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Inside AdSense
Google's official blog for news, tips and information on AdSense.
Site targeting: a refresher
Friday, December 30, 2005
Over the past few months, we've written
several posts
about
site targeting
, but given the questions we've received, we thought this might be a good time to review the details of site targeting, what it means for you as an AdSense publisher, and how site-targeted ad campaigns fit into the AdSense model.
First, a bare-bones explanation of the program. Using site targeting, AdWords advertisers can enter their CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) ad directly into their site's ad auction. That CPM ad will compete against the CPC (cost-per-click) ads in the auction -- and if it wins, it will run in place of the CPC ads that would have otherwise appeared. As an AdSense publisher, you get paid for each impression on that ad, rather than for each click.
So what does this mean? It means AdWords advertisers and AdSense publishers can connect in a way not previously possible. AdSense publishers can now offer advertisers the opportunity to bid directly on their site through
Onsite Advertiser Sign-up
, and advertisers can pull up a list of sites in the content network, large or small, that falls under any vertical or content theme. Advertisers and publishers of all sizes can find each other in the same virtual forum.
Site targeting also means
more money for you
. Period. If a site-targeted ad (text or image) appears on your site, it means that that ad is paying you more than any CPC ad that would appear in that ad unit. Many publishers have seen dramatic revenue increases as a result of these site-targeted ads appearing on their pages.
Some of you have asked, "How is an ad for an off-road vehicle targeted to my pages about hiking?" Excellent question! Contextual targeting, or targeting the text on your site (the primary targeting mechanism of AdSense), is only one form of targeting. With the launch of the site targeting program, advertisers can select sites that are relevant to their prospective visitors, thereby targeting an audience, not just content. So although the ad campaign may not be targeted directly to your site's content, it will be relevant to the specific or general interests of your readers. AdSense has always been, and will always remain, a targeted advertising system -- we're just implementing new targeting approaches to help you monetize.
Some advertisers target many AdSense sites to reach a broad set of users and interests. Others use site targeting campaigns to target only a handful of sites and a very specific interest niche. And many fall in between these two. Regardless of the level of reach, site targeting campaigns all work to provide higher network CPMs, effective monetization, and fresh, dynamic content rolling through our system.
Remember, you maintain control over the types of ads that are appearing on your pages. So if you ever see an ad on your site that you'd rather not show, simply add the destination URL of the ad to your
competitive filter list
, and with a snap of our fingers (well, ok, it might take a little longer than that -- but no more than 5 hours), the ad will stop appearing. Your filter list works for both keyword-targeted and site-targeted ads.
We really appreciate all of your feedback about these campaigns. We say this a lot, but it's true: we take your comments very seriously. Never hesitate to
send them to us
.
Here's to a safe and happy New Year, from all of us here at AdSense.
UPDATED with accurate waiting time
Posted by Mike - AdSense Publisher Support
Site maintenance this Friday
Thursday, December 29, 2005
While many of you may be on vacation this week, some of our engineers are working hard to ensure the performance and stability of AdSense. Occasionally this means taking down the main AdSense site (http://www.google.com/adsense) for updates. At 8PM PST this Friday (12/30), it will be unavailable for up to 6 hours while we complete some engineering work. Of course, all your AdSense ads will still serve properly and all your stats and earnings will be recorded as usual. We'll bring the site back up as soon as we can.
In the meantime, we hope you have a happy and high-earning new year!
Season's greetings!
Posted by Rob - AdSense Product Management
AdSense fan mail 1
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
To celebrate the holiday season, we thought we would share with you some of the letters we have received from publishers. Here is one from Germany:
We greatly appreciate your service and feel deeply honoured to be playing amongst Google's Top Leagues now - for us it really is an honour.
The whole team here is enthusiastic and motivated to optimise AdSense earnings based on your recommendations as soon as possible.
Last year your AdSense program saved us from being taken over by a competitor - we will never forget that.
-moonchild media AG (Germany)
We really appreciate hearing from publishers, and of course are very glad when they're happy as this publisher is. But whether your experience is positive or not, we want to hear from you too. Email us
here
.
Posted by Susan - AdSense Product Marketing
What's a webinar again?
Thursday, December 22, 2005
We're always looking into better ways to communicate with you to help you get the most of AdSense. So on Wednesday, December 21st we held a
webinar
to provide an overview of some recently launched AdSense features including
Onsite Advertiser Sign-up
,
referrals
,
section targeting
,
themed ad units
, and
custom
and
emailable
reports. We also discuss each in our previous blog posts -- feel free to browse through these.
Satya Patel from product management, Mohammed Abdoolcarim from product marketing, and Phoebe Ho from account management were on hand to provide information about their areas of expertise. Their presentations concluded with a live Q&A session you might also find useful.
If you missed it, be sure to watch a recorded version of the New Features Webinar
here
(Firefox users, you will need to view this in Internet Explorer).
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
Flair for your ad units
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Are your artistic talents limited to crayon drawings of stick figures? Good, looks like I'm not the only one. For those of us who peaked at a seven-year-old skill level, here's a holiday gift from a true artist: Google's
Dennis Hwang
.
Our new themed ad units incorporate elements from
past Google logos
created by Dennis, to give your pages a little extra flair during various holidays and special events. You can enable or disable themed ad units by logging into your account, visiting the
My Account
tab, and scrolling down to the Ad Type Preference section to click 'edit.' Check or uncheck the box marked 'enable themed ad units when available' - any changes you make will take effect within 24 hours.
If you've enabled themed ad units, users who visit your site may see themed ad units that are relevant to their geographic location (as determined by user IP address) and the date or season. Depending on your location, you should see the seasonally themed ad units for the winter holidays start appearing on your site soon and remain until December 26th. Here comes one now.
Happy holidays, everyone.
Posted by Shannon - AdSense Product Management
A note from AdWords regarding your site-targeting concerns
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
When we launched site-targeting in June, we created a new way for AdWords advertisers and AdSense publishers to benefit from each other. Advertisers use the Site Tool, a
site-targeting
feature, to choose specific sites from the Google content network on which to place their ads. This makes it possible for advertisers to spend more of their marketing budgets on specific sites. For publishers, it's a great way to increase coverage and eCPMs.
Many publishers have asked why we decided to lower the minimum CPM bid required for advertisers to run site-targeted campaigns. As you know, we're constantly working to improve the experience for our users, advertisers and publishers. To this end, the lowered minimum CPM for site-targeted ads allows advertisers to more accurately price their ad placements on a wider variety of sites.
Sounds like a bad deal for publishers, right? It's not. By lowering the minimum CPM we've increased adoption of the product and competition for placements on your site(s). This leads to higher payouts and better coverage. Remember, CPC and CPM ads compete against each other to display on your site, and we'll only show the ads with the highest eCPM. So you can be assured that increased competition will only help you improve monetization of your site.
Posted by Sarah - AdWords Advertiser Support
Out of the box and in your inbox
Friday, December 16, 2005
In our continuing efforts to find a cure for
G.A.S.S.
, we now enable publishers to have your AdSense stats emailed directly to the recipient of your choice. Daily, weekly, or monthly relief from G.A.S.S. is just a few easy steps away:
Step 1
: On your "Report Manager" page, under your
Reports
tab, choose a custom report from the list. (If there aren't any listed,
create a new custom report
with the settings you want.)
Step 2
: Select the frequency, recipient, and format of email reports from the dropdowns. To add a new recipient, click "edit addresses" and enter a new email address.
Step 3
: Click "Save changes" to schedule your report for mailing.
We hope this new feature will provide you with the freedom to be away from your AdSense account. There's a whole world outside your AdSense account - one that you can explore for new content for your site. ;)
Posted by Julie - AdSense Publisher Support
The search for a better search box
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Publishers have told us they want more control over the look and feel of the
AdSense for search
box, and we've listened. There's a new search query box in town - check out your
AdSense for search
tab to design your very own.
What's changed? First, we cleaned up the design a bit to make it smaller and more compact, allowing you to set the logo position and search box length to best fit your site design. Plus, we've added the "'Google Search' on button" logo option, which enables you to select from a number of different background colors or enter any HTML code to match the color of your site. All these changes add up to enhanced customization and flexibility.
You've asked us, "Why can't Google just let us edit the text and design any query box we want?" While we're always looking to give publishers more customization options, we also feel that consistency in how our code is used and how the Google logo is displayed is good for the long-term integrity of the Adsense program. Rest assured that we're constantly working to provide more options, whether it's improved reporting, more creative styles, or a redesigned search box.
Posted by Hunter - AdSense Product Management
For faster, more secure payments, try EFT
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
If you have an AdSense account in one of
these countries and territories
, we encourage you to sign up for payments by Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). We're working to expand our EFT support, so if payments by EFT aren't currently available for your location, know that we appreciate your patience in the meantime.
If you're new to EFT payments, signing up is easy: in the
Payment Details
section of the
My Account
tab, click 'edit' to enter your bank account information, then verify a test deposit we'll make to your bank account. Once your account is verified, you can begin receiving payments more quickly and securely. If you'd like more detailed instructions on signing up, you can find them
here
.
Posted by Alexa - AdSense Publisher Support
Tipping you off
Friday, December 09, 2005
If you haven't done so already, check out our improved
Google AdSense tips page
.
While it still offers many classic tips you may be familiar with, our redesigned tips page is now better organized, with more visual examples of optimization in action.
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
Paramount site-targeting AdSense publishers
Thursday, December 08, 2005
In a recent
BusinessWeek
article, "
Grabbing The Grassroots
" (
BusinessWeek
, November 21, 2005), David Kiley profiled Paramount Pictures' use of
site targeting
to reach a specific and relevant audience for three of their films:
Hustle & Flow
,
Four Brothers
and
Aeon Flux
.
Site targeting allowed Paramount to find many smaller, niche sites with users who they felt would have a particular interest in the films. Kiley describes these as "specialized networks of what are often small online sites and blogs," and notes that such sites "increasingly [soak] up Net surfers' attention," -- which means it's more possible than ever to reach an increasingly fragmented audience.
"With
Hustle & Flow
, Paramount had the ideal test case for this kind of advertising," Kiley explained. "The film is about an aspiring rap singer, specifically a performer of 'crunk,' 'a Dixie-originated hip-hop genre marked by lurching beats and bellowed choruses.
Hustle & Flow
was a blowout hit at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, but Paramount couldn't count on that industry buzz making it to the grass roots of crunk enthusiasts the movie studio wanted to reach."
By plugging terms like 'crunk', 'Memphis', and the names of some of the movie's stars into Google's
Site Tool
(a tool that automatically returns a list of sites related specific topics or categories), Paramount was able to identify and advertise on 170 different niche sites.
As the
Hustle & Flow
example demonstrates, when advertisers want to reach the audience that's most receptive to their message, they're interested in targeting not just the big sites, but content-rich smaller sites as well. To make it easier for advertisers to target ads to smaller sites, AdSense has added features like
Onsite Advertiser Sign-up
.
Thanks to all our publishers in the AdSense network for creating the kind of content that makes this type of targeted-reach possible for those of us on the advertising side.
Posted by Bismarck - AdWords Product Marketing
Queries and PageRank and Traffic – oh my!
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
As you may recall from previous posts,
Google Sitemaps
and
Google Mobile Sitemaps
are quick and easy ways for you to submit all your pages to the Google index and help improve your visibility on Google. But did you know that now with Google Sitemaps you can see which Google search queries are driving traffic to your website and what your PageRank distribution is for all your pages in Google? And, to help you make your site more bot-friendly, Sitemaps also shows you which pages returned errors (and which specific errors were returned) when the Googlebot tried to crawl them.
The best part? You don't even have to submit a sitemap to get all these stats - just
create a Sitemaps account
and add your site to it. Once you verify ownership of the site we'll show you
these stats
so that while you're working on
creating your sitemap
, you can already start getting valuable feedback on your Google traffic and crawl status.
Posted by Shaluinn - Sitemaps Product Marketing
From the mail bag
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Peter asks:
Sometimes not all the ads display in each ad unit – for example there will only be 2 ads in the medium rectangle ad unit instead of 4. Is this normal?
We say:
Yes, this is normal. With
expanded text ads
, AdSense technology automatically displays fewer ads when we determine that larger ads will perform better on a particular page. This should improve monetization for you.
Wayne asks:
The
Inside Adsense blog
says that publishers can maximize their income by having multiple ad units on their web pages. Is this new? Last year I got an email from Google telling me that I wasn't allowed to have more than one ad unit per page.
We say:
Yes, on each page of your site AdSense is now able to support up to:
3
ad units
2
AdSense for search
boxes
1
link unit
1
referral button
per product (i.e., 1 AdSense referral button and 1 Firefox plus Google Toolbar referral button).
Chris asks:
How does AdSense treat websites using frames?
We say:
In order to use AdSense on a frames-based page, you'll need to follow two steps. First, when generating your AdSense ad code, make sure to check the
'Framed page' checkbox
. Next, you'll need to paste your AdSense code in the
primary
content frame of your site. Pasting the AdSense code in the same frame as your site content allows our crawlers to understand your page and serve relevant ads accordingly.
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
Firefox referrals - now available internationally
Monday, November 28, 2005
We're happy to announce that international AdSense publishers can now refer users to Firefox plus Google Toolbar. A Firefox sub-tab will be visible to all publishers when they visit the "Referrals" tab in their AdSense account. For all the details on Firefox referrals, visit our
FAQ
.
Posted by Mohammed - AdSense Product Marketing
Happy Thanksgiving
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. publishers! Due to the holiday, it may take us longer to respond to your emails, but we will be back in action next week.
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
Suzie gets up-close and personal with publishers
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Last week I was fortunate enough to represent Google AdSense at
Pubcon 10
, the WebmasterWorld conference in Las Vegas. It was great to meet some of our publishers in person and hear their feedback on AdSense features.
Several publishers showed me their sites and asked for tips to boost revenue. I know we've covered some of these tips before, but based on some of the questions I received at Pubcon I want to reiterate my top 3 recommendations:
1. Consider the AdSense
heat map
when choosing your ad placement (and don't forget our
heat map for forums
post from October).
I saw several sites where Google ads were hidden away in the header or below the fold. Placing ads where users are more likely to see them is one recommendation we give publishers who want to improve their clickthrough rates.
2. Use
channels
.
You won't know which ad formats and placements are performing best on your site until you track stats separately using channels. This knowledge can help you experiment smartly when optimizing your site.
3. Try
link units
.
Many publishers don't know much about them, so they don't use them. But for many publishers, link units have become an important source of revenue. I recommend trying them out - and make sure to use channels to track your earnings so you'll know how link units are performing relative to your traditional ad units.
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
Go wide!
Monday, November 21, 2005
With 11 ad formats to choose from, you've got a lot of options. To narrow it down, first identify which formats will fit the ad space on your site. From there, you can choose the ad unit that'll perform best for you.
In general, the best formats are the wider ones – the ad formats that contain the widest individual ads. Try using the
336x280 large rectangle
,
300x250 medium rectangle
, or
160x600 wide skyscraper
.
My tip? Consider which ad formats currently support image ads (more advertisers bidding on your pages = more potential revenue for you!). Choose either the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper -- or both, if you display multiple ad units on a page.
See here
for other formats that support image ads.
For advanced publishers: If you have the time to test and can fit both a 336x280 large rectangle and 300x250 medium rectangle on your site, try rotating between these two formats and using
custom channels
to track which performs better. The best way to know which avenues will make the most revenue is to test them out on your own.
Posted by Phoebe - AdSense Publisher Support
Gain more advertisers right from your site
Friday, November 18, 2005
UPDATE: Sorry, the Onsite Advertiser Sign-up feature is
no longer available
.
Many of you have been asking for the ability to sign up advertisers directly from your pages. Starting now, you can do just that with Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up. Using this feature, your ad units will display an 'Advertise on this site' link that takes interested advertisers to a landing page where they can quickly create an AdWords account and ad targeting your site. Ads created through this channel will automatically target your site and only your site. More advertisers competing for your ad space means more revenue for you.
Beginning today, you can customize the landing page advertisers will see with your logo, color scheme and site description. Just follow these
simple steps
.
Shortly after you customize your landing page, 'Advertise on this site' links will begin appearing in your ads and you can begin signing up advertisers. Starting within a couple weeks, your ad units will begin displaying 'Advertise on this site' links automatically, so if Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up isn’t right for you, you can opt out before then by visiting the My Accounts tab. Want to learn more? Take our
guided tour
.
Ryan - AdSense Product Marketing
Spotlight on... CamcorderInfo.com
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Robin Liss, founder of CamcorderInfo.com, turned AdSense into a major source of income for her business by using AdSense
channels
to experiment. Specifically, adding ad link units in some areas "provided as much as a 300 percent increase in revenue." See our
case study
for more information.
Posted by Cherie - AdSense Product Marketing
A day in the life of Russ
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
I wake up around 5:45, and usually that's with a smile on my face. Not only do I work at a great company, but my job sits at the intersection of our users, advertisers, and publishers. How cool is that?
If my 3-year old son is awake (and he usually is), I spend a little time with him. Often he's lively enough to awaken his older brother too, and so I heat up their milk, get them pointed in the right direction, and let my wife catch a few extra zzz's with the baby.
At about 6:45, I leave the house to catch the
Google shuttle bus
at 7, where I can catch up on email (oh, yeah, it has wireless, baby!) or work on offline projects. Typically I arrive around 7:45 and begin my day with some Lucky Charms (they're magically delicious and surprisingly low in calories). After that, the first thing I do is to support customers by reviewing new publisher applications and responding to
publisher questions
.
Like my colleague
Spencer
, my favorite dish here is the carne asada burrito, but I have a rule that my inseam:waist ratio must remain greater than 1. Thanks to the great food here, that ratio is in danger of creeping lower – so to avoid the purchase of more pants, I have lately switched to salads.
My days are filled with a variety of projects and tasks – I'm on a team that focuses on product innovations, support efficiency initiatives, and network expansion projects.
I usually catch the 6:30 PM shuttle home. While I catch up on email once more, I'm already looking forward to the best part of my day: opening the front door to see the boys come running at me with the big Welcome Home Hug (and the big Welcome Home Takedown). It's salad for dinner (ratio considerations), after which I help bathe the kids and prepare them for bed between 8 and 8:30.
Then I spend some time with the baby, read, do some work, talk with my wife. Some evenings I work on the draft of a letter to the Pope seeking canonization for her – every day, she adroitly deals with 3 less-than-5-year-old boys. Indeed, as I am choosing between a Greek salad and carne asada, she is choosing between chunky and creamy peanut butter.
I hit the sack around 11 and dream about delivering such great
support to our AdSense publishers
that they never need to wait – even a minute - for an answer.
Posted by Russ - AdSense Publisher Support
Blogging for dollars
Monday, November 14, 2005
Like cookies and milk, Blogger and AdSense make a great pair. In fact you might remember when
we posted
about a new integration of Blogger with AdSense that makes it easier for bloggers to sign up with AdSense and customize the ads to their blog.
Those of you who sign up for AdSense through Blogger may notice that public service ads appear on your blog right away. That's standard until you've verified your email address and your application has been approved - usually within 2-3 days. Once you're in, your pages will begin displaying targeted Google ads.
If you're interested in using AdSense, but don't have a website, you can use
Blogger
to create your own blog on which you can display Google ads. If you're already using Blogger, but don't have an AdSense account, we encourage you to
apply
to start seeing revenue. (
Adding Google ads to your blog
is easy.)
Posted by Dobromir - AdSense Accounts
From the Inside AdSense International mail bag
Friday, November 11, 2005
Emma (UK) asks:
I recently moved from England to Germany. How do I make sure I don't miss my check?
We say:
If your address has changed within a country, you can simply update the information in your AdSense account by going to the 'Payee Information' section on the "My Account" tab. If, however, you are changing countries, you will not be able to change the country field in your current account, for identity protection and tax purposes. You need to:
1.
Place your current account on payment hold
so that your check is not sent to your old address in England
2.
Email us
with the answers to the following three questions:
What was the amount of your last AdSense payment?
What was the first day you received a page impression?
How many page impressions did you get on your first day?
3. Close your existing account, and
4. Submit an application for a new account with your new address in Germany.
We will do our best to make the transition of your account as quick as possible so that our part of your move will go smoothly.
Robert (France) asks:
I have a French website as well as my English language site. Is there enough of an ad inventory for French to use AdSense on both sites?
We say:
We have extensive ad inventory for all 18 supported languages including both English and French, and AdSense will automatically detect the language of your pages. All you have to do is paste the AdSense code on your French pages and you will start to see relevant ads there as well.
Stefan (Germany) asks:
I got my first payment from you but I did not get a statement of earnings that I can submit at the tax office. Can you send me one?
We say:
At this time we don't issue any statements of earnings, invoices or similar documents for our publishers. For your records, we recommend printing your bank account statements or copying your check before cashing it. It may also be useful to print the detailed information regarding your earnings in your AdSense account on the pages 'Advanced Reports – Ad Performance', 'Advanced Reports – Search Performance' and in your 'Payment History' page.
Danijel (Croatia) asks:
When will AdSense be available in Croatian?
We say:
AdSense for search is now available in Croatian. Feel free to
sign up for an account
here.
Posted by Uladzimir - AdSense Publisher Support
Spotlight on... Ask the Builder
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
In our newest
case study
on Tim Carter from
Askthebuilder.com
, we explore how Tim was able to increase his website revenue from $10,000 a month to $30,000 a month through Google AdSense. We also provide some insight into his optimization techniques for advanced publishers.
We had the pleasure of meeting Tim in person a few weeks ago when he visited our Mountain View campus. Here he is in a picture with a few members of the AdSense team.
Posted by Cherie - AdSense Product Marketing
Your referral questions answered
Monday, November 07, 2005
Since we launched
referrals
last week, we've received a number of publisher questions about this new feature. So, we thought we'd clarify a few of the top issues that we continue to see:
Will Firefox plus Google Toolbar referrals be made available to publishers outside the U.S.?
Currently, Firefox plus Google Toolbar referrals are only available for U.S. publishers. However, we're continuing to improve the referrals feature and hope to make Firefox referrals available to international publishers soon.
UPDATED:
Firefox referrals are
now available
internationally.
Can publishers use language endorsing AdSense or Firefox plus the Google Toolbar (e.g., "I use Firefox with the Google Toolbar and recommend it to other web users")?
Including such language is fine. However, as with AdSense for content, publishers should not use language encouraging clicks on your referral buttons (e.g., "Click here", "Visit these links", etc). The
AdSense program policies
is the best place to find more specific information about referral policies.
What happens if a user who clicks on the Firefox referral button already has Firefox?
In this situation, the user will be redirected to the Google Toolbar for Firefox page. Because we only count referrals for Windows users who have not previously downloaded Firefox, this will not appear as a Firefox
conversion
in your reports.
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
Have you heard?
Friday, November 04, 2005
We've made it easier to spread the word about AdSense with
referrals
, our newest feature. Not only can you connect friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers with AdSense, but you can generate more earnings in the process.
It's easy: Visit the new "Referrals" tab in your AdSense account.
Pick out a referral button, and add it to your site. Users who sign up for AdSense through your referral button will learn about a great product, and you'll have a new way to generate revenue - $100 when each user you refer first earns $100.
In addition, if you are a U.S. publisher, for Firefox with Google Toolbar referrals we will pay up to $1 per referral the first time a user installs Firefox. (We hope to make this available soon to international publishers.)
UPDATE: Firefox referrals are
now available
internationally.
Posted by Mohammed - AdSense Product Marketing
Engineeringtalk talks
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
You might make frequent changes to the position and design of your ads, but it isn't often that you completely redesign your website. The next time your site is due for a full makeover, take a tip from
Engineeringtalk
and incorporate what you've learned from your AdSense optimization.
Engineeringtalk has been a successful AdSense publisher since June 2003. When the site's
old design
needed a rethink, the team went back to basics on the site navigation and structure. Realizing that the vast majority of visitors reached the site through search engines, editor Chris Rand wondered: "Why are we prioritizing on helping visitors find their way around the site when they've already come straight in to what they're looking for?" Moving site navigation from the prime ad positions - across the top and down the side - to a more logical place gave the team more options for ad placement.
Next, the team experimented with AdSense designs, focusing on optimization through typography and placement. They found the biggest influence on CTR was the similarity between the AdSense type (size and font), and the main body text of the page. The more similar the type, the higher the CTR.
The Engineeringtalk team found little difference in CTR between between left-versus-right positioning. So they opted for the right side, which proved useful a few months later, when the final piece of the jigsaw arrived - the introduction of
link units
. After another round of testing, it was no surprise that the link units worked best in the "prime position" as seen on the
"heatmap"
. The new design can be seen
here.
From his experience, Chris learned that it's best to incorporate your ads into redesign discussions right from the start. After experimenting with a new redesign he walked away with this new perspective:
“The recommended positions for AdSense ads are a great place to start, but don't assume they'll automatically be the best for your site, which is unique. Even more important, however, is the relationship between the typography of the AdSense ads and your site's design. Ask yourself if your website's current fonts, font sizes and colors are really that important to you, or if you'd be prepared to change them for better AdSense results!"
Posted by Phoebe - AdSense Publisher Support
Monday, October 31, 2005
Happy Halloween from all of us on the Google AdSense team!
Posted by 'The Long Tail' - Google AdSense Team
The facts about smart pricing
Friday, October 28, 2005
We've noticed a lot of talk recently about the phenomenon commonly referred to as 'smart pricing'. There are some misconceptions out there about this, so we wanted to provide a few facts about smart pricing and how to ensure you're maximizing your revenue.
1. Many factors determine the price of an ad
More than conversion rate goes into determining the price of an ad: the advertiser's bid, the quality of the ad, the other ads competing for the space, the start or end of an ad campaign, and other advertiser fluctuations.
2. Clickthrough rate doesn't affect advertiser return on investment (ROI)
The percentage of clicks that convert for an advertiser is the most important factor in an advertiser's ROI, so it's not only possible, but common, to have a low CTR and a high advertiser conversion rate. It's also possible to have a high CTR and a low conversion rate. Don't remove the AdSense code from your site just because it has a lower CTR - it may be one of your best converting sites.
3. Google doesn't make money from 'smart pricing'
In fact, we make less money, since the cost to advertisers is reduced in order to provide a strong ROI. Ultimately, this leads to higher payouts for publishers by drawing a larger pool of advertisers and rewarding publishers who create high quality sites.
4. Remember the old chestnut: "Content is King"
The best way to ensure you benefit from AdSense is to create compelling content for interested users. This also means driving targeted traffic to your site -- advertisers don't gain as much ROI when paying for generic clicks as they do for quality clicks that come from interest in your content. Good content usually equals a good experience for user plus advertiser, which can be much more valuable than CTR.
Keep in mind that like most Google technology, our system for calculating advertiser pricing gets updated regularly. We're constantly improving our ad products to benefit both the publisher and advertiser communities; what benefits one side ultimately benefits the other.
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
Where is that PIN?
Thursday, October 27, 2005
You've earned your first $50 through the AdSense program and your account pages say that a PIN was mailed to you two weeks ago. But where is it?
We understand that this is a concern for many publishers, and what we've noticed is that PINs often take longer than 2 weeks to arrive in the US (and between 3-4 weeks for international PINs). To help set realistic expectations, the AdSense team has changed the PIN request wait period to 3 weeks instead of 2 weeks.
After waiting 3 weeks, you're welcome to request up to two additional PINs, and as before, you can enter any of the PINs that you receive, regardless of which one arrives first.
Just a friendly announcement from AdSense Support. If you're still curious about PINs, feel free to stop by the
Receiving Payments help section
.
Posted by Dan - AdSense Publisher Support
Make the most of your ad units
Monday, October 24, 2005
By placing multiple ad units on your pages, you give users more relevant ads to choose from, and you may reap the rewards from more clicks as a result.
Here's where to go
to see if your pages can benefit from additional ad units.
Already placed the code but are showing fewer units than expected? This is because our multiple ad unit system works best for pages with highly targeted ads and therefore may only display the first few units (
See how a first ad unit is defined
).
For publishers who are familiar with HTML, here are some advanced tips:
1) Create a channel (
see AdSense Help
for creating channels) for each ad placement. For example, if you have a leaderboard on the top of the page, a skyscraper on the right hand side, and another leaderboard on the bottom of the page, make sure you have a channel for all the top leaderboards, a second for the right skyscrapers, and a third for the bottom leaderboards.
2) Test the channels for at least a week to compare which position has the greatest clickthrough rate.
3) Make sure the the ad unit with the
highest
clickthrough rate is the
first
instance of the ad code that appears in the HTML. Since the first ad unit is always filled before the rest, you want to make sure that ad unit is located in the best placement on your page.
Posted by Phoebe - AdSense Publisher Support
Work some magic with the new troubleshooting wizards
Friday, October 21, 2005
For Halloween season we thought we'd highlight some of the AdSense wizards that can help you create a little magic of your own.
Are public service ads showing on your site? Need some help filtering ads from appearing on your site? The new AdSense
troubleshooting wizards
can help you solve these issues quickly. Almost like magic.
Posted by Laura - AdSense Publisher Support
AdSense 101
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Recently, we've received some emails from readers who are looking for more information about program eligibility and how to get started. To answer your questions we thought you might find some of our online tools and information helpful.
If you're wondering what AdSense is all about, the AdSense
Quick Tour
is a great place to start.
No matter how much or how little traffic your site gets, you're welcome to
submit an application
. And once you're approved, you can add your AdSense ad code to any of your websites that meet our
program policies
.
Ready to get started? Don't miss a step - review the
Quick Start Guide
, or for a more interactive tutorial check out the
Getting Started with AdSense Demo
.
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
We get letters
Friday, October 14, 2005
Shortly after our
"Distorted images"
post, we received a letter from
Recipezaar
publisher Gay Gilmore:
What a surprise today!
I would have loved to comment on what great results we have seen since we implemented image ads, but you guys don't allow comments -- I understand why ;-) -- so I thought I'd pop an email.
Well, nothing makes us happier than to hear about publishers seeing great results, so we followed up with Gay to learn a little more about their success:
We've seen a 34% increase in AdSense revenues by allowing image ads in our ad codes and implementing
section targeting
on key pages. These technologies by their nature mean that impressions may initially drop, however, we have still seen increased revenues because our
eCPM
has doubled. Making more money from fewer impressions is a GREAT thing.
Of course Google doesn't give us all the stats yet on image v. text v. site-targeted ads, so we can't be sure exactly what the cause is ;-).
AdSense now offers us a more competitive eCPM than other ad publishing networks (without the annoying banners or attention-grabbing layer ads), so we are sending more and more traffic to Google. Our users are happier too. Because our AdSense ads are super-targeted, our customers tend to view them as "additional content" rather than diversionary advertising.
Thanks for the Link Love ;-)
Gay, thanks for sharing this part of your AdSense success story - and how additional reporting will be useful for you. No promises, but we'll keep doing our best to give you what you need to maximize your AdSense earnings.
Posted by Sandra - AdSense Publisher Support
Spotlight on . . . Weblogs, Inc.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Recently, we caught up with Jason Calacanis from
Weblogs, Inc.
who shared with us how he's taken his AdSense earnings to a new level. We really enjoyed speaking with Jason, and knowing how much you enjoy hearing from your fellow publishers, we're featuring him as our newest case study.
Check it out
and find out how he went from making a few hundred dollars a day to $3,000 a day with AdSense.
Jason is enjoying success on other fronts these days -
Weblogs, Inc. was just acquired by AOL
last week. Our congratulations to the team.
Posted by Cherie - AdSense Product Marketing
Searching for flexibility
Monday, October 10, 2005
We often hear the following question -
"In
AdSense for search
, how can I change the default search from Google to my own site?"
Many of you already know that you can add up to three sites alongside the google.com search when generating your AdSense for search code. Now that you have added your own site(s), you also have the flexibility to select one of these to be the default search.
The simple key is to select your site in the example box on the "Search code" page on the AdSense for search tab, so that the selected radio button is next to the site you would like to appear as default. Then the code will automatically reflect your selection.
Posted by Phoebe - AdSense Publisher Support
Six AdSense optimization tips for forums
Friday, October 07, 2005
1. Format is important for multiple ad units
Placing a
skyscraper
above the fold on the left side of your forum seems to produce slightly better performance than other positioning. However, when using multiple ad units throughout the page our horizontal bias still favors the leaderboard. See the Forum Heat Map below for more details.
2. Display your ad units wher
e repeat users will notice them
A leaderboard at the very top fits nicely next to the logo, but forum regulars tend to skip the header and go straight to the meat of the thread. Placing your ad unit above or below the first post can be more effective.
3. Place a leaderboard immediately after the last post
This provides users who make it to the end of a thread with a ‘next step’ when the content ends. If you place it after the footer, though, folks will move to the next thread before they even see the ad!
4. Use horizontal link units
Link units
offer a wider range of relevant topics for users to browse. A horizontal unit can be placed near the top of your forum just below the header.
5. Opt-in to image ads
Supporting image ads increases the pool of ads –particularly
cost-per-thousand-impression (CPM) ads
– bidding to display on your site. Since forums tend to have lower click-through rates (CTRs) than other types of sites, CPM ads can improve revenue without the need for clicks. Please remember, however, that CPM ads come in both text and image formats.
6. Be sensitive to your forum community
Forums are highly interactive, so be sensitive to your users when implementing your AdSense ads. Be sure to blend the ads nicely, so they don’t appear overly intrusive – but don’t blend them so well they mislead your users! Every forum site is different and you know your community best, so as always use your own judgment to create the most positive experience for your users.
Posted by Sandra - AdSense Publisher Support
A day in the life of Spencer
Friday, October 07, 2005
When you write to AdSense - whether it's for help with payments, troubleshooting or general feedback - I might be the guy who writes back. Since so many of you have shared your stories with me, I thought it was only fair to tell you a little bit about my role here at AdSense.
I try to roll into the office fairly early to beat the Bay Area traffic. Then, fortified with extra strong coffee, I spend most of my day responding to publisher emails and working on projects to improve AdSense publisher support. Somewhere in the noon range I break for lunch at one of the Google cafes - my favorite menu item is the carne asada burrito with guacamole. Since the California weather has been nice, I've been eating outside with friends. In the afternoon, I sometimes take a break for a game of foosball. Our office is filled with world class foosball players, of which I am not one. So the games don't tend to last very long.
Most of my time, though, is spent writing to publishers over email. It's a good feeling when I've helped publishers get paid, or can troubleshoot a problem so that ads start to appear on their pages. Our publisher base has a lot of energy and is incredibly diverse. I can be working with a publisher from Oregon one minute, and the next minute I might get an email from Lebanon. The best part about my job is being able to help people all over the world. Plus, I get to see a lot of cool websites every day. :)
Posted by Spencer - AdSense Publisher Support
Money talks
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
If you could talk to your AdSense earnings, you'd probably give them a pep talk ("Grow, baby, grow!"). If your AdSense earnings could talk to you, they'd want you to get to know them a little better. Though your earnings can't talk, we're happy to talk for them - just watch our updated
Payment Demo
. This video presentation will help you get personal with your earnings by learning more about how our payment process works and what payment methods are available to you.
The Demo walks you through the steps you'll need to take to receive payments, including submitting your tax information, entering your PIN, and selecting a form of payment. And it also guides you through the EFT sign-up process we highlighted
last week
.
Maybe after you've watched our Payments Demo, you feel like you've had a good long heart-to-heart with your AdSense earnings. You can even provide feedback about your bonding experience through our Payment Demo
feedback form
.
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
From the Inside AdSense International mail bag
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Vladimir asks:
Do you have any plans to offer other payment options to Russian publishers?
Inside AdSense says:
We’re working hard to provide additional payment options to a wider set of publishers, but we don’t currently have a date for when new options may become available in Russia or any other location. At this time, publishers in Russia are only eligible to receive payments in US Dollar checks.
Publishers in some other locations may have additional payment options available to them:
local currency checks
or
Electronic Funds Transfer
(EFT) .
We appreciate the patience of all our publishers while we work to expand our payment options.
Mark asks:
European publishers have been experiencing pretty big delays with PIN deliveries. I was wondering why you have to send it by post and not by email?
Inside AdSense says:
We mail each publisher a Personal Identification Number (PIN) in order to help verify publisher addresses, protect the personal information of our publishers, and ensure that payments can be received. We anticipate publishers will receive PINs 2-4 weeks after they are mailed, but it may take longer depending on your location.
We’ll always mail your PIN to the payment address in your account, so make sure that information is correct. If it’s not correct, you can always
update your information and
request a replacement PIN. Although your payments will be held while you’re waiting for your PIN, please rest assured that you’ll still be able to access your account and continue to accrue earnings.
If you don’t receive your PIN, or if it has been lost, you're welcome to request up to two additional PINs.
Deepak asks:
My website is built for India and targets the Indian population, but I’m based in Canada. Is there any way that I can ensure the ads are targeted to India?
Inside AdSense says:
AdSense uses geo-targeting to ensure that your Google ads are always targeted to your audience wherever they are located. AdWords advertisers choose which countries they’d like to target, and AdSense serves appropriately targeted ads based on the IP address of your users. This means that your users in India will see a different pool of ads than you will see in Canada.
To preview what ads your users in India or many other geographic locations are seeing, we recommend reading
our
previous post
on the
AdSense preview tool
.
Posted by Uladzimir - AdSense Publisher Support
Bye, bye, beta...
Friday, September 30, 2005
If you've logged into your account in the past couple days, you might've noticed that Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT for short) is officially out of beta. So what's changed? Our process for verifying bank account information has improved.
After you submit your bank account information, we will place a small test deposit into your bank account for you to keep. Once you see this test deposit credited to your account, just input the amount of the deposit into your AdSense account to help us verify your bank account information.
Testing your bank account before we make your payments means a greater chance of an error-free deposit. From now on, if you choose to use EFT, you can rest assured that we're taking the steps to make your payment successful.
We're excited about this launch and want to thank all of you who took part in our beta testing phase. We appreciate your help.
Posted by Alexa - AdSense Publisher Support
And many more...
Thursday, September 29, 2005
While we work to support you, we always appreciate your support, too. On Tuesday many of you sent us some very cheerful birthday wishes and we thought we'd share one of them with you:
Hello! Dear Sirs,
First of all we would like to congratulate you on Google's 7th Birthday. We wish all the best and wish you to stay on the top as world's Best search engine! Keep on this good work!
Best regards,
HITECHHOST.NET Team
A warm thank you to all of you who wrote in and granted our birthday wish: to keep making our users happy for many more years to come. Now, who wants some leftover cake? ;-)
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
Bloggggggger
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
We've just made it a lot easier for Blogger users to make money with their blogs. Our new integration with AdSense lets you sign up from within
Blogger
. And we've added a tool for inserting the ads in your blog (so you don't have to mess around with HTML). There are even built-in options that will analyze the colors on your blog and choose a recommended color scheme. Check out the
mad science
, why don'cha.
Posted by Jason - Blogger Manager
Tuning in to your feedback
Monday, September 26, 2005
As a member of the AdSense support team, I help publishers with everything
from
optimizing their ad implementation
to understanding the
AdSense payment schedule
. With the wide range of incoming inquiries and concerns, we are always looking for ways to better understand what's most important to our publishers.
Recently, I had the opportunity to work on a team with engineers and product managers to help redesign our "Ads by Google" page – the feedback page users land on when clicking on the "Ads by Google" link on each ad unit. Using your feedback and aiming to improve our response time, we added categorization buttons so that users can tell us if they are providing feedback about Google ads, AdSense publishers, or something entirely different, like how they enjoy exploring the Grand Canyon with
Google Earth
.
So far, we're seeing positive results with the new Ads by Google page, and we hope you like it. The new page allows us to quickly know if you love the Little Bow Wow Rap ad on your site, or if you are interested in a new feature. This helps us to understand and prioritize what is most important to web users and our publishers, and what features we should focus on implementing in the future. From time to time we may experiment with new designs to continue making this a more useful page - stay tuned.
Posted by Katie - AdSense Publisher Support
Preventing leaky filters
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Creating effective
Competitive Ad Filters
is easy as long as you follow a few simple guidelines. Here are some quick tips to improve your filters:
Tip 1: Don't use "www" in your Ad Filters
Ads should be blocked at the domain level. Frequently, publishers append "www" to their filters, such as using 'www.example.com' instead of 'example.com'. If you filter 'www.example.com' and the ad points to landingpage.example.com, the ad will continue to appear on your page. However, filtering 'example.com' will block ads from 'landingpage.example.com', 'example.com/subdomain', and 'www.example.com'.
Tip 2: Don't believe the myth about blocking 'low-paying advertisers'
Our auction system automatically selects the best performing ads for each page to help you earn the most possible money. This is especially true with our new
expanded text ads
. By filtering ads you think are low paying, you could actually be cutting out the most optimized ads and decreasing your revenue potential. Each ad that is filtered is one less bid in the auction, lowering the price for the winning ad on your site. You benefit most when there is a larger pool of advertisers competing for a place on your site. Additionally, when we calculate the auction, we take ad
clickthrough rates (CTR)
into account - an ad with a $0.25
cost-per-click (CPC)
with a 5% CTR is more valuable than an ad with a $1.00 CPC but a 0.1% CTR.
Learn more
about how the auction works.
Tip 3: Don't go overboard with filters
Only filter URLs when absolutely necessary. As mentioned, each URL you add to your filter list may cut into your AdSense revenue potential, so it's important to think carefully before deciding what to block.
Some publishers worry that competitive ads will affect their bottom line and they may overuse filters, limiting the ad inventory available for their site. Our advice? Test it. Some publishers don't use filters and sell at the same levels after adding AdSense to their pages. This might not be true for all publishers, but you should test first so that you know the actual effects before unintentionally reducing your AdSense revenue.
Posted by Bryan - AdSense Publisher Support
Tools of the trade
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
They say you learn something new every day. Today, maybe that something can be a new way to improve your website. Google has more tools for website publishers, so you can focus on creating content while we help with everything else. Recognize traffic trends on your site with
Urchin
. Or, add some interactivity with
Blogger
. Have some video content? Give
Google Video
a try to get the visibility it deserves.
If you're hungry for more ideas, visit our
publisher tools site
. Take advantage of the tools that make sense for your site, and you just might learn something in the process.
Posted by Mohammed - AdSense Product Marketing
See things before they happen
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Wish you could see your AdSense ads before pasting the code on your pages? With the
Google AdSense preview tool
for Windows Internet Explorer, you can. Even publishers who use the preview tool aren't always aware of all its useful features, so we decided to highlight a few gems:
Filter more efficiently – You don't have to wait until AdSense ads are on your page to block any unwanted ads from appearing. It’s quick and easy to preview your site’s ad inventory and add URLs to your
Competitive Ad Filter list
.
Test color schemes – You can preview your ads using a selection of
color schemes
, helping you to visualize how AdSense will look on your pages.
Experience geotargeting – Do you wonder whether your users in India are seeing the same Google ads as users in France? With
geotargeting
, AdWords advertisers choose specific countries they want to target. Then, AdSense determines where your users are located based on their IP address and serves geographically targeted ads accordingly. The preview tool allows you to see your site's ad inventory for a variety of locations.
Please note that if you're a newly approved AdSense publisher, the preview tool may not display relevant ads until your site content has been indexed by our crawler. This means you may have to run the AdSense code on one or two pages of your site before trying out the preview tool.
Posted by Suzie - AdSense Publisher Support
From the Inside AdSense mail bag
Monday, September 19, 2005
Amy asks:
I just pasted the Google code into my travel site, but the ads I'm getting are public service ads. Why is that?
Inside AdSense says:
If you’ve just pasted the code on your site, our crawlers need some time to gather information about the content of your page. For the first 48 hours after you put the code on your site, public service ads (PSAs) might show up, but you should expect ad relevance to increase over time.
If you do not see your ad relevancy improve within 48 hours, check that your page has enough text-based content for our crawlers to determine relevant ads to display.
If these tips don’t seem to apply in your case, you may find it helpful to
learn more about PSAs
so you can determine other reasons you may be seeing these types of ads.
Clarence asks:
Why won't the ads show up on my site? I copied and pasted the Google ad code from my account, and I could see the code appearing between the tags in my site's HTML source code. When I looked at my live website, though, no ads showed up at all. I tried to paste the AdSense code into my site a second time, but the AdSense code appeared as text on my live page. Help!
Inside AdSense says:
If you can see the code within the tags of your site's HTML source code but no ads show up on your site, you’re still on the right track.
First, double-check that you’ve copied the ad code exactly as it appears on the Ad layout code page of your account and pasted it into your source without any modification. Some web design programs automatically insert extra line break tags into the HTML code, or you might’ve accidentally removed a piece of the AdSense code when pasting. If the ad code is altered in any way, ads may not appear.
The second time you tried pasting the code, it sounds like something else might’ve happened involving the HTML editor you used to create your web page. If you’ve pasted the code into a 'what you see is what you get' (
WYSIWYG
) editor, this will often result in the Google ad code appearing as text on your live site.
For the ads to appear correctly, you'll need to copy and paste the AdSense ad code into the HTML code view of your page rather than into the WYSIWYG view. In your editor, this might be labeled as 'Code view', 'HTML view', or something similar. Some editors don’t have an HTML view and use an 'Insert HTML' function to paste HTML instead. If you're unsure where to paste the code, we recommend using our
HTML troubleshooting guide
or contacting your HTML editor's customer support center for assistance.
Posted by Carrie - AdSense Publisher Support
Reports done your way
Friday, September 16, 2005
You can customize hamburgers,
search results
, and the ring of your cellphone whenever your mom gives you a call. But can you customize your AdSense reports? You bet. Even better, you can view the customized reports at any time with just one click. Here's how:
On your
Advanced Reports
page, create a report with a variable date range (e.g. "yesterday", "today", etc.). Choose any combination of channels or just aggregate data to view all channels, then make a selection between page impressions or ad unit impressions.
Generate the report, and you'll notice a new text box appears above it. Type a name in the box and click "save". That's it - the report you've named will appear on your
Overview
page in the Custom Advanced Reports section and you can view it at any time with one click.
We hope this will free up the time you used to spend selecting the same set of channels over and over, so you can spend it doing other things - like
customizing your AdSense ad color palettes
.
Posted by Rob - AdSense Product Management
Feeds fixed
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Recently, we received emails saying that our feeds were not working properly – thank you for letting us know. We looked into it with a cool tool called,
Feed Validator
. It seems that we goofed and had added some invalid HTML. We’ve gone back and cleaned up those posts, and we have confirmed that the feed is now fixed.
Posted by Rob - AdSense Product Management
Mobile Sitemaps answers the call
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Back in August
, we recommended using Google Sitemaps to help Google crawl your content pages. Since then, Sitemaps has been updated to support mobile website URLs. We know that more users are searching the web from their cell phones and more publishers are creating web pages designed specifically for mobile devices. So, you can now use
Google Mobile Sitemaps
to tell Google about your new and changed mobile web pages, and increase your coverage in our mobile web index. (Incidentally, you can search through these mobile-specific websites using
Google Mobile Web Search
on your phone.)
Posted by Matt - Google Mobile Team
Good news for HTML newbies
Monday, September 12, 2005
You've signed up for AdSense. You've activated your account. You've chosen your ad format and colors. Now you're ready to paste your AdSense ad code into your site. Or are you? If you're new to HTML, you might find it a bit challenging to add our code into the HTML source of your pages. ("HTML source--what's that?")
Have no fear - our new
Troubleshooting Demo
is here! I've worked with other members of our support team to create an HTML Troubleshooting Demo that should help clear up the confusion so you can see the ads on your site without delay. The demo addresses many common issues new publishers face when adding the code to your site, including instructions for pasting the ad code using two common types of design software. It also provides a background on HTML, information on viewing your page source, and tips to address the top four problems faced by new publishers.
If you've used our demo, we
welcome your feedback
.
Posted by Kristin - AdSense Publisher Support
Prescription for G.A.S.S. relief
Friday, September 09, 2005
Now that stats are back up again, your
G.A.S.S.
is probably flaring up as well. We'd like to use this opportunity to introduce a "cure" to the syndrome. The new version of Google Desktop has a plug-in called 'AdSense Status'. This feature allows you to continuously monitor your AdSense earnings and avoid the hassle of logging in to your account every 15 minutes.
Of course, in order to treat your G.A.S.S. you'll first need to download the
new version of Google Desktop
. Then you'll need to go to the
plug-in page
(see example above) to download the AdSense Status feature. It's fast, easy and fun – and we hope it will cure your G.A.S.S. permanently.
Posted by Cathleen - AdSense Publisher Support
Distorted Images
Thursday, September 08, 2005
I’ve heard some ugly rumors circulating about image ads, and I want to separate the myths from the facts so publishers don’t miss out on an important revenue opportunity.
Myth:
Image ads take too long to load and I hate those ‘Shoot the Duck’-type ads
Fact:
We have strict
guidelines
for both animated and static image ads restricting them to a maximum size of 50 kb, so they’ll load quickly on your site – and no Shoot the Duck ads allowed!
Myth:
Image ads don’t pay as well as text ads
Fact:
All ads served by AdSense – whether image or text, contextual or
site-targeted
– go through the same auction process. Opting into image ads maximizes your site’s revenue potential by allowing a greater pool of advertisements to compete for space on your site. Image ads will only appear if our technology determines they will be more effective than any other ads for a particular page.
Myth:
Image ads aren’t relevant.
Fact:
When serving contextually-targeted ads, we use the same algorithm to match ads to your content whether image or text ads appear. With site targeting, an advertiser has determined that their ads are specifically relevant to your users (see example below).
So, here are some recommendations:
1) Under your ‘My Account’ tab, make sure that ‘Ad Type Preference’ is set to ‘Display text and image ads in all ad units’. Then, when generating your code on the ‘Ad layout code’ page, I recommend checking ‘Use my default account setting’ under ‘Ad Type’ (see example below).
2) Check the HTML source code for each page where you are running the AdSense ad code to make sure you have opted into both text and image ads (i.e., google_ad_type should be set to “text_image”)
3) Make sure you are using an
ad format
that supports image ads to take full advantage of this option.
4) Test the image ad option on a small subset of your pages for at least 2 weeks and track the progress using
URL channels or a custom channels
. This will allow you see whether image ads are effective for you. More data means that you can make educated decisions about your site. Try image ads and see the results for yourself.
Posted by Phoebe - AdSense Publisher Support
Temporary G.A.S.S. Relief
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Speaking to AdSense publishers at face-to-face events and in reading emails and forums, we on the AdSense team have seen a phenomenon develop that's probably best described as G.A.S.S. - Google AdSense Stats Syndrome. The primary sign of affliction is the compulsive need to check AdSense stats every 15 minutes or so to see how much you've earned since your prior login. Sufferers face strong withdrawal when separated from a PC with Internet access and have been known to experience mild abdominal discomfort and general irritability.
So for you G.A.S.S. sufferers, we will offer a bit of temporary summer relief this Thursday. For some scheduled maintenance, our reports will not be (visibly) updated for around 6 hours beginning at 12 noon PST (GMT -8 for you international folks). Your earnings will of course be unaffected, but you won't see any change in stats during this time as we work to improve the AdSense system.
Please enjoy the day and rest assured that things will be back to normal as soon as possible.
Posted by Rob - AdSense Product Marketing
Playing a small part
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Echoing the
sentiments Kim posted last week
, a member of our team recently suggested that we use
PSAs
to increase awareness of the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Our team agreed that this was a great idea and we worked together to make it happen. Starting last Friday, all of our PSAs began directing help to specific charities aiding those affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Posted by Allen - AdSense Publisher Support
A note for the weekend
Friday, September 02, 2005
This Labor Day weekend I’d like to send my best wishes to all those affected by Hurricane Katrina. This is a part of the country I visited often growing up and have always loved. Please know that we at Google are thinking of everyone in the region.
Posted by Kim - AdSense Director
Link up
Thursday, September 01, 2005
If you'd like to offer your readers something different in the way of relevant content, give
link units
a try. Link units offer a unique design and implementation that can adapt to your site and your readers' interests.
Each link unit displays a list of topics relevant to the content of your site, and when users click on one of these topics, they're brought to a page of AdWords ads related to that topic. Though you won't receive earnings for clicks on the topics, you'll be paid for user clicks on any of the AdWords ads on the resulting page.
Link units are available in several
adformats
designed to complement your site's layout. You might wish to place a
horizontal link unit
near a horizontal navigation bar (see the example above). Or, you could use a
vertical link unit
near a sidebar navigation menu (see example below).
For even more effective placement, we suggest creating a color scheme for your link unit that blends with the background of your site.
UPDATED: formatting
Posted by Kristin, AdSense Publisher Support
Channel your energy
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Different sites have different optimization needs - where some sites benefit from simple changes like switching to a wider ad format, others see more improvements after changing ad placement or color. Subtle changes can produce significant results. The key is to experiment, measure, and find what works best for your site. That's where
channels
come in.
Using your channels can help you see a more complete picture of how different types of ads are performing on your site. Do leaderboards perform better than skyscrapers? Or do ads above a navigation bar perform better than ads next to it? Channels help you measure the results. Assign a custom channel to each of the different ad formats running on your site to measure which ones perform best - then you can make changes to maximize your findings.
Here's another tip: include page name, position, ad format, and color in your channel name so you can easily identify what each channel is measuring. 'HomeTopLeaderMotherEarth' tells you the channel is reporting on the leaderboard at the top of the home page with the Mother Earth color palette. These names might look a little funny, but they can help you combine channels into more detailed and valuable reports.
Read more of these
tips
and
learn more
from your fellow AdSense publishers who have implemented similar strategies.
Posted by Bryan - AdSense Publisher Support
Maybe they really are looking for a "needle in a haystack"?
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
What do your site visitors really want? To find out you could commission an expensive six month research study involving focus groups, demographic trending and expert consultants.
Or you could deploy
AdSense for Search
and use the "Top Queries" reporting feature to see the Top 25 searches performed on your site. It's a peek inside the minds of your visitors (x-ray equipment not included). To see it in action, check out your Quick Reports section or go to Advanced Reports for even more customization options.
Not yet using AdSense for Search on your website? Click on the AdSense for Search tab inside AdSense to get started. With web and site search running you'll begin collecting the data you need to build out your content to match your visitor's interests. And make some money while you're at it.
Posted by Hunter - AdSense Product Manager
From the trenches: a publisher's story
Monday, August 29, 2005
We recently caught up with Dan Hogan from
ScienceDaily magazine
to learn more about his experiences as a web publisher and how AdSense programs are an integral part of his online business. Dan found it easy to get started and after some experimentation and suggestions from the AdSense support team on ad placement, he quickly saw a 10 percent increase in his
effective CPM
. "Google provided great suggestions for ad format and placement, which helped us optimize our results," Dan reports.
With these results from
AdSense for content
, Dan decided to also try
AdSense for search
on his website in hopes of increasing his revenue potential and perhaps providing another useful service to his visitors.
Since then, Dan says, "AdSense for search performs extremely well. It gives us an exceptional clickthrough rate of 10 percent and generates 10 to 20 times the clicks of a job search service we've tried. Plus, by using Google site search, I can now drive traffic to content on ScienceDaily that visitors might not find otherwise."
Read more about
Dan's story
and those from other publishers on the
News and Case Studies
page.
Posted by Christine - AdSense Publisher Support
From the Inside AdSense mail bag
Friday, August 26, 2005
Rowland asks:
I signed up for AdSense with my blog URL, but I’d like to paste AdSense on my forum site as well. Do I have to submit a new application?
Inside AdSense says:
You don't have to submit a new application to add your code to a new site. As long as your pages comply with our policies, you can put your code on them - whether they share the same domain name as your original site or not. We'll detect the new pages once the code is there, and we'll start serving ads to them almost immediately.
Jackie asks:
I added my competitor’s URL to my filter list last week, and ads for this competitor continue to appear on my site. Can you figure out what’s wrong?
Inside AdSense says:
Jackie, here are three tips for creating effective filters:
1) Make sure that you have added these URLs to your AdSense for Content filter list rather than your AdSense for Search filter list.
2) As you know, some AdSense ad formats contain a URL within the ad text. However, filtering this URL wouldn’t necessarily block ads from this advertiser. To create effective filters, you should verify that you’re filtering the
destination
URL of the ad. For instructions on how to determine the destination URL, check out the
Competitive Ad Filter Guide
.
3) If you're keen on blocking all ads from a particular site, and you've found the destination URL, you can enter simply
domainname
.com in your filter list (where
domainname
is, of course, the domain name in their destination URL). Dropping the www. and any folder or file names will ensure that
anything
coming from that site will be blocked from your pages.
David asks:
I recently posted several blog entries about airplanes, but the ads are still targeted to an old post about kites. How can I get AdSense to show ads about airplanes?
Inside AdSense says:
Crawling is done automatically by our bots, and we don’t manually control how often your pages get indexed but we’re always trying to improve how quickly we can crawl your pages to display the most relevant ads. When you update a site or add new content, you may have to wait until these changes are reflected in our index before relevant ads appear. During this time, your ads may be targeted to older content.
In the meantime, you may be interested in trying a new feature, section targeting, to improve the relevancy of ads appearing on your blog. Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you'd like us to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site's content.
Here's more information
.
Posted by Suzie
Keeping your account alive and well
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Occasionally, we get emails from publishers who are worried about having their AdSense accounts disabled. And recently,
we've seen that others have been talking about it too
. While we do take our
program policies
seriously, no one should lose any sleep over their AdSense account -- after all, there's a person behind every one of them. And a big part of maintaining a positive experience is working with publishers to understand the policies. In every possible case we first try to work with the publisher over email to remedy the issue -- and in nearly every case there is a quick and easy solution. (You might want to add
adsense-support@google.com
to your email contacts list to make sure any email messages about your account make it past your spam filters.)
We know you care about your AdSense account and we do too. As long as you're familiar with our simple guidelines, we're positive we can continue to work together for a very long time.
Ben, AdSense Publisher Support
Machines Can't Dream, Part II
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Yesterday we talked about the site targeting feature that was released within the past few months. As we introduce new ways of targeting ads, we also need new ways of capturing user and advertiser value. That's why our system now supports
cost-per-impression (CPM) bidding
. This lets advertisers try out their best ideas while we make sure that that the right economic incentives are in place.
Regardless of bidding method and format, all ads compete for placement on a page - and that means the winning ad meets a high bar for user value . Since site-targeted CPM ads and keyword-targeted CPC ads compete for every slot on a publisher's site, this improves how you make money.
For many publishers, site targeting actually serves as a sales team. When advertisers want to buy space on your site, tell them, "Just bid directly on our site using Google AdWords site targeting!" And the ads placed by our system will run alongside ads targeted directly by marketers.
Posted by Gokul - AdSense Product Manager
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