I am kind of surprised that Google sees the need to further clarify the concept of their referral program. But apparently there must’ve been some misunderstandings with the newly introduced “drawing attention” rule that only applies to referral units (Firefox and Google Pack) and not to regular AdSense ads. In their latest blog entry they take the reader by the hand and explain the whole thing again, but this time with an example. Must be one of those american things where everything is a legitimate and reasonable assumption until explicitly clarified and exlcuded (aka “Do not put hamster in microwave”). Kidding, of course ;-)

In short:

[…] Google is willing to pay up to $2 for each new user who downloads and installs Google Pack. If you encourage people to download and install Pack on your site and the conversion rate goes up, we’re happy to pay the additional cost, because it directly translates to more Pack users for us. […] This isn’t the case for most AdSense for content […] Encouraging clicks on these ads not only drives lower quality traffic to an advertiser’s site but provides poor data for an advertiser to make an appropriate bid on the click. This results in a poor experience for visitors and advertisers, which isn’t good for you as a publisher. […]

read it all

Have fun!