Talking AdSense optimization in Google Ad Manager

It can be tough to sell advertising in today's economy. It can be even tougher to figure out how to maximize revenue for each ad impression. Google Ad Manager, our hosted ad serving and management solution for publishers with small direct sales teams, was built to address these issues. Ad Manager helps publishers maximize the value of their ad impressions while reducing ad serving costs.

We enlisted the help of Nandu Ramani, Engineering Lead on Ad Manager, to talk about one of Ad Manager's features that helps publishers maximize the value of their ad impressions: AdSense price optimization.

What is the AdSense price optimization feature in Ad Manager?

Many publishers don't sell all of their ad inventory. In these situations, publishers might not serve any ads or might serve less valuable house ads, therefore losing potential earnings. The AdSense price optimization feature in Ad Manager provides an automated solution so publishers will always have an ad to serve in an undersold situation.

We also wanted to make sure that when a publisher runs multiple ad networks they are always showing the most valuable ads. For certain individual impressions, AdSense can provide the highest paying ad. When that's the case, an AdSense ad shows. When that's not the case, an ad from the highest paying alternative network will be shown.

How does the price optimization feature work?

In order for AdSense to compete against other ad networks, a publisher must manually enter a CPM for each configured network. We use the CPM entered to determine in real time, on a per impression basis, whether or not an AdSense ad will pay a publisher more. If the AdSense eCPM is greater than the CPM value entered for competing networks, then an AdSense ad will be shown. Additionally, AdSense will never compete with a publisher's directly-sold inventory. To enable the price optimization feature, all a publisher has to do is check a box when setting up inventory.

As a publisher, how much will I earn using AdSense price optimization?

It's hard to predict; the best way to find out is to opt your ad slots into AdSense price optimization and see how AdSense performs for you. With AdSense price optimization, Google will always serve the highest paying AdSense ad available, and will never lower the price of the winning ad, or reduce your earnings from it.

When should I use the AdSense price optimization feature?

We suggest you opt all of your ad slots into AdSense price optimization. AdSense ads will only appear if they're able to pay you more than the alternatives, so there's no risk of losing revenue.

We also recommend that you opt your premium placements into placement targeting so AdWords advertisers may specifically choose to bid for space on your website.

Sounds good. How do I get started?

If you already have an Ad Manager account, go into the inventory tab in your account. For each ad slot where you want to enable AdSense price optimization, click on the name of the ad slot, check the 'Maximize revenue of unsold and remnant inventory with AdSense' checkbox, and click 'Save.'

If you don't already have an account, get started today at http://www.google.com/admanager. Then, when you're setting up your inventory, make sure to opt all of your ad slots into AdSense price optimization.

For more information about AdSense in Ad Manager, check out the following video.

Announced by Stephen Kliff - Google Ad Manager Team

Asking Dave Taylor about AdSense

AskDaveTaylor.com offers tech support Q&A on subjects ranging from mp3 players to Linux to AdSense. We recently chatted with founder Dave Taylor about his site and his AdSense experience.

Inside AdSense: Where did the idea for your 'Ask Dave Taylor' site come from?

Dave Taylor: There's a great backstory, actually. I've written twenty different books on various business and technical topics, including Teach Yourself Unix in 24 Hours and Creating Cool Web Sites. Each time I'd publish, I would be sure to include my email address and other contact information. Problem was, people would send me email with questions. Lots of email with questions.

Over time I found myself answering the same questions again and again and realized that there had to be a better way for readers to search through an archive of already answered questions. I tried an online discussion forum, but it didn't really work very well (though it did give me an excuse to write my own bbs system from scratch, but that's another story!).

Then early in 2003 this "weblog" thing started to gain a bit of traction. When I first saw how it was built upon the concept of an author writing entries and others being able to add their comments, I realized that it could be ideal for my needs.

IA: Why did you join the AdSense program?

DT: As a businessperson, I had always viewed my website as a cost center. I mean, you had to pay for hosting, you had to pay for graphic design, you had to pay for Internet connectivity, etc. That was just my mindset. It was a marketing expense and its purpose was lead generation for my consulting and book sales.

In mid-2003 my friend told me about this "AdSense thing" and said that he'd been experimenting with it and making some money. So I finally decided that I'd try putting some adverts on my site (I'd been on the Web since 1996 but never had any adverts on my sites until that point). That first month I made more than I expected by simply adding the AdSense adverts to my pages and was surprised as heck. Then it started to grow...

That's when it hit me, that my website was becoming a profit center for my business, not a cost center. I began to pay more attention to the site and published new content on a more regular basis. Within a few months I was earning enough to pay my mortgage, and today my website, and specifically Google AdSense, is a primary revenue stream for my entire company.

IA: Can you talk a little about your experience with optimizing your ads?

Once I began working with AdSense in earnest, I began to wonder how ad placement, size, color, and design would affect earnings, and how to balance my desire to offer a splendid user experience with the need to simultaneously maximize revenue.

Enter A/B testing. I read and talked with many AdSense publishers, tried what they suggested and what had worked for them, fiddled with my own ideas, and generally tried every variation I could imagine to see if I could improve the click-through-rate of my ad blocks. The greatest boosts I saw in clickthrough rate were when I moved the advert into the middle of my articles, when I made sure it had the same color background as the material around it, and when there wasn't a solid border or other visual element to make the ad stand out from the surrounding content.


Truth be told, I've also paid close attention to the sites profiled on the AdSense blog, looking at how they integrated ads into their own design and trying to emulate their successful techniques on my own site.

IA: Glad to hear you used the blog! Any other optimization tips for our readers?

1. Focus on generating really good content that meets real user needs.
   
2. Design your blog so that there are minimal distractions for the user.
   
3. Wrap your blog entry around the Google ad unit and put the ads where users will see them, though make sure you have them visually distinct from your content: trying to trick readers into clicking on ads is a definite no-no and anti-reader too.
   

IA: Thanks for the interview, Dave, and good luck with your site!

Do you also have an AdSense success story to share? Let us know.

Announced by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Our Inside AdSense resolution

Here on the AdSense blog, we usually kick off each new year with a list of suggested AdSense resolutions for publishers. Although we still think using more 300x250 medium rectangles and setting up ad placements make great goals for the year, we'd like to change things up this time and share our resolutions with you.

In 2009, we resolve to continue improving the blog based on your needs and suggestions. We heard positive feedback and saw increases in readership last year in response to our themed campaigns, videos, and easier navigation to important posts. Beyond that, we want to continue looking for ways to ensure that this blog is a useful resource for you, whether you're looking for new feature releases or oldie-but-goodie optimization tips.

We also resolve to bring you more information from our team in new ways. In the new year, you'll hear more from the Product Managers who develop the AdSense features you use, and specialists on the AdSense team who will share their expertise with you. We've heard from many publishers that they want clearer, more transparent communication from our team, and we resolve to provide as much information as we can to address your questions and concerns.

Do you have suggestions for improving the blog, or types of content you'd like to see more of? We're all ears, so please feel free to leave us a comment below. It's a brand new year, and we're ready to get started!

Announced by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Adsense Year in review: 2008

As 2008 winds down, we'd like to follow tradition and close out the year with a look back at a few of the biggest happenings in AdSense.

In 2008, we introduced new features like AdSense for feeds and an improved version of AdSense for search to help you generate additional forms of revenue. We brought Google Ad Manager out of beta to help publishers with smaller direct sales teams more efficiently sell, schedule, and deliver their ad inventory. At the same time, we worked towards providing more information within AdSense accounts. In April, we enabled the Ad Review Center in all accounts to help you review ads placement-targeted to your sites. And in response to requests for more insight into your reports, we launched link unit reporting and began inviting publishers to link their AdSense accounts with Analytics.

Internationally, we launched AdSense for content in Thai and also expanded Western Union payments to a number of new countries such as Egypt, Taiwan, and Panama. To help more publishers find answers to their questions, we launched AdSense Help Forums in Hebrew, Czech, and Slovak.

On the English Help Forum, we celebrated our 50,000th member and then unveiled a new platform with additional capabilities. Now, forum participants can vote on the best answer to their questions, subscribe to individual discussions, and receive replies to their threads via email.

In news closest to home here on the blog, the Inside AdSense family continued to grow with the launch of blogs in Russian and Traditional Chinese. With your support, our 13 global AdSense blogs received 3.8 million pageviews from 2.4 million visits this year. Through our blogs, we brought you a Newbie Fridays series, 'Optimisation Essentials' videos from our Australian team, and began distributing AdSense stickers. Check out the sticker requests, postcards, and notes we received in the photo on the right :)

Last but not least, the 2008 Reader's Choice Award for this year's most visited post goes to our April Fool's joke, 'Introducing AdSense for conversations'. Co-author Julie Beckmann had this to say: "A lot of hard work went into omega testing the product for this post. While I found the hat fit snugly, I was disappointed to learn the effect my Orange County upbringing had on my chats -- 17 'like's' sprinkled into a two-minute conversation? My chats aren't fit to be placement-targeted."

Thanks for helping to contribute to an eventful 2008 -- we're looking forward to an even more exciting 2009. Happy New Year!

Announced by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

Adsense Light up your site

We all know how it feels to find the perfect gift. After scouring stores far and wide, suddenly your hunt is over: the stars have aligned to bring you just what you're looking for -- and not a moment too soon. It's a bit the same way when a search brings you to just the right site. But what if your site's just the right site, and users can't find it?

We're happy to let you know that you don't need divine forces to play a role in the findability of your site. Nope -- you can help make sure that your site turns up just when it should by taking advantage of these tips from our Search Quality Team.

1. Not sure if all your pages are being seen by Google? Search for your site's address after the command "site", like [site:example.com]. When you see your pages in the results, check your snippet content and page titles. Include information that matches the topic of a particular page. If anything is missing or you want more details, you can also use the Content Analysis tool in Webmaster Tools.
   
   
2. If you upload new pages or topics faster than Google crawls your site, make sure to submit a Google Sitemap and include a refresh rate.
   
   
3. Label your images appropriately. Users searching in Google Image Search will more easily find the image on your site. Don't miss out on potential traffic because of [001.jpg] instead of [NintendoWii.jpg]. Image Search is one of the largest search properties out there, so you should take advantage of it.
   
   
4. Manage your SiteLinks. Your most valuable links may not be the ones that Google chooses as SiteLinks, so remember you can remove any that you don't think users will find useful.
   
   
5. Check for errors and keyword traffic in Webmaster Tools. See our diagnostics checklist.
   
   
6. Serve accurate HTTP status codes. If you've retired a page permanently, serve a 404. If you've simply relocated it, serve a 301. The more we know about your old pages, the faster we will find the next best page on your site for a given query.
   
   
7. Users and search engines like organic content. Make some of your own!
   
   
8. Read our recently released SEO Starter Guide.
   
   
9. Watch our Tutorials for Webmasters.
   
   
10. Find out what information Google has about your website in Webmaster Tools.
    
    
11. Get the latest updates from the Webmaster Central Blog.
    
    
12. Find answers to your questions in our Webmaster Help Center, or ask your questions in the Webmaster Help Group.
    

Whether it be the perfect gift, the perfect site, or the perfect cup of cocoa on a cold winter's night, we hope all your searches are fruitful this holiday season.

Announced by Julie Beckmann - AdSense Publisher Support

Google Adsense Optimize

It's Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it readily available to all; as a web publisher, one of your goals may also be to make sure your content is readily available to all. We've recently taken steps to help you grow your site's traffic: we updated our Submit Your Content site with more information about distributing your content through Google products such as Web Search, Maps, YouTube, and iGoogle. In addition, we launched our Content Central blog, featuring tips and information from Googlers who work on different products. The goal of both of these resources is to help you grow your site's visitors by taking advantage of promotion opportunities in new Google mediums.

If you're just getting started with these resources, we recommend visiting the yellow getting started box in the upper right hand corner of the Submit Your Content homepage. Here, we've listed the three steps we recommend all content partners take to begin sharing their content. Alternatively, check out the industry categories where we'll walk you through the types of content you may have, and show you where that content is visible across various Google services.


We've also enabled comments on the Content Central blog, so feel free to visit the blog to suggest topics for future posts or leave your feedback. If you've already visited the Submit Your Content site, you may know all about the wonders of RSS, so be sure to subscribe to the Content Central blog's feed to receive the latest posts when they're published. Or, enter your email address in the right-hand sidebar to subscribe by email.

Announced by Steffanie Johnson - Content Partnerships Team

The forecast is clear in Google Ad Manager

If you're a publisher who sells advertising space directly to advertisers, you might have experienced times when you've been unsure about how much inventory is available for you to sell. Google Ad Manager can help you learn what you have available to sell by forecasting your future inventory and subtracting off what you've already sold.

A Helpful Analogy

To put this into context, pretend for a minute that instead of a website, you run a popular destination hotel. Instead of selling space to advertisers, your job is to book hotel stays for guests. You receive all kinds of requests to book hotel rooms: two rooms for a one-week family vacation, 100 rooms for a three-day conference, a suite for a weekend getaway. In order to book these reservations, you have to know both how many rooms your hotel has and how many rooms are already booked. For a hotel, this is fairly straightforward. You know exactly how many total rooms the hotel has, and you can subtract how many rooms are booked for each night.

For a publisher, it's not as straightforward. Since the amount of inventory you have to sell is directly tied to your site's traffic, it can vary day by day. It's also complicated because there's flexibility in how you meet your obligations. If an advertiser has booked advertising space on your Finance and Entertainment sections, for example, you can serve more ads on the Finance page and fewer on the Entertainment page. To compare to a hotel, it's like you have the flexibility to substitute two single rooms for one double room. Because of the variability of traffic and the flexibility in how you can satisfy your reservations, it's hard to know exactly how much space you have left to sell for any day or any specific area of your website.

A Common Problem - and Solution

Even though it's more complicated for websites than for hotels, the customers' (or advertisers') needs are the same: They want a reservation, and you have to be able to guarantee that there will be availability when they show up. A hotel can't operate effectively without this type of capability, and neither can these web publishers.

Google Ad Manager, our hosted ad serving and management solution for publishers with smaller direct sales teams, addresses this publisher problem. It allows you to predict future availability and be confident that when you sell an ad, you'll be able to deliver it. In Ad Manager, forecasting works by using your historical data to estimate how many impressions you have left to sell. Ad Manager's inventory forecasting system allows you to find availability broken down by different areas of your website, by cities or states, and even by custom criteria that you define, like the user's age. Even better, when the inventory you request is unavailable, Ad Manager will give you suggestions for freeing-up the requested inventory, so that you can still make the sale.

New Improvements

In the last few weeks, we've rolled out major improvements to our forecasting system. It's now up to ten times faster, and it uses much more historical data, so you get more accurate estimates of future availability. The new system allows us to quickly add new features in the future. We've already launched one of these improvements: Forecasts now take account of frequency caps, meaning that the availability estimates are modified to account for the fact that you might only want to show an ad once to each user. And more new features are coming soon!

Forecasting also continues to be a major development focus of our DART for Publishers (DFP) ad serving platform for publishers with larger direct sales teams, part of the DoubleClick Revenue Center suite of publisher solutions. Google Ad Manager serves as an effective complement to DFP and the DoubleClick Revenue Center to provide solutions for publishers of all sizes.

To learn more about forecasting in Ad Manager, visit the Ad Manager Help Center.

Announced by Narayana Tummala - Tech Lead, Google Ad Manager

Optimisation Essentials (Part III)

Position for performance - be noticed

This is the final video installment in our three-part series on Optimisation Essentials for AdSense for content. We've covered the best-performing ad unit sizes and taken a look at how to design your ad units for good-looking ads. However, even if you have large, well-designed ad units, they won't perform for you unless your users can see them!

So what can you do to ensure your ad units get noticed? Place your ads where users are likely to look.



We've also made a heatmap to show you where the best placements are on a typical page. Great positions include:

• Above the fold of a page (the section of the page a user can see without scrolling)
  
• At the end of an article
  
• Aligned with content
  

But don't just take our word for it - every website is different. Make sure you use your judgment of how visitors interact with your pages to determine good ad placements. Position your ads so that they're visible, but be careful of intruding on the experience of your site's visitors. Most of all, think like a user and you'll be able to balance your website's content with a successful ad strategy.

Announced by Mel Ann Chan - AdSense Australia Optimisation Team

Google serving overlay ads in embedded YouTube partner videos

Today, to help its video content partners earn more money, YouTube will begin running overlay ads in YouTube partner videos embedded on other websites. To date, YouTube has only run ads against partner videos on YouTube itself, and with people viewing millions of embedded YouTube videos every day, this meant that partners were not generating revenue from their views outside YouTube.com. But now, YouTube partners will be able to capitalize on their popularity across the internet and generate revenue from their content no matter where their video lives.

Although this may sound similar to AdSense video units, this YouTube change is separate from AdSense, and we'd like to discuss the differences between the two offerings.

Let's start with a refresher on AdSense video units, which are available within AdSense accounts in specific languages and regions. Video units help you enrich your website with fresh, dynamic content from our YouTube partners. Each video unit is accompanied by a banner ad and a overlay ad targeted towards the video and the site's content, and is customizable so you can choose categories of video to target to your site. The ad revenue is divided between the AdSense publisher, YouTube, and the YouTube partner providing the video content.

But AdSense video units aren't the only way our YouTube partners can distribute their content -- just as with other YouTube videos, it's possible for anyone with a website to embed partner videos on their sites. Now, following today's announcement, thousands of videos produced by YouTube partners will begin displaying overlay ads when embedded on other websites. (YouTube will gradually roll out these ads to additional YouTube partner videos in the coming weeks.) This feature is external to AdSense, and so no configuration within an AdSense account is needed. Revenue from these ads will be divided between YouTube and the YouTube partner providing the video content.

By helping YouTube partners generate additional revenue no matter where their videos are played, we hope to encourage further content creation among our most popular and prolific video creators. If you create your own video content and are interested in becoming a YouTube partner, submit an application today.

Announced by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

Optimisation Essentials (Part II)

Dress for success - impressing your audience

The video below is the second in our "Optimisation Essentials" series, demonstrating our top three tips for maximising your AdSense for Content performance. Last week, we reinforced the importance of bigger ad units. This week, we're showcasing how a better ad unit design can result in improved AdSense performance.



*Please note that no leopards were harmed in the making of this video!

Over the years, we've seen some colourful ad unit designs. Some publishers design ad units that contrast with their site so that they stand out. Although this can work in some cases, we've found that ad units that match your site's design tend to perform better in terms of revenue and click-through-rate. Users are more likely to read ads when they're well integrated into your site.

When you design your AdSense ads, keep these tips in mind:

• Use colours that either blend with or complement your site's colours. Make the ads a part of your site.
  
• Use lighter colours for borders, or no border at all.
  
• Try rotating colours or occasionally switching the location of your ads on the page.
  
• Save sets of frequently-used colours as a palette.
  

So give your ad design and colours some thought, and you'll notice the difference!

Announced by Mel Ann Chan - AdSense Australia Optimisation Team

Optimisation Essentials - Part 1

Bigger is better - for AdSense ad units

AdSense for content is the bread and butter of many of our publishers, and we often receive requests to recommend strategies to improve AdSense performance on publisher sites. While we refer to this as 'optimisation', we understand that this term can make the process sound more difficult than it really is. In response, we're releasing a three-part video series that demonstrates, in plain English, our top tips for increasing your AdSense earnings.

This week, we're recommending you think big - big ad units, that is:



Publishers often ask us what the best ad sizes are to include in their site's design, and we always point them to these three:

• 300x250 medium rectangle
  
• 728x90 leaderboard
  
• 160x600 skyscraper
  

These ad units have proven in the past to deliver better results for both publishers and advertisers. Advertisers favour these formats, and if you've receiving all ad types, you'll find that advertisers will specifically target your sites more often. If you position your ad units well, users will be more likely to see these ad formats and find an ad that they're interested in.

When you're considering how to design your site, our testing has shown that displaying at least one of these ad formats on your page can increase your AdSense earnings potential. So remember, sometimes bigger is better!

Announced by Mel Ann Chan - AdSense Australia Optimisation Team

Make a date with data in Google Analytics

In AdSense, we’re big on data. From spreadsheets and graphs to weekly reports and metrics, we constantly turn to numbers when running our business. In a similar vein, we've heard your requests for more data to help you run your AdSense websites, which is why we’re excited to announce the integration of one of our personal favorite reporting tools, Google Analytics, with AdSense. We're gradually rolling out this functionality to publishers, and you'll see an invitation link at the top of your 'Overview' and 'Advanced Reports' pages when it's been enabled for your account.


By integrating your AdSense account with a new or existing Analytics account, you’ll have access to in-depth reports about user activity on your site. In addition to the wealth of metrics already available in Analytics such as unique visitors and visitor language, you'll now have access to granular reports that break down AdSense performance both by page and by referring site. Armed with this new data about user behavior, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions on how to improve the user experience on your site and optimize your AdSense units to increase your revenue potential.


We've highlighted a few ways to use the integrated metrics below, but we encourage you to be creative! Come up with your own to discover how useful (and fun) new data can be:

• Discover untapped markets. Use the geographies report to determine which regions are under-represented in your site’s user base. Optimize your site’s content to attract more of these under-represented users.
  
• Drive high-earning traffic to your site. Use the 'Referring sites' report to determine where the users who are making you the most money are coming from. Focus your efforts on getting traffic from these sources.
  
• Delve deeper into AdSense reports. Use the visualization feature to look at trends in your site's AdSense performance over time, or by time of day.
  

Again, this feature is not yet available to all our publishers, but please keep checking your account for an invitation. In the meantime, you can take a look at our demo to learn more about the reports you'll have access to:



Announced by Vineesha Malkani - AdSense Publisher Support

Google AdSense for Games

Do you develop or publish web-based games? If so, you're contributing to a growing trend - according to comScore, over 25% of Internet users play online games every week, which is over 200 million users worldwide. As a beta user of AdSense for Games, you can display video ads, image ads, or text ads within your online games to earn revenue. You'll be able to show these ads in placements you define, such as interstitial frames before a game, after a level change, or when a game is over. Members of our AdWords team will sell your in-game ad placements directly to top brand advertisers, and you'll also see contextually targeted text and image ads based on content and demographic information. In addition, you'll be able to control the ads you see on your pages using our filtering options.

Here's a quick video to give you a better idea of what games are part of our network and how advertisers can use this medium to reach their target audience:



And here's another, less flashy video, to show actual game play and how an ad could appear within the game:



We've built ad technology for games played within a user's browser, and now we're looking to expand our publisher network. At this time, eligible publishers must have a minimum of 500,000 game plays per day and have 80% of their traffic from the U.S. or the U.K. If you're interested in becoming a AdSense for games beta publisher, feel free to review our complete list of requirements and submit an application. You can also find more information on our games site.

Updated post with game play requirements

Announced by Ryan Hayward - Ads Product Marketing

Maximizing revenue by exposing your channels to the right advertisers

As you may know, you can set up your custom channels so that they're targetable by advertisers - these targetable custom channels are known as ad placements. By selecting the 'Allow advertisers to target this channel' checkbox on the channel creation page, you can enable brand advertisers to target their content to your audience directly on a CPM or CPC basis.

Creating ad placements allows them to show up in AdWords, so that advertisers who create placement-targeted campaigns can include your content directly. What many publishers don't know is that this also makes your content available to Google's internal sales teams, who work closely with many advertisers looking to target a certain audience or type of content. With this in mind, we thought it would be important to mention a few best practices which will help advertisers and our internal sales teams target your content to help you maximize revenue:

First, take time to make sure your channel names and descriptions accurately describe your content and audience. By including descriptions that closely reflect your content, you'll also attract advertisers from those areas. Naming and descriptions are important.


On that note, our second tip: be very careful about changing the name of an ad placement. If an advertiser has already targeted one of your specific channels, the channel will become unavailable to the advertiser once you change its name. If you wish to rename a channel, we recommend creating a second channel with the new name, and then attaching both channels to your ad unit. Remember, you can attach up to five custom channels to an ad unit.

Third, use the 300x250 medium rectangle, opted in to both text and image ads. This is one type of targetable ad unit that's in high demand by Google's CPM advertisers. We recommend placing these units in line with your content, and describing them as they relate to the content. This combination of format and placement enables advertisers to use image, text, or rich media (including gadget ads) effectively. In feeds, we recommend opting in to both image and text in all ad units, as many of these advertisers only target with image ads into feeds.

Finally, as always, the most important tip for maximizing revenue from your ad placements is to create quality content that is visually appealing and attracts a quality audience. Many brand advertisers look at all placements before placing an advertising order to make sure the destination sites are in line with their brand and attract the type of audience they wish to target for a particular campaign.

Announced by Steve Olechowski - AdSense Product Manager

AdSense for content, now in Thai

Late last year we welcomed Thai to our AdSense for search family, and we're now excited to let you know about the launch of AdSense for content in Thai. If you're a publisher with a Thai website, you'll now be able to earn money for valid clicks and impressions for Google ads on your site. Get started by logging in to your account and visiting the AdSense Setup tab to generate ad code. Or, if you don't have an AdSense account yet, review our program policies and then feel free to submit an application.

To celebrate this launch, why not look up a few Thai recipes and prepare traditional dishes like Som Tum, a spicy green papaya salad, or Tom Yam, a hot and sour soup? We hope they'll leave you content and ready to create new content of your own.

ยินดีต้อนรับสู่โปรแกรมของเราค่ะ

Announced by Nopparat Yokubon - AdSense Thai Publisher Support

Western Union launched in Panama

Western Union is now offered as a payment method for publishers located in Panama. To sign up for payments by Western Union, sign in to your account and follow these instructions. Please also keep in mind that we're only able to make Western Union payments to individual payee names, but not to businesses.

Not located in Panama? We've been reading your comments on our other recent payment-related posts, and understand that many of you are looking forward to new payment options in additional countries. Please know that we aren't able to provide details about when new options may become available, as setting them up can take time due to factors like compliance with local laws and tax regulations. However, we're working hard to find more convenient ways to send you your earnings, and we'll definitely announce any new options here. In the meantime, please feel free to keep leaving your feedback, and we appreciate your patience!

Announced by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

Google Ads clicks Get Reported but no revenue?

Have you ever checked your reports and noticed that you have clicks reported, but no revenue? We'd like to explain why this may happen, as we frequently receive emails and questions on our Help Forum about this issue. What you're seeing may be due to one of the following:

1. Allowed Sites setup
   
   The Allowed Sites feature allows you to specify a list of sites where ads from your account may be displayed. If you're using this feature, you'll need to make sure that you've listed all sites where you'd like to display your AdSense ad code.
   
   To check if this is the case, log into your account and visit the 'Allowed Sites' page under your AdSense Setup tab. If the radio button 'Allow any site to show ads for my account ' is populated, you're not being affected by this issue, and you should continue to #2 below. However, if 'Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account' is populated, review the list of sites in the box below -- are all the sites you own listed in this box? If the answer is 'no', you won't be credited for clicks on the missing sites. Please be sure to add all of the sites where you'd like to display your AdSense ad code.
   
   We've noticed some confusion among publishers who have entered the sites of advertisers they'd like to see on their pages into the Allowed Sites list. Please know that this is not the case, as it's not possible to request ads for a particular page - the sites you enter into this box can only be sites where your ads can be placed.
   
   
2. Invalid clicks
   
   It's possible that you have some clicks that our monitoring system has considered to be invalid. As we've mentioned before, we monitor all clicks and impressions on Google ads for any activity that may artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. Any clicks that our system considers invalid will still appear on your 'Overview' page, under the Reports tab. However, because our advertisers aren't charged for these clicks and impressions, we won't show the earnings for this activity. If you're concerned about suspicious activity in your account, we recommend reviewing your site's logs and letting us know about the situation.
   
   Rest assured that AdSense accounts are properly credited for all clicks and impressions we consider to be valid. We'll post your finalized earnings for a given month on your 'Payment History' page during the first week of the following month. For more information about invalid clicks, please review our Help Center.

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Google Adsense For Feeds

When you visit the AdSense Setup tab in your account, you'll notice a new "AdSense for feeds" option. This means you can now use AdSense to place ads in your RSS feeds, allowing you to increase the reach of your content while earning revenue. Our salesforce will sell cost-per-impression (CPM) ads directly to the largest advertisers, while the rest of your inventory will be filled with contextually targeted cost-per-click (CPC) and CPM ads. This means that more of your feed items will be sold and with higher overall revenue, than with any other feed network.

At this point, you may either be thinking, "great!" or "umm...what's a feed?" For those of you in the second category, feeds allow your content to be delivered and subscribed to on the Web, often as headlines, summaries or articles. FeedBurner also has a nifty tutorial that you might find useful.

And here are a few more reasons to try AdSense for feeds:


To set up AdSense for feeds now, sign in and visit the AdSense Setup page of your account, or apply for an AdSense account.

• Receive higher CPMs and maintain a positive user experience by displaying ads specifically optimized for RSS feeds.
  
• View detailed stats on your feed audience, distribution, and more through FeedBurner when you set up your feeds with AdSense.
  
• Manage monetization for your feeds through the same account that you use to manage other AdSense properties.
  

AdSense for feeds is currently enabled in all languages supported by AdSense for content.

Want to learn more about what feeds are and how to get started with AdSense for feeds? Visit our Help Center and watch our introductory video from Product Manager Steve Olechowski:


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Google Content Network

Google have some key enhancements on the Google content network (partner sites for which we provide advertising) that will offer a better experience for users and better value for advertisers and publishers. These enhancements are the latest result of our integration with DoubleClick and our commitment to making advertising on the Google content network more efficient and accountable. When we purchased DoubleClick, we talked about how we would empower agencies, advertisers and publishers to collaborate more efficiently and effectively, and provide a better experience for our users. We are happy that we have been able to deliver on this promise already, like support for third party vendors on the Google content network.

The new enhancements that we are announcing today and that will be available in the coming months are the next step in our integration and in enabling standard industry functionality on the Google content network:

• Frequency Capping: Enables advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad. Users will have a better experience on Google content network sites because they will no longer see the same ad over and over again.

• Frequency Reporting: Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads.

• Improved Ads Quality: Brings performance improvements within the Google content network.

• View-Through Conversions: Enables advertisers to gain insights on how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. This helps advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users will see more relevant ads.

We are enabling this functionality by implementing a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the Google content network. Using the DoubleClick cookie means that DoubleClick advertisers and publishers don't have to make any changes on their websites as we continue our integration efforts and offer additional enhancements. This also means that with one click, users can opt out of a single cookie for both DoubleClick ad serving and the Google content network. (If a user has already opted out of the DoubleClick cookie, that opt-out will also automatically apply to the Google content network.)

To learn more, you can check out our updated main privacy policy and a new advertising-specific privacy policy that reflects our integration with the DoubleClick ad serving cookie, and you can visit a section in our Privacy Center devoted to advertising and privacy.

We're excited about our integration of DoubleClick and the improvements we're making to the Google content network. And I am personally excited about seeing more relevant ads, especially if I don't have to see the same ads over and over!


Related:

Google AdSense Information

Adsense An Overview

Google AdSense is the program that can give you advertising revenue from each page on your website—with a minimal investment in time and no additional resources.

AdSense delivers relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content. And when you add a Google search box to your site, AdSense delivers relevant text ads that are targeted to the Google search results pages generated by your visitors’ search request.

Google uses its search technology to serve advertisements based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads is often relevant to the website.

Currently, AdSense uses JavaScript code to incorporate the advertisements into a participating website. If the ads are included on a website that has not yet been crawled by the Mediabot, AdSense will temporarily display advertisements for charitable causes, also known as public service announcements (PSAs). (The Mediabot is different from the Googlebot, which maintains Google's search index.)

Many websites use AdSense to monetize their content. AdSense has been particularly important for delivering advertising revenue to small sites that do not have the resources for developing advertising sales programs and salespeople. To fill a site with ads that are relevant to the topics discussed, webmasters implement a brief script on the sites' pages. Sites that are content-rich have been very successful with this advertising program, as noted in a number of publisher case studies on the AdSense site.

Some webmasters invest significant effort into maximizing their own AdSense income. They do this in three ways:[citation needed]
They use a wide range of traffic-generating techniques, including but not limited to online advertising.
They build valuable content on their sites that attracts AdSense ads, which pay out the most when they are clicked.
They use copy on their sites that encourages visitors to click on ads. Note that Google prohibits people from using phrases like "Click on my AdSense ads" to increase click rates. The phrases accepted are "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements."[citation needed]

The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program, which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction. AdSense commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (i.e., a bid not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid.

How Adsense Works

> The webmaster inserts the AdSense JavaScript code into a webpage.

> Each time this page is visited, the JavaScript code creates an IFrame with a src attribute set to the page's URL.

> For contextual advertisements, Google's servers use a cache of the page to determine a set of high-value keywords. If keywords have been cached already, advertisements are served for those keywords based on the AdWords bidding system. (More details are described in the AdSense patent.)

> For site-targeted ads, the advertiser chooses the page(s) on which to display ads, and pays based on cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM), or the price advertisers choose to pay for every thousand ads displayed.

> For referrals, Google adds money to the advertiser's account when visitors either download the referred software or subscribe to the referred service.The referral program will be retired in August 2008.

> Search ads are added to the list of results after the visitor performs a search.

> Because the JavaScript is sent to the Web browser when the page is requested, it is possible for other site owners to copy the JavaScript code into their own webpages. To protect against this type of fraud, AdSense customers can specify the pages on which ads should be shown. AdSense then ignores clicks from pages other than those specified.

Take Tour

Ads Formats

> Link Units
Link units are an alternative to standard text ads that we're offering to our AdSense publishers. Using the same contextual targeting algorithm that targets Google ads to your content pages, link units display a list of topics that are relevant to your page. Each topic, when clicked, brings the user to a page of related advertisements.The result is advertisements that are closely targeted to the interests of your users. By selecting the topics through interaction with the ad unit, users are presented with useful information in the form of related advertisements. Their direct involvement with the evolution of the ad unit guarantees an interest in the ads that are presented.

How do I add link units to my page?

1. Log in to your AdSense account at www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the AdSense Setup tab
and choose AdSense for content as the product.
3. Select the link unit radio button and continue.
4. From the Format drop-down list, select a link unit format and choose the radio button for showing 4 or 5 links per unit.
5. Select your color palette and assign a channel and alternate ad to your ad unit, if desired.
6. Copy and paste the ad code from the Your AdSense Code box into the source of your web pages. Please make sure that you copy the code in its entirety, and that you paste it into the body of your source.

Once you've updated your pages, link units will appear immediately. If we haven't yet crawled your page, we may initially show your alternate ad or a 'View ads about' search box in the link unit.

Read more on Link Ads!!

> Image Ads

Image ads are graphical ads offered in several ad formats. Like text ads, Google's image ads can be either contextually targeted to the content of a publisher's webpage or placement-targeted by advertisers who wish to run pay-per-impression campaigns on specific content placements in the AdSense network.

As a publisher, running a combination of image and text ads expands the available ad inventory for your site, and offers the potential for increased revenue. Google's technology determines on a page-by-page basis whether text ads, image ads, or video ads are likely to make you more money, and serves the appropriate format to your page.

Please note that Google image ads will only be displayed on content pages, not on AdSense for search results pages.

How do I enable/disable image ads?

To enable or disable image ads, you'll need to select or change the ad type associated with your ad unit. There are 3 possible choices: text ads only, image ads only, or text and image ads. You can select your desired ad type while generating your ad code:

1. Log in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the AdSense Setup tab and choose AdSense for content as the product.
3. Choose the 'Ad unit' radio button and select your desired ad type from the Ad Type drop-down menu.
4. Follow the guided steps to create your ad code.

If you've already generated the code, you can change the ad type of your AdSense unit using the ad management feature:

1. Log in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the AdSense Setup tab.
3. Select the Manage Ads sub-tab.
4. Click Edit settings for the ad unit you'd like to update.
5. Under Format pick your desired ad type.
6. Click Save settings.

Read More on Image Ads

> Gadget Ads

What are gadget ads and how do they work?

Gadget ads are customized mini-sites that run as ads on AdSense publisher websites. These ads are interactive, engaging, and will appeal to your users, simultaneously providing value to advertisers while getting visitors to stick around your site. Gadget ads may appear in ad units that have been enabled to show image ads in one of the supported ad formats.

How do I earn revenue from gadget ads?

Your earnings from gadget ads will depend on the pricing of the specific gadget ads you display. Gadget ads can be priced on either a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand impressions basis (CPM). When paid on a CPC basis, you'll receive earnings for each valid clickthrough -- that is, a click that directs a user to the advertiser's website. You will not be paid simply for clicks on components of the ad that do not result in the user reaching the advertiser's website. When paid on a CPM basis, you'll be paid for the initial ad impression, rather than interactions or clickthroughs.

Read More on Gadgets Ads

> Text Ad Settings

What are the format and color options for ads on my webpages?

Google lets you select the colors and layout that best fit your site.

Ad Colors
You can select from our list of pre-defined color palettes or you can create up to 100 of your own. Color palettes allow you to make sure that the ad text, background, and border colors complement your website. We provide detailed suggestions for choosing color palettes that will be most effective for your site.

Ad Formats
You can choose from multiple ad formats designed to suit a wide variety of page designs - examples of each format are available on the Ad Formats page. You may place up to three standard ad units on each page that complies with our program policies, in addition to three link unit. Your three ad formats can contain any of combination of text ads, image ads, or video ads - it's up to you! You might find it helpful to check out our suggestions for choosing the right format.

How do I customize the color of the ads on my website?

You can select from a number of built-in color palettes, or you can create up to 100 of your own. When you select a color palette and an ad format during the guided ad setup, the appropriate ad code is generated for you. You can select up to 4 palettes that will rotate randomly. To take advantage of this feature, you'll need a newer web browser with JavaScript functionality (Internet Explorer 6 + or Opera 8+).

To generate ad code with the palette of your choice:

1. Log in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the AdSense Setup tab and choose AdSense for content as the product
3. Choose an ad type and format.
4. In the Colors drop-down, choose from one of our pre-designed palettes. You can edit it by clicking the color boxes next to each ad element. Or, to rotate palettes, click 'Use multiple palettes', then select up to 4 color palettes by holding down the Control or Command key
5. Copy-and-paste the AdSense ad code into webpages

To create custom color palettes and manage your palette list:

1. Log in to your account at https://www.google.com/adsense
2. Click Color Palettes under the AdSense Setup tab
3. Select a pre-existing color palette to start with
4. Choose the color you want for each area of the ads (border, background, title, text, and URL)
5. Name your new palette
6. Click Save Settings

Read More on Text Ad Settings

> Video Ads

What are video ads and how do they work?

Click-to-play video ads are a new type of ad available for sites in the Google network, including AdSense sites. They're available in several ad formats and will be shown only if a publisher is opted in to image ads for one of the supported ad formats.

When a video ad is served to a page, it will be displayed as a static opening image. Once the user clicks the play button or the opening image, the video will begin playing within the ad space. If the user clicks the display URL at the bottom of the ad, or clicks the ad while it's playing, the user will automatically be taken to the advertiser's website. Users can control the volume and can replay the video if they choose; the video will not automatically replay.

You can choose whether to enable or disable video ads from appearing on your pages.

Read More on Video Ads

Earn money from relevant ads on your website

Google AdSense matches ads to your site's content, and you earn money whenever your visitors click on them.AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content—ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful.

> AdSense lets you customize the appearance of ads to match the look and feel of your site. You can also customize the style of your AdSense for search box and search results page.

>With Google's extensive AdWords advertiser base, we have ads for just about all categories of businesses and for practically all types of content, no matter how specialized.

Google technology matches the most relevant and highest performing AdWords ads to your website. And since Google provides the ads, you don't have to worry about maintaining advertiser relationships.

> Competitive Ad Filter enables you to filter out specific competitors or specific advertisers.

> Editorial Review makes sure that all Google ads are reviewed and approved by the Google team, ensuring that inappropriate ads don't appear on your pages.

> Customizable default ads means that in the unlikely event that Google is unable to serve targeted ads on your page, we provide the option to display a default ad of your choice.

How do I get paid?
You get paid whenever someone on your site clicks on one of the AdSense ads. Advertisers can also bid to appear on your site on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. Both CPC and CPM bids compete in our AdWords program to ensure that you optimize your ad revenue.

> Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT)
We have an EFT payment system available in a number of countries, which will help get your AdSense earnings delivered directly to your bank account every month without any additional effort.

How much do I get paid?
How much you earn depends on a number of factors including how much an advertiser bids on your site -- you'll receive a portion of what the advertiser pays. The best way to find out how much you'll earn is to sign up and start showing ads on your web pages.

Becoming an AdSense publisher is fast and easy:

To apply, you must have:
1. A launched website with acceptable content and valid URL.
2. A valid payee name and mailing Home address to receive your payments.

Read tips for application success

Don't own a website? Create one with Blogger or Google Page Creator.

Have multiple sites? As an AdSense publisher, you can place ads on any acceptable site-- without re-applying.


Get AdSense now-- it's free!

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