[wp-hackers] Advertising on Plugin Option Pages

[Otto]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 2:32 PM, Jackson Whelan <jw at jacksonwhelan.com> wrote:
> I stumbled across a plugin from the repository today with Google AdSense
> banners on the options page. With a call to action above it - 'Click here if
> you like this plugin.' - to boot!
>
> Obviously this is a little tacky (aside from violating AdSense's TOS), but I
> was just wondering if there's a policy here? Or maybe this is more common
> than I realize.
>
> Not trying to rat anyone out, just genuinely curious.

In general, things like banner or text link advertising should not be
anywhere in a plugin, including on its settings screen. Advertising on
settings screens is generally ineffective anyway, as ideally users
rarely visit these screens, and the advertising is low quality because
the ad-systems cannot see the page content to determine good ads. So
they’re best just left off entirely. Putting links back to your own
site or to your social-network-system of choice is fine. Furthermore,
if the plugin does include advertising from a third party service, it
must default to completely disabled, in order to prevent tracking
information from being collected from the user without their consent.

TLDR: No, it's not kosher.

-Otto