Adsense Primer

Adsense For Domains Launched By Google

2008-12-11T22:43:00.003+05:30

Google has announced the launch of 'Adsense for domains' for publishers having undeveloped domains. Currently, this option will be available to English speaking Adsense publishers in North America. In the coming months, it will be expanded to other parts of the globe.

Publishers must read the guidelines and policies, before using their undeveloped domains for 'Adsense for domains'.

Adsense Statistics Integrated With Google Analytics

2008-10-24T08:56:00.004+05:30

Finally, Google has initiated the process of integrating publishers Adsense statistics with their Google Analytics account. The integration is being done in phased manner, and you will get an invitation link in your Adsense account to merge your Adsense stats with Analytics account, once it is activated for your account.

Millions of publishers across the globe were panting for this feature, and finally Google has fulfilled their requests. After integration with Analytics, publishers will get tons of stats related to Adsense that can help them in developing better monetization strategies.

Adsense Invites Publishers To Beta Test Adsense For Games

2008-10-08T09:50:00.003+05:30

Google Adsense has announced a new array of ads called Adsense for Games. These ads will be tightly integrated with online games played in web browser. According to estimates, there are about 200 million online gamers who play games in their web browser.

The new ad technology of Adsense will enable publishers to show ads in their games. At present Adsense for games is in beta stage, and Google has invited selective publishers to test these ads. Their are some minimum requirements, that every publisher must fulfill for taking part in beta testing of these ads.

All the prerequisites and online application form can be found here. Publishers can also visit Google's games site to get more information about this program.

Google Testing New Adsense Ad Formats

2008-09-25T18:15:00.003+05:30

Google has been testing some new ad formats of Adsense in lat few weeks. Here is one screen shot from one of my blog.

Image Credit: Google

As we can see there are black dividers between ads with similar borders on either sides.

I am not sure whether these ad formats will be for 'Adsense for content', if at all they are finally implemented. They appear to be more suitable for 'Adsense for feeds'.

What is your opinion about this new ad format?

How To Earn More From Adsense

2008-09-14T20:51:00.002+05:30

Sometimes new Adsense publishers struggle to generate enough income from their initial experience. Some experiment and learn by collecting extensive data, while others remain clueless about optimizing their monetization strategy.

Remember, if you want to earn something from any PPC program, the first step is to make a site with genuine valuable content. Everything else will supplement it.

Here are some useful articles on Adsense Primer to get more out of your monetization efforts.

Ad Placement Strategy: An Introduction
Ad Blindness and Palette Rotation:An Introduction
How To Optimize Site Content for Adsense
Adsense Link Units Optimization
Monetization Techniques
How To Attract Targeted Traffic For Higher Adsense Payouts
How To Boost Your Adsense Revenue

With some well known strategies and experimenting we can increase our Adsense earnings significantly.

Google Announces General Availability of Google Ad Manager

2008-08-27T13:37:00.002+05:30

Google has finally announced the formal launch of Google Ad Manager for publishers. The application will help publishers manage their ad campaigns and ad inventory. Publishers have the option of tightly integrating their Adsense account with the Ad Manager to better manage their ad inventory.

No invitation or review process is required for signing up for Google Ad Manager. Adsense publishers can directly login at https://google.com/admanager/login/en_US/index.html and can start using it immediately. At present, the user interface is available in 32 languages.

Publishers can have access to loads of video tutorials from within their account to better understand the working of Ad Manager.

Adsense FAQs

2008-08-25T11:01:00.011+05:30

Often new publishers are clueless about proper implementation of code and various terms and conditions. Here are some FAQs that are mostly asked by the people.

Image Credit: alexanderdrachmann

Q. For every new website, do I need to apply again?
Answer: No, once you have your Adsense account running, you can use it for any number of sites you own, provided they all follow Adsense guidelines.

Q. Me and my friend both want to share same web page for our ads. Can we paste ads of two different Adsense accounts on the same page?
Answer: Yes, you can paste :-)

Q. My CTR is high. Is this anything to worry about?
Answer: No, CTR is a variable factor that fluctuates depending on the type of site and how well it is optimized for Adsense ads. However, if you notice sudden increase in clicks average, you must contact Adsene team with log details.

Q. Can I have two separate Adsense accounts?
Answer: No, you can't. But you may obtain several Adsense accounts, if they are registered under distinct business entities. It is always advised to make the picture clear before Google while applying in such cases.

Q. My site's PR is 0. It means I will get low paying ads?
Answer: No, CPC of ads has nothing to do with the PR of the site. It depends on the type of ads that are served on your pages.

Adsense For Feeds: Are You Ready For It?

2008-08-16T16:48:00.002+05:30

Finally, as it was already anticipated, 'Adsense for Feeds' has been introduced by Google. Now publishers can see this option in their Adsense Setup tab. However, some questions and concerns remains in the minds of publishers.

The migration of Feedburner feeds to Adsense account has made many publishers to adopt wait and watch policy. The customization and placement of ads in the feeds will not be under direct control of the publisher. We can predict some changes in the coming weeks as more feedback will reach Adsense center.

Ad Space Sharing: Publishers Dilemma

2008-08-01T09:22:00.003+05:30

Often we have seen in forums and bulletin boards, that publishers are asking for questions related to ad space sharing. One of the most common question that is asked related to as space sharing is: "Can two publishers display their ads on same web page?"

Image credit: Mikey G Ottawa

Adsense team also got thousands of queries for the same question, and finally they decided to answer it and make things clear for the publishers.

Adsense has categorically made it clear that two publshiers can share the same ad space on a single page, provided they comply to Adsense T&C. The Adsense team has also made it clear that there is no mechanism of revenue sharing in such cases and accounts will be credited on the basis of clicks on specific ads of individual publishers. It may happen that one publishers gets maximum clicks on a page, while others poorly positioned ad may not get even a single click.

Google Affiliate Network: Alternative For Adsense Referrals Program

2008-07-27T15:06:00.003+05:30

As we all know that Adsense referrals program is retiring from last week of August, 2008. A large number of publishers were upset with this recent development, because a good share of their Adsense earnings was coming from the referrals program. Fortunately, Google has provided the alternative for referrals program, called Google Affiliate Network.

Image Credit: Google Inc.

Adsense publishers can apply for it giving their site details and can start earning from product referrals, once their site gets approved. GAN brings Advertisers and Publishers on one platform. Cost per action (CPA) model is basis of this referrals program, and the account of publisher is only credited when a visitor performs some action after clicking the referral link.

Advantage of using this affiliate network is huge inventory of referral ads to choose from.

Ad Placement Strategy: An Introduction

2008-07-13T13:01:00.004+05:30

A large number of web publishers have no concrete ad placement strategy. They simply paste their ads at well known locations and forget it. A good ad placement strategy is not formulated in one day. It is an evolving process and is refined after analyzing the ad performance data on regular basis.

Image Credit: ktheory

Outline The Basics

Make sure you first make a heat map of your web pages and find out where visitors click most in your pages. Use Clickheat to track it. Once you have collected the sufficient data about meaty click zones of web pages, you can initiate the next step. At this point many web publishers do a big mistake by replacing or shifting the existing content and stuffing ads in place of it. Instead of doing that, concentrate on areas around it and fit in your ads in those places.

CAUTION: Do not stuff excessive ads around heat zones.

Watch And Refine

Once you have updated the heat zones of your web pages, its time now to watch and crunch lots of data. The more high traffic you get, more it is easier to refine your ad placement strategy because you get large set of data for analysis. Remember, if you are getting good clicks on some part of your page do not stuff additional ads there. Just change the color, format or size of your ad at regular intervals to avoid ad blindness. You can use the palette rotation facility given by Adsense to serve that purpose.

Keep On Refining

It is a never ending process and dividends are great. A bit of extra effort in formulating ad strategy for your web site can increase your earnings exponentially.

Video Units Introduced For Australian And Japanese Publishers

2008-06-07T09:04:00.002+05:30

After much wait, finally Google is expanding the reach of video units to more publishers. Now publishers from Australia and Japan will find the video unit generation option in their Adsense accounts. These units are still not common across sites and their earning potential is yet to be proved as more data will be collected by the Google.

The official Adsense blog, recently announced the expansion of Video units to Australia and Japan.

Ad Blindness And Palette Rotation: An Introduction

2008-05-14T19:03:00.004+05:30

Whenever you visit any site, you may look to any ads on that site when first time you open it. If you visit it regularly, then time will come that you will be completely ignorant about the ads on that site. This is called Ad Blindness. How to reduce this for frequent visitors on the same site. Making some slight changes you can significantly increase the CTR for returning traffic on your blog. The solution is to use multiple palettes for Adsense ad units.

Whenever you will choose multiple palettes for an Ad unit, the color combination will be rotated in subsequent page impressions. This helps in reducing the ad blindness effect, as repeating visitors will see a new customized ad on subsequent visits. The customization process is very simple. While generating the ad, choose the "Use multiple palettes..." option from the drop down menu while defining a palette for an ad. After selecting this option, you will be presented a selection box with all available palettes. Hold down the CTRL key and click the palettes you want to come in rotation. This will make your ads more vibrant and alive for repeating visitors.

Custom Search Introduced For Adsense For Search

2008-05-06T13:30:00.002+05:30

Google has integrated the Custom search feature to Adsense for search. Now publishers can generate a customized search engine that suits their needs from within their Adsense account.

With the introduction of this feature, a publisher can easily integrate a highly customized search box in his site. You can also customize it to make the search results appear within your site page. There are many more advanced options including tuning the search results by defining keywords, and limiting the search to selective domains.

Adsense Launches Image Ads For Mobile Content

2008-04-27T09:37:00.006+05:30

The image ads for mobile content have finally arrived for Adsense publishers. For now, this option is available to publishers in 13 countries ( viz., US, UK, Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, and Spain).

Now you have three options available while generating ads for mobile content. You choose from text ads, text and image ads and image only ads. It is always advisable to select the second option, because it gives the serving engine more options to place ads from the inventory in case one type of ad in not available. You can view sample of mobile image ads and can get the idea about their types and shapes that will be available to a publisher.

Ad Review Center Introduced

2008-04-24T19:01:00.006+05:30

Google has introduced the Ad Review Center feature for all publishers. It was much awaited feature and Adsense team has done a great job by giving this feature for publishers.

You can activate this feature by going to Adsense Setup tab and selecting the Competitive Ad Filter sub-tab. The review center enables you to see and review the ads specifically targeted to you site. You can choose to allow or block them selectively from the list. This gives you the facility of better targeted ads and much better way to remove competitor’s ads.

Filtering competitive ads is a feature that is not used by every publisher. With the introduction of ad review center, ad filtering will gain more attention from large number of publishers.

Adsense Reporting Feature Enhanced For Link Units

2008-04-17T09:30:00.005+05:30

Adsense has updated its advanced reporting with the introduction of "Choose Units" option, giving you the flexibility of segregating the data on type of units.

Now you can easily filter your Ad performance data related to link units, regular ad units or both type of units combined. It was a long awaited feature that every Adsense publisher was waiting for. Now you can easily track down CTR of link units as well as the click-throughs on the result page.

To take out reports related to your link units, simply go to "Reports" tab and select "Advanced Reports" sub-tab. Here you will find a new option "Choose Units". You can either choose combined option to generate reports as before, or you can select the appropriate ad unit to filter out the performance data related to that specific type of ad unit.

New Adsense Ads Feature

2008-04-02T21:26:00.005+05:30

Google is testing a new feature in Adsense for content ads. You can observe two clickable arrows beneath the ads to refresh it for new set of ads.

The new clicking zone for refreshing ads is certainly going to attract attention of large number of readers. It will be interesting to know the feedback and data related to this new feature. I think after sometime it will have little impact on how readers interact with Adsense ads.

How to Get Maximum from Referral Ads?

2008-03-29T17:53:00.002+05:30

At times your Adsense referral ads can give you more than Adsense for content ads. You can endorse referral ads and can attract the attention of visitor to these ads. Of course you cannot ask them to click on them so that it gives you money.

Some new publishers do not know or are hesitant about endorsing referrals ads. Google has clarified that all referral ads can be endorsed by the publisher. The logic is simple why the Adsense for content ads can't be explicitly endorsed. You already know the referral ad that is going to appear on the page, but the Adsense for content ads are only known in real time when the page is viewed and no one knows what ads will appear each time a page is viewed. Keeping in view this fact, a publisher can comfortably endorse a product, about which he or she is sure that will appear each time page is viewed.

So go ahead and take advantage of this fact and aggressively endorse your referral ads. But keep in mind, while endorsing you should not violate the T&C at any cost.

Adsense Image Ads : An Introduction

2008-03-24T08:53:00.004+05:30

Sometimes publishers do not utilize the power of image banner ads of Adsense. They are extremely attracting to eyes and CTR is much more promising if you have social networking, discussion forum or dating site. These image banners are eye catching and grab the attention of the visitor immediately. The most popular image banner ads are Leaderboard (728 x 90), Wide Skyscraper (160x600) and Large Rectangle (336 x 280).

If used cleverly they can get higher CTR than text ads. There are two options available while generating image ads, 1) image and text both 2) image only. If you choose the latter option, occasionally PSA's can also be served from inventory in case the image ad is not available. But if you choose the former option, then text ad will shown in case image ad is not available. In first option it is less likely that any PSA will be served. But in the end it's up to you, what option you choose while generating the ad code.

Google Gadget Ads: An Introduction

2008-03-02T07:58:00.003+05:30

Probably the most innovative ads ever launched by Google are gadget ads. What actually are they and how can you put them in your inventory of monetization alternatives. First of all, it must be made clear that these ads are highly sophisticated, interactive and feature rich ads, and requires some technical knowledge to build them as well as an AdWords account. The technology used by these ads is same as used by gadgets on iGoogle. These ads follow strict privacy requirements as mentioned in revised terms T&C of Adsense. Like other ad products from Adsense, gadget ads are also served on CPM and CPC basis.

Presently very few AdWords advertisers have the gadget ads option available in their account, and in future it will be available to all advertisers who will fulfill the required prerequisites for creating gadget ads.

Visit Google Gadget Ads for detailed information about how you can use this excellent ad option to enhance your business.

More Updates Coming From Adsense

2008-02-26T09:54:00.004+05:30

Google has announced some more updates to Terms and Conditions of Adsense. Most of the changes are triggered by new range of products and services that are going to be introduced in next few months, as indicated by Google. If you will log in your Adsense account you will be prompted for reading these changes in terms and conditions and accepting them.

The changes has been divided into two categories:

Future Products and Services
Privacy Requirements

With the introduction of new products like Gadget ads, these changes in T&C were inevitable. The privacy requirements will demand publishers to notify the users that cookies are being used to gather data. It is advisable to go through the revised T&C once again, so that you may not face any problem in future.

Google pushes InVideo Ads for Adsense Video Units

2008-02-18T13:10:00.005+05:30

Google has introduced new ad type for its Adsense for video beta units. Since the launch of Adsense for video units from May last year, they have gain significant popularity as one more monetization option for publishers. The text overlay ad type is already running successfully with video units, and are served on CPC basis.

The new InVideo Ads will appear within the video stream at bottom of the video, and will be served on CPM basis. You can see the demo of this new Ad type here. To join Adsense for video beta, the publishers have to fulfill few prerequisites.

You must be using Flash player 7.0 or above
Target audience must be primarily from United States, English language
A minimum of one million monthly video views

At present a large number of Adsense publishers may not be able to fulfill this criteria, but Google is indicating that soon it will be available in all parts of world.

Generating Adsense Reports: An Introduction

2008-02-13T17:43:00.008+05:30

Your Adsense account provides exhaustive report creation options, ranging from simple to advanced reports. Whenever you log in to your account, by default you are provided summary report of the day’s performance. The "Report" tab provides "Advanced Reports" and "Reports Manager" sub tabs to create simple as well as complex reports. It also let's you set the report creation time and mailing address where it should automatically be mailed after report generation.

The reports can be generated for specific time periods and data can be grouped by date, channel or both. The date ranges that can be specified are:

Today
Yesterday
Last 7 days
Current month
Last month
All time
Specific time period ( to - from )

It even lets you segregate data on the basis of individual ad unit types (Contextual or placement). You can create various complex report templates and save them for future one click report generation. While setting e-mail delivery options you can specify multiple addresses and frequency of delivery. Automated report deliveries can be set to daily, weekly or monthly. If used cleverly, Adsense reports can give you exact insight about your ads performance. Normally, new publishers do not pay much attention to reporting features of Adsense, but as their sites traffic increases and more data is generated they finally turn to this excellent reporting tool provided within the Adsense account.

More Policy Updates from Google Adsense

2008-02-12T16:14:00.000+05:30

After lowering the PIN sending threshold to $10, now Google has announced some more policy updates related to payment and tax information. Earlier publishers were allowed to submit their tax information and were allowed choose their payment method from the first day of their account creation. Now the publishers can only update this information in their account once their earnings reach at least $10.
The policy changes done in last 2 months related to Adsense suggest that Google is experiencing a flood of new Adsense publishers sign ups and the maintenance system is feeling the heat. With these latest policy updates two things will happen. First the load on support system will be lowered and second the crappy sign ups will be dealt with ease.