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Inside AdSense
Google's official blog for news, tips and information on AdSense.
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Monday, August 10, 2009
To date, we've been sharing AdSense information with you through this blog, Twitter, the AdSense Help Center, and the AdSense Help Forum. You also expressed your interest in Facebook by creating a number of AdSense groups, and we listened. We're pleased to announce that the official
AdSense Facebook Fan Page
is now up and running! A one-stop shop for up-to-date information, our Facebook Fan Page will be synched with the blog and Twitter, and will house optimization photos and videos that are currently found on our YouTube channel. (If you're unfamiliar with Facebook, learn more on
Facebook's profile
.)
The AdSense Facebook Fan Page will open up a new method of communication between our team and our publishers. You'll be able to respond to poll questions and complete surveys, helping our team better understand your needs so we can keep improving our products. You can also find out about upcoming events under the 'Events' tab and look out for posts about new AdSense features, webinars, and more on our wall. Our team will be contributing to the page, so be sure to check the page often for different opportunities to provide us with your input and learn more about AdSense.
To make this new page as useful as possible to all of our publishers, we won't be responding via Facebook to questions regarding individual AdSense accounts. Please continue to visit our
Help Center
and
Help Forum
to troubleshoot your specific issues.
Sign up to become a fan, and start taking advantage of all of the benefits our official Facebook Fan Page has to offer.
Posted by Simone Davis -
Inside AdSense
Team
Site maintenance on Saturday, August 8
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Our engineers will be performing
routine site maintenance
this Saturday from 10am to 2pm PDT. Although you won't be able to access your AdSense or Ad Manager accounts during this time, your clicks, impressions, and earnings will continue to be recorded as normal. In addition, ad serving and ad targeting on your pages won't be affected.
For our international readers, here's the maintenance start time converted for a few cities around the world:
London - 6pm Saturday
Athens - 8pm Saturday
Mumbai - 10:30pm Saturday
Kuala Lumpur - 1am Sunday
Melbourne - 3am Sunday
Posted by Arlene Lee -
Inside AdSense
Team
Extending the category filtering beta for English-language ads
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
In April, we gave you a
sneak peek
into category filtering, a new feature we've been developing to give publishers more control over their ads. Today, we're excited to announce that we're extending the beta to publishers in a number of English-speaking countries including, but not limited to, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S.
As a reminder, category filtering lets you prevent ads from up to 5 specific categories such as religion, politics, and dating from appearing on your pages. Your filters will be applied to ads in English, regardless of how they're targeted. In addition, you'll be able to see the percentage that each category contributes to your earnings, which can help you understand any revenue impact you might notice as a result of filtering.
Based on feedback from our initial beta testers, we've also made a few improvements to the feature:
Ad impression impact
: To give you a better sense of how many ads you'd be filtering, we've now added an extra column to show you the percentage of ad impressions on your pages which fall into each category.
More accurate percentages
: Ad impression and earnings percentages are now calculated based on impressions from the previous 30 days instead of three. This extended time frame should provide a more accurate picture of the types of ads you're receiving and how much revenue they're contributing.
Category descriptions
: We've added details about each category directly within your account to help you understand the types of ads that may fall into each.
To see whether category filtering has been enabled for your location, sign in and visit the
Ad Review Center
, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. We're working on expanding this beta to additional languages and countries, and will be sure to announce any updates here on the blog. If you'd like to learn more about category filtering, please visit our
Help Center
.
Posted by Arlene Lee -
Inside AdSense
Team
In North America? We recommend EFT for your next payment
Thursday, July 30, 2009
We want to get you paid by the fastest means possible. As many of you know, we offer Western Union in
23 countries
and courier service in
many other countries
.
We'd like to take a minute to remind our North American publishers that the fastest way for you to receive your payments is via Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). EFT is quick and easy to set up. When payments are issued, there's no need to wait for the delivery in the mail -- the funds appear in your bank account shortly after they're issued. That means if we processed a payment for you this month, your earnings would be in your bank account already.
Also, EFT is good for the environment, since a check doesn't need to take a ride by sea, plane, or land to reach you. In available locations, it's the Google-recommended form of payment, so we hope you won't hesitate to sign up. You can learn more in our
Help Center
.
To our publishers in regions where we don't offer EFT yet, please know that we're always working towards expand our payment options, so stay tuned to
Inside AdSense
to learn when new forms of payments launch in your location.
Posted by Elizabeth Ferdon - AdSense Payments Team
Tips for maintaining an AdSense-friendly site with user-generated content
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
These days, user-generated content is everywhere, from the comments below newspaper articles, to the photos and videos shared on social networks. So it's no surprise that many publishers are monetizing this type of content with AdSense ads. But, while you're familiar with types of content which are compliant with the
AdSense program policies
, your users might not be. We understand that it's not always easy to monitor hundreds of new comments, posts, user profiles, videos, or photos every day, so here are a few ideas on how to maintain an advertiser-friendly environment on your pages.
As a quick note before we head into the tips, remember that inappropriate content can come in many forms -- images, forum posts, comments, links, and so on. For example, adult content isn't only limited to pornographic images; it can also be sexually explicit forum posts or spam bot comments with links to adult sites, which aren't permitted by our policies. We recommend reviewing our previous
Inside AdSense
post on this topic
for further clarification and a few tests you can try on your content.
Now for the tips, which we've divided in two sections - 'Prevention' and 'Monitoring'.
Prevention
Here are some recommendations for ways to prevent your ads from appearing alongside user-generated content that isn't compliant with our policies:
Publish clear content guidelines and policies that your users will have to accept and adhere to in order to sign up and use your site's services.
If you own a photo or video sharing site where users are permitted to upload adult or other non-compliant content, clearly structure your content to avoid placing your ad code in sections/categories containing this type of content. The same idea could also be easily applied to online stores with adult sections or to classifieds sites which offer adult dating classifieds.
Ask users to tag their inappropriate content (e.g. sexually suggestive pictures or videos) as being non family-safe. This can help you perform human evaluations of potentially inappropriate content for AdSense ads. You can also try installing keyword filters for content related to adult topics, violence, or drugs, for instance. While we're unable to provide you with details about setting up these filters for your site, we recommend searching for terms such as "keyword filtering" or "content filtering" on Google.com.
Implement spambot protection for your comment forms, forums, and guest books. If you need more information on this topic, try a Google search for "spambot protection".
Monitoring
We suggest these tips to ensure that your existing user-generated content pages remain compliant with our policies:
Set up ways for your community to monitor itself. For example, try adding a "Report inappropriate content" link to your pages, to allow users to flag content for you to review.
Proactively review pages, videos, photos, etc. with high pageviews on a regular basis.
Spot-check content based on keywords, content search, or related user accounts. For example, try entering keywords related to inappropriate content in your own search engine and checking the results. Alternatively, you can search on Google.com using the following parameter, replacing 'example.com' with your own site's URL and 'keyword' with a specific word or phrase: "site:example.com keyword".
Create editorial policies and exercise moderator control in your comments, forums, and guestbook sections.
We hope you find these tips helpful. You can also read related information and suggestions from our Search Quality Team in
a recent post
on the Webmaster Central Blog. If you have any other ideas, or if you've already implemented similar measures on your sites with user-generated content, please feel free to leave a comment below and share your experience.
Posted by Gergana Marinova - AdSense Publisher Support
Inside...Google Ad Manager
Thursday, July 23, 2009
In March 2008, we launched Google Ad Manager, our
ad management solution
for publishers with small direct sales teams. Following the rapid growth of this product, we're excited to announce that we're now devoting a new blog to Ad Manager at
http://googleadmanager.blogspot.com
. The Ad Manager team has lots of information to share, and we encourage you to visit the new blog for the latest Ad Manager news, tips, and resources.
For those of you new to Ad Manager, it can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and network-based ad inventory. It offers an intuitive and simple user interface, Google serving speed and reliability, and significant cost savings. Best of all, Ad Manager can be optionally
integrated
with AdSense to offer you an automated way to maximize the revenue of your unsold and network-managed inventory. If you don't have an account yet, visit
http://www.google.com/admanager
. We also recommend looking through our two-part series on
getting started
.
Thanks for following our Ad Manager posts here on
Inside AdSense
for the past year; we hope that you'll stop by and visit the new Ad Manager blog for the latest announcements and tips.
Posted by Stephen Kliff - Google Ad Manager Team
Expanding availability of local currency reports
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
We've been working to enable local currency reporting in more countries, and are happy to announce that this feature is now available for publishers located in Denmark and Norway. As a reminder, switching to these new reports means that all earnings generated from advertisers paying in other currencies will be converted to your local currency each day. If you receive payments in your local currency, there won't be any additional conversions at the end of the month, but you can still update your payment method and currency at any time.
If you're located in one of these countries, we recommend that you first
download
and save copies of your past reports in U.S. dollars for your records. Once you're ready to switch to local currency reports, sign in to your account and look for the green prompt in the upper right hand corner of your Reports Overview page. Click on the link, and you'll then be asked to agree to a new set of
Terms and Conditions
. If you have questions or need legal advice on interpreting the new Terms, please don't hesitate to contact your attorney.
We encourage you to switch to local currency reports soon, as we'll be requiring this change in the future. To learn more about these new reports, visit our
Help Center
or review common FAQs in a
recent Inside AdSense blog post
-- all references to 'Euros' in the post now also apply to your local currency.
Updated for accuracy
Posted by Arlene Lee -
Inside AdSense
Team
Speeding up: Attracting more advertiser spend
Thursday, July 16, 2009
In the final week of our educational series about speeding up your business in a slowdown, you'll hear tips from Christian Ashlock, an AdSense Optimization team manager, about attracting additional advertiser spend. If you have any final suggestions for growing your business, we hope you'll leave them as comments. If you missed a week or want to re-read tips from our team, you can revisit the series at any time at
www.google.com/ads/speedingup
.
I'm Christian Ashlock, and I manage an AdSense optimization team at Google that works to help publishers get the most out of their AdSense accounts. Once you create a site with great content and great ad inventory, the best way to earn additional revenue is to make sure advertisers can find you. Today, I'll share two tips to help attract advertisers to spend money on your site, and a third tip to help you access a new pool of advertisers you may not currently be reaching.
Tip #1: Define ad placements in AdSense so that AdWords advertisers can find them and bid directly for them.
Ad placements
are simply
custom channels
that you can expose to advertisers to encourage more placement targeting spend on your site. Ad placements are most effective for sites with lots of different topics or with different sections like articles, a blog, and a forum. You can set up ad placements based on specific categories of interest on your site, like fine arts or sports. You can also set up ad placements to cater to advertisers who are more interested in specific ad unit locations, like above the fold placements, or popular ad unit sizes including the 300x250 medium rectangle or 728x90 leaderboard.
Tip #2: Help advertisers find your inventory outside of AdWords.
Google Ad Planner is a media planning tool that advertisers use to find sites for their media buys. With the recently launched
Publisher Center
in Ad Planner, you can claim your site and provide information that helps advertisers better understand your content, audience and advertising options. You can also share your Analytics data with Ad Planner to ensure that advertisers see the most accurate traffic numbers for your site. All of this will help advertisers who use Ad Planner as a media planning tool understand the value of your site, and may even help new advertisers learn that your site exists!
Tip #3: Tap into a new set of advertisers: search advertisers.
Google has relationships with many advertisers -- some advertise on Google.com, some advertise on our partner sites through the AdSense program, and many do both. You can tap into advertisers who choose to advertise on our search partner sites by using
AdSense for search
. AdSense for search lets your site's visitors find what they're looking for on your site and across the web. Just like on Google.com, we'll display ads targeted to what your visitor is looking for along with the search results.
Additional Resources:
Learn more
about placement-targeted advertising, and read about
best practices
for setting up ad placements.
To get the most out of AdSense for search, try our five
optimization tips
.
Thanks for following our educational series for the last five weeks. We hope you've gained a better understanding of the tools and resources you can use to improve your site and your AdSense earnings.
Posted by Talia Brodecki - AdSense Product Marketing
Now offering AdSense in Google Sites
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
As an AdSense publisher, you manage and develop websites.
Google Sites
is a free product that simplifies the process of creating secure group websites, whether you're building a family website or a company intranet. You can publish pages with the click of a button, edit web pages like documents, and add videos, presentations, and calendars to your pages. Information is stored securely online, and you decide who can edit or view the site. And now, with
a recent integration
, you can place AdSense ads on Google Sites to earn money.
If you're new to Google Sites, we encourage you to take it for a test drive today. After you've built out your site and ensured that it complies with our
program policies
, follow
these instructions
to add AdSense to your pages. You'll have the option to place ads in the sidebar as well as the main content of each page, and you can choose the formats that work best for your site. If you're not sure where to start, we encourage you to check out our
optimization tips
to make sure you're maximizing your site's revenue.
For more information about getting started with Google Sites, watch this video:
Posted by Ryan Rennaker - AdSense API Team
Speeding up: Increasing your revenue potential
Thursday, July 09, 2009
It's week four of our five-week educational series about speeding up your business in a slowdown, which we kicked off
three weeks ago
. Today, you'll hear tips from Mel Ann and Tim, two AdSense Optimization Specialists from our Sydney, Australia office as they take you through a complete optimization. The series will conclude next week with tips to attract more advertiser spend. Keep on commenting with your own suggestions for growing your business! You can also follow the series at
www.google.com/ads/speedingup
.
Mel Ann and Tim are two AdSense Optimization Specialists from the Google office in Sydney, who work with publishers to help them improve the performance of their ads. Today, they'll walk you through a 5-step process to optimize the AdSense ads on your sites, and will also share tips that many publishers have found successful.
Step 1: Analyze your webpages
The first step to a successful optimization is to analyze your webpages. Ask yourself the following questions as you think about where to place ads on your site:
What type of content do you have? People interact differently on articles, forum, and video sites, for example, so think about how people will be interacting on your site.
Where is visitor attention likely to be focused? You should place ads where your users are most likely to look, but as Ricardo Prada mentioned in
week two
of this series, make sure that they won't get in the way of users trying to complete tasks on your site.
How can you integrate ads into an area without getting in the way of your users? You can view a
heat map
we've put together showing where ads perform well, and keep in mind that above the fold ads and ads close to primary content tend perform better.
Don't forget to think about how advertisers would like to appear. If you can make your site more appealing to advertisers, while keeping the above tips in mind, you're more likely to be able to attract advertisers and
placement targeted
ads.
Step 2: Set up custom channels
Custom channels
will help you figure out how different ad units are performing based on a number of variables you can choose, like placement, size, and color. Create a channel for individual ad units and categorize them to see how they're performing. For example, you can track your leaderboard and medium rectangle to see which performs better, and use this information in step four below. Custom channels will also allow you to track and measure results from your optimizations.
Step 3: Optimize your ad unit design and placement
The next step is to look at color, position, and size of your ad units and optimize these for user experience, advertiser experience, and performance. We've found that the medium rectangle (300 x 250), wide skyscraper (160 x 600), and the leaderboard (728 x 90) tend to perform best. You can also opt in to image ads to receive rich media and video ads, which tend to perform well too. It's important that you implement your ads in a consistent manner and in a way that is desirable to advertisers. Use colors effectively. Blend ads in, but not too much that users don't see them. Borderless ads tend to work well, as does highlighting the link and URL. Test different colors and placements, and then keep the changes that perform best.
Step 4: Maximize revenue from multiple units
We recommend adding multiple ad units to your pages, while still keeping the user experience in mind when deciding on placements. You can use custom channel reporting to determine which ad unit performs best, and structure your page to optimize performance based on that. The highest paying ad we have for your site will be shown in the
first ad unit
that shows up in your HTML code. If you have a leaderboard at the top, but learn with custom channel reporting that a medium rectangle halfway down the page is outperforming it in terms of CTR and eCPM, try putting the medium rectangle first in your HTML code. You can do this by switching the location in the HTML if you're comfortable editing the code, or by changing the actual location of the leaderboard on the page.
Step 5: Track and measure results
The last step is to understand whether your optimizations have made a difference. Here, use the custom channels you set up earlier to generate reports on your different ad units.
Generate reports
on your custom channels and group results by channel (remember, this depends on how you've set them up) to see how different sizes, colors, and placements are performing. You can also look at
placement targeting reports
to see which ad units are receiving placement-targeted ads, and if they've resulted in improved performance.
We hope these steps and tips are informative, and strongly encourage you to take the time to try an optimization on your own.
Additional Resources:
We'll be re-hosting the optimization webinar from last month again on Thursday, July 23 at 11am PST.
Sign up
if you're interested in attending.
You can also see valuable information in
Analytics
after linking your AdSense and Analytics accounts.
For more advanced optimization, you can use
Website Optimizer
to run live experiments based on ad placement, format and more.
Posted by Talia Brodecki - AdSense Product Marketing
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