Inside AdSense

Google Certified Publishing Partner Spotlight: learn about how Ezoic and SalesFrontier boosted publisher’s monetization

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Whether you’re just starting out with ads, fine-tuning your existing ad setup or looking for brand new revenue sources, Certified Publishing Partners are ready to help you achieve your goals. Learn about how two of our partners helped websites like yours earn more revenue through innovative approaches.

Ezoic is an automated website testing company that helps publishers to evaluate and optimize ad placements and website layouts. According to an internal study commissioned by Ezoic, SimplyPsychology.org, a popular education site, increased revenue by more than 400% and saw an 84% rise in time spent on site by optimizing their website layout. John Cole, Chief Customer Officer of Ezoic says “What Ezoic does is use analytics to make sure that the user experience is superior. We’re tackling the enormously complex task of balancing user experience, content, and monetization. And we’re doing it through data that spans all platforms.” Read more in Ezoic’s partner spotlight.

SalesFrontier, a strong partner for mobile optimization, helps nearly 200 publishers optimize their digital strategies and increase revenue. James Lan, New Media Business Department Vice President of Sanlih E-Television, says “SalesFrontier is a highly recommended Google AdSense partner that dramatically increased our market share in digital advertising. We trust their professional technical support and outstanding consultant services.” Read how SalesFrontier helped Sanlih E-Television Co., Ltd., a large media publisher, grow its mobile revenue business. Read more in SalesFrontier’s partner spotlight.

Since its launch in 2015, the goal of the Certified Publisher Partner is to find the best partners to give publishers like you the extra support to grow your website. To learn more about the program or get started, check out the Certified Publisher Partner website.

Posted by Danielle Landress, from the AdSense team

Join #AskAdSense on Google+ and Twitter

Monday, September 19, 2016

We’ve expanded AdSense support to our English AdSense Twitter and Google+ pages. Join our weekly #AskAdSense office hours and speak directly with our support specialists on topics like: ad placements, mobile implementation, account activation, account suspension, ad formats, and much more.

#AskAdSense office hours will be held every Thursday morning 9:30am Pacific Daylight Time beginning September 29th, 2016. Participating is easy:

Follow AdSense on Twitter and Google+

Tweet, post, comment, or reply to AdSense on Twitter or Google+ asking your question during the office hours.

Please do not provide personally identifiable information in your tweets or comments.

If you can’t attend during our office hour times, be sure to use #AskAdSense in your tweet, post, comment or reply to AdSense and we’ll do our best to respond during our weekly office hours.

On October 27th, John Brown, Head of Publisher Policy Communications for Google, will be joining our office hours to provide transparency into our program policies. John is actively involved with the AdSense community helping to ensure that we continue to make a great web and advertising experience. You can also follow John on the SearchEngineJournal.com column "Ask the AdSense Guy" to learn more about Google ad network policies, processes, and best practices.

AdSense strives to provide many ways to help you when you need it, we’re happy to extend this to our Twitter and Google+ profiles. Be sure to follow us and we’re looking forward to speaking to you there.

Posted by: Jay Castro from the AdSense Team

AdSense help, when and where you need it

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Whether you need help urgently or just want to learn, Adsense provides different ways to provide help when you need it. In this post we’ll share the different ways we offer support to our AdSense partners.

Did you know you can get help on any AdSense issue from within your AdSense account using the help widget? You can find the help widget by clicking on the Help button on the upper right corner of your AdSense account. This will take you directly to informative articles related to the topic or issue you provide.

We hope that this widget will help solve your problems directly within your AdSense account, eliminating the need to switch back and forth between tasks.

Additionally, if you consistently earn more than $25 per week (or the local equivalent), you may be eligible to email the AdSense support team. If you don’t meet the earnings threshold, you can still get help through the issue-based troubleshooters in the AdSense Help Center or by using these relevant resources:

AdSense Help Center: Articles written to help you get started and grow your AdSense account
AdSense Troubleshooting: A step-by-step guide to help you solve or "troubleshoot" your issue
AdSense Help Forum: Post your questions and get answers and advice from the community
Guide to AdSense: Designed to help you understand the program before you sign up for AdSense
Optimizing AdSense: Videos created to help you earn more from your account
AdSense YouTube Channel: Video resources from a wide range of topics

The AdSense support team is here to help so you can continue to focus on creating amazing content for your audience. Use the support resources noted above when you require assistance and let us know on Twitter or Google+ how we can improve your support experience.

Posted by Melina Lopez, from the AdSense team

The secret to share-worthy content

Monday, September 12, 2016

People love to share things with their friends, family, and colleagues. Presenting your users with relevant and unique content is the best way to encourage sharing and give you a competitive advantage. Content that is underscored by emotion, in particular, can help you strengthen your brand’s presence.

Here are some tips to help you get into the minds, and hearts, of your audience:

1. Be relatable

Taking the time to research what your visitors are interested in is the first step to creating shareable content. Diversify to cover multiple facets of your audience’s interests by including work, lifestyle and social topics to keep things fresh and engaging. Contextualizing your stories also increases the chances of your audience relating to and wanting to share your site.

2. Know what’s trending

Staying up-to-the-minute can require a lot of time and research. Luckily, online tools such as Google Trends can help you identify what’s important to your audience as well as offer helpful insights about people in specific regions you are trying to target. Being a thought leader means not only sharing up-to-the-minute industry news with your audience, but also offering insightful observations and predictions of what this may mean down the road. A trusted source is a followed source.

3. Increase your content’s shelf life

While timely articles are great for generating instant buzz, having content that maintains its importance over time yields higher traffic rate overall. Evergreen content is information that stays relevant no matter when it is consumed. Make sure to interlace trendier content with evergreen pieces every so often.

To learn more about familiarizing your audience with your brand, check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

Posted by Jay Castro
Audience Development Specialist
@jayciro

[Video] Adopt these 3 key strategies to grow your online business

Thursday, September 08, 2016

Whether you're new to running a blog or an experienced website pro, check out this video featuring David, Oisin, and Raj from the AdSense team, to learn about the best ways to monetize your online content.

Did you know that 68% of users share online content to give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about? Now, more than ever, it’s important that your audience loves your content. In the video below, we share 3 key strategies for you to boost audience engagement and jump start your earnings using AdSense.

Relate to your users’ interests
Diversify your content strategy
Make your content easy to consume

Watch our video to get started today.

Not using AdSense yet? Once you’ve watched the video, here’s how you can get started:

Make sure your website is compliant with the AdSense program policies.
Sign up for an AdSense account by enrolling your site.
Add the AdSense ad code to your site.

The Need for Mobile Speed

Thursday, September 08, 2016

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick for Publishers Blog
Today, we’re excited to share insights from a new study on how mobile speed can impact user engagement and publisher revenue. As people’s expectations for mobile experiences have grown, simply loading on a mobile device is no longer enough. Mobile sites must be fast and relevant.
Unfortunately, based on our analysis of 10,000+ mobile web domains, we found that most mobile sites don’t meet this bar: the average load time for mobile sites is 19 seconds over 3G connections.¹ That’s about as long as it takes to sing the entire alphabet song!²
Slow loading sites frustrate users and negatively impact publishers. While there are several factors that impact revenue, our model projects that publishers whose mobile sites load in 5 seconds earn up to 2x more mobile ad revenue than those whose sites load in 19 seconds.³ The study also observed 25% higher ad viewability⁴ and 70% longer average sessions⁵ for sites that load in 5 seconds vs 19 seconds.
That’s why we’ve been so focused on mobile-first solutions to help publishers succeed — from our participation in the nearly year old AMP project, to our launch of a scalable native advertising solution, to our investment in products that help publishers increase revenue while minimizing latency.
Never before has mobile speed been more important.

3...2...1… gone

Slow page load times are a big blocker:

53% of visits are likely to be abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load⁶
One out of two people expect a page to load in less than 2 seconds⁷
46% of people say that waiting for pages to load is what they dislike the most when browsing the web on mobile devices⁸

We all know this first hand — if you’re looking for something on your phone, how long will you wait if the page takes more than a few seconds to load?
The three major factors that slow down mobile sites are file size, the number of server requests, and the order in which the different elements of the page are loaded. We found:

The average size of the content on mobile sites is 1.49 MB, which takes 7 seconds to load over 3G connections⁹
Mobile pages make an average of 214 server requests, and nearly half of all server requests are ad-related¹⁰

Getting up to speed

There are many tools out there to help diagnose the problem and fix it. We recommend a 3-step process to speed up mobile sites:

Assess the current performance of the site using tools like PageSpeed Insights, Mobile-Friendly Test, and Web Page Test.
Execute changes that eliminate bulky content, reduce the number of server requests, and consolidate data and analytics tags. Switch up the element order and select the minimum number of pieces to show above the fold first — styling, javascript logic, and images accessed after the tap, scroll or swipe can be loaded later.
Monitor performance after making changes and run A/B tests to regularly audit the setup of your site, flagging and removing anything that adds latency.

You should also investigate open source solutions like Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps.
To learn more about our study and the steps you can take to improve the experience on your mobile site, check out our guide, “The Need for Mobile Speed” [g.co/MobileSpeed]

^{1 Webpagetest.org, Sampled 11.8K global mWeb homepage domains loaded using a fast 3G connection timing first view only (no cached resources), February 2016}
^{2 NPR, “Keep Flu At Bay With A Song”, April 2009}
^{3 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized Google Analytics and DoubleClick AdExchange data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=4.5K, Global, June 2015 - May 2016}
^{4 DoubleClick for Publishers, Google Active View ad viewability for 10.7K mWeb homepage domains with >70% measurable ad viewability, Global, February 2016}
^{5 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized Google Analytics data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=3.5K, Global, March 2016}
^{6 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized Google Analytics data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=3.7K, Global, March 2016}
^{7 Akamai Technologies - 2014 Consumer Web Performance Expectations Survey}
^{8 Google Webmaster Central Blog, "#MobileMadness: a campaign to help you go mobile-friendly", April, 2015}
^{9 Webpagetest.org, Sampled 11.8K global mWeb homepage domains loaded using a fast 3G connection timing first view only (no cached resources), February 2016}
^{10 Webpagetest.org, Sampled 11.8K global mWeb homepage domains loaded using a fast 3G connection timing first view only (no cached resources), February 2016}

[Infographic] Download the #AdSenseGuide to creating content that draws crowds

Tuesday, September 06, 2016

Big events create big opportunities for AdSense publishers. Keep your content relevant when web traffic spikes and you could grow your business. We’ve put together a guide to help you make the most of these moments and draw the crowds to your site.

Download The #AdSenseGuide to creating content that draws crowds now! We have the PDF available for you in 4 languages:

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and G+ for more helpful tips and to share your thoughts on this infographic.

New to AdSense? Sign up now and turn your passion into profit.

Posted by Jay Castro, from the AdSense team

3 easy tips to build a relationship with your audience

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Drawing new visitors to your site is only half of the battle. Having a plan for them to follow once they get there is the key to encouraging repeat visits and building a meaningful relationship with your readers.

To engage user-focused design for your site, it’s important to consider the following:

1. Keep It Simple

Gating desirable content can be a great way to learn more about visitors by prompting them to fill out a form or sign up for your newsletter to access it. However, roughly 67% of users will abandon an effort to obtain information or purchase something online if there are too many steps to take. Make sure your users get what they need in as few steps as possible. Matched content is another way to keep visitors from checking out too soon by increasing your odds of presenting them with content they are directly interested in.

2. Identify User Moments

People often look for inspiration and ideas while they complete a task online. Anticipating your visitors’ needs can help you set up your site to better serve them so you can capture and capitalize on these important moments. Whether they are purchasing something or just browsing, presenting this information in the right format can greatly increase the amount of time they spend on your site.

For example, if you’re an eCommerce site selling chocolates, having recommendations alongside each product such as gift boxes, complementing candy, and drink pairings can get your site visitor thinking about the holidays or gifts for their loved ones.

3. Create engaging Calls to Action

Bold “sign up” buttons and friendly prompts or reminders move visitors to take action. From bold colors and text to exaggerated size and other visual clues, there are a number of ways to make these important actions stand out on your site and even fun for users to engage with. In fact, our own AdSense team tested different campaign graphics on our marketing campaigns and saw higher implementation and engagement rates.

To learn more about familiarizing your audience with your brand, check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement.

Posted by Jay Castro

From the AdSense Team

@jayciro

Optimize your content for mobile to #drawthecrowds

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Throughout the summer, fans are looking for great content, regardless of whether they’re viewing it from a desktop, tablet or mobile device. Did you know that 1/3 of followers used more than one screen to follow the 2012 Olympic games?[1]

With this in mind, think about whether your content is mobile-optimized and easily accessible for your users in the moments that matter. If they receive a link on their smartphone but are unable to view the content because it’s not mobile-optimized, it’s easy for them to feel frustrated with the poor user experience. On the other hand, If the users are delighted with the content and their first visit to your site is a positive one, they’re more likely to share your content and come back again.

If you already have a mobile optimized site, don’t forget that you can grow your earnings potential by understanding which mobile ad sizes are most effective for you. Finally don't forget these 4 important tips to maximize your earnings with AdSense:

Swap out the 320x50 ad units for 320x100 for a potential RPM increase.
Place a 320x100 ad unit just above the fold or peek the 300x250 -- that is, place a small portion of the ad unit just above the fold (ATF).
Use the 300x250 ad unit below the fold (BTF) mixed in with your content.
Prevent accidental clicks on enhanced features in text ads by moving ad units 150 pixels away from your content.

Is your site mobile ready for the summer?

Download the #AdSenseGuide to Mobile Web Success to learn more. Are you new to AdSense? If so, sign up now and turn your passion into profit.

Posted by Barbara Sarti, AdSense Account Associate

[1] Google internal data

How to make the most of Matched content

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Matched content is a recommendation tool that allows you to promote relevant content from your site and sponsored content to your visitors. Matched content can help capture visitor attention and loyalty by showing relevant content which could increase pageviews on your site. Here’s a few tips to help you get started with Matched content.

Strategically place your ads to improve viewability.

According to a Think With Google study, “56.1% of all impressions are not seen.” So when determining the placement of your Matched content units, think about which spot(s) would improve viewability and engagement. To increase these metrics we recommend placing this unit directly below your article and either above or below your ad unit. This way readers can easily click on the next piece of content that is interesting to them. Placing it directly below the article often drives higher click-through rates (CTR) than other placements.

Since Matched content units help your users learn more about similar content, you should think about placing it at points in your website where your user will engage more with the content.

Track performance.
To determine if your placement is effective for your site, be sure to track the performance of your Matched content units. Understanding performance is key to maximizing your ad revenue and satisfying your readers. On your Performance reports tab, you’ll see an updated way to view two metric families -- the Overview metric family and the Matched content metric family:
Overview metric family

Selecting this metric family will allow you to understand how much you’re earning from your Matched content units and how these units compare to other ad units on your site. You can also review metrics such as impressions, clicks, and estimated earnings.

Matched content metric family

To get a more detailed performance of your ads and recommendations, use this metric family to view metrics like total impressions, ad impressions, ad clicks, ad revenue per thousand impressions (RPM), and recommendation clicks. Since this metric family is more specific, you should be able to use this data to optimize the ad unit itself.

To see all metric offerings and how they work, take a look at the AdSense Help Center.

By optimizing your Matched content units, you will allow your readers to learn more about topics they are interested in and potentially increase your site’s engagement rate and revenue. If you do not currently have Matched content but are looking to add the feature, determine if you’re eligible by viewing our Help Center article.

Posted by Bserat Ghebremicael
From the AdSense team

Inside AdSense

Google Certified Publishing Partner Spotlight: learn about how Ezoic and SalesFrontier boosted publisher’s monetization

Join #AskAdSense on Google+ and Twitter

AdSense help, when and where you need it

The secret to share-worthy content

[Video] Adopt these 3 key strategies to grow your online business

The Need for Mobile Speed

[Infographic] Download the #AdSenseGuide to creating content that draws crowds

3 easy tips to build a relationship with your audience

Optimize your content for mobile to #drawthecrowds

How to make the most of Matched content

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