Can You Use AdSense And Affiliate Ads on Same Web Page?

I talk about Google AdSense and Affiliate marketing all the time and keep getting questions related to the same. One of the most asked questions is,

Can I use AdSense and affiliate ads on the same page. Will it be a violation of AdSense policies?

This is the most common question by newbie bloggers who just started monetizing their website with Affiliate ads and have AdSense running on their blog. AdSense is a contextual ad network and they do not allow running any other ad network which mimic ads like AdSense.

Can you have Amazon Affiliate And Adsense on the same Page:

Let me take an example of Amazon affiliate ads, as they are one of the popular affiliate programs. You can replace it by anything like eBay, hosting affiliate or other affiliate programs you can think of.

The Answer is “Yes” you can place Affiliate ads along with AdSense ads on the same page, and this doesn’t violate AdSense policies. Here is a screenshot from official AdSense help page, which clearly says: “We do allow affiliate or limited-text links.”

To add more to it, here is what you need to know to use any other ad network with AdSense. In simple words, Affiliate ad is also considered as different ad network here:

Before you jump with joy and start adding tons of affiliate banner ads and link ads on your blog, here are few important things which you should know.

• If the number of ads or affiliate banner/links is more than the original content, this will put your AdSense account in danger. So limit the number of ads on your blog, and focus on adding value and quality of your website. I suggest you to keep an optimum limit of Ads on your blog, and place it in a way which doesn’t hamper the user experience on your website.
• Your affiliate ads should not link to content which are not allowed in AdSense policies. Ex: Adult content. AdSense treats other ads (Ads from other ad network or affiliate ads ) on a page as part of the content, and it should follow their content guidelines.
• While using Affiliate links on your blog, make sure they are nofollow. This has nothing to do with AdSense, but using Nofollow tag is a good practice from SEO point of view. You can use this guide to learn how to add nofollow tag or better useThirstyAffiliateLinks plugin.

Summing it up:

To sum it up; you can use Affiliate ads with Google AdSense on your blog. Though before you jump into the world of affiliate marketing, I suggest you to learn tricks of the trade and then implement ads. A good idea is to replace one of your low performing ad unit with direct affiliate ads of a product related to your niche. Once you start getting success in form of affiliate sales, replace more AdSense ad blocks with affiliate ads. If you select the right product to promote, you can easily earn minimum 2-3X of your AdSense earning via Affiliate marketing.

If you have any more question related to using Affiliate ads and AdSense together, feel free to ask via comments. If you find this post useful, do share it with your friends on Google and Facebook.