the the most important because is related to new rules you have to respect to comply with AdSense TOS.

“Publishers must notify their users of the use of cookies and/or web beacons to collect data in the ad serving process. This change relates to advertiser’s use of innovative products and features like Gadget Ads and other offerings in the future.”

The new TOS must be accepted before 25 May of 2008 or you will not be able to use your account

You can read the complete announcement here and the new TOS here

Also Google after accepting the new TOS will request you to merge your current AdSense account with a Google Account. You can select during the merge if you will personally use the new account or if you will share it with others. This is a strong signal to all webmasters to create a central Google account for all their tools: AdSense, AdWords, WebMaster Tools and Analytics.

How to comply?

Google needs to specify if we have to create just one page will all the infos they request:

1) Informations about Cookies

2) How you can remove them

or if we need to post these informations on all the pages, which, in some cases, is an incredible amount of work.

For now we can just suggest you to create a page or a footer note with informations about cookies and how you can generally remove them.

In any case write a disclaimer about some “cookies” which collect “data” inside all the pages will scare a lot of visitors, that is for sure.