Multiple Language Google Adsense Ads on Same Page

Today I was surprised to see ads in multiple languages (English and Hindi) being loaded on my blog sidebar. I believed that Google Adsense policies implied that the ads will be targeted to the primary language of the content. Since this blog is written in English, I usually get english ads.

The ad show above was spotted on our main page in the 160×600 vertical google adsense ad in the blog sidebar (The ads colours are different because I have changed the sidebar CSS template now). Notice that the first text ad is in Hindi (Indian language) and rest of ads were in english. The title and text of the ad are in Hindi, while the url is in english (I wonder why!). I visited the site (by typing the url of the ad) and the site was in english with no link to suggest an alternative hindi version of the page.

Since this ad is geotargeted for India, it made sense to show Hindi ads intermixed with English ads, since most Indians would be able to understand these Hindi ads. But based on that corollary, would I like to see all my ads being shown in Hindi if an Indian reader is visiting us? I do not think so.

I checked what languages AdSense supports. Though I found several different languages there, Hindi is not listed there.

“You can select your site’s primary language during the application process. If you’re approved, AdSense will serve relevant ads to your pages in the appropriate language, even if your site contains multiple supported languages.

Please also be aware that placing the AdSense code on pages with content primarily in an unsupported language is not permitted by the AdSense program policies.”

Does that mean Hindi language sites cannot run Adsense ads because it is an unsupported language? I decided to see things from the advertisers point of view. I read this article from Google Adwords support titled How does language targeting work?

“You may consider targeting multiple languages to expand your advertising reach on Google. For example, an advertiser may have a website written in English and an AdWords campaign with English ads and keywords. However, he may choose to target that campaign to both English and Spanish. This way, his ads will show to bilingual users who search on his English keywords – indicating that they speak English and would be interested in his website – but whose Google interface language is set to Spanish.”

A search for Hindi in both Adsense and Adwords support returned no results. I understand that if your site’s primary language is english, they will show english ads. This can be tested by the Adsense preview tool, which will display english ads geotargeted to the country, but the language does not change.

Has anyone seen multiple language ads on your site based on multiple supported languages in your country e.g. would a reader in France see both ads in french and english?

Update: It seems Hindi ads have been seen before here and here.