More countries go Western Union

Good news! We’ve expanded Western Union Quick Cash as a payment method to 7 new countries: Barbados, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nepal, Uruguay, and Vietnam. If you live in any of these locations, you can now sign up to receive your AdSense payments from your local Western Union agent. With Western Union, you’ll receive your earnings sooner, since you won't have to wait for checks to arrive in the mail or clear at the bank. Plus, AdSense won't charge you a fee to use this payment method.

Please keep in mind these important points:

• Payments will continue to follow our normal payment schedule and will be available for pickup at your local Western Union agent the day after they're issued.
• You'll need to present a government-issued ID that matches your AdSense payee name when picking up your payment. If you need to update or correct the payee name listed in your account, please follow the instructions in our Help Center.
• Right now, only individual payee names can receive payments by Western Union, not businesses.
• Payments must be picked up within 60 days of issue or they'll expire and be credited back to your account.
• Payments will be made in US dollars, but depending on your local Western Union agent, they may be picked up in your local currency.

These instructions will help you to sign up, and our Help Center has more info about picking up your payments and other countries where Western Union payments are currently available. We're working towards making this payment option available to publishers in additional countries, and we'll be sure to announce any updates here on the blog

Your introduction to Google Ad Manager (Part 2 of 2)

Earlier this week, we provided a basic introduction to Google Ad Manager to help you determine whether the product is right for you. If so, we hope that you've signed up for an account to help you manage your ad inventory. As you begin using Ad Manager, we'd like to give you some tips and instructions to help you on your way.

In addition to the tips below, we'll be hosting a Getting Started with Google Ad Manager Webinar on April 21st at 11:00 am PDT, where we'll give a live demo of Ad Manager, share best practices, and help you get started. Sign up at:
https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=570486361.

What terms do I need to know in my Ad Manager account?
With Ad Manager, you'll manage all of your inventory according to the following terminology:

• Ad Slot: This is the most granular inventory component, and represents the location of an ad. It's the equivalent of an ad unit in AdSense. For instance, you can set up an ad slot for the top banner on your pages.
• Placement: This is a publisher-defined collection of ad slots, and represents inventory to be sold. In AdSense, this is the equivalent of an ad placement . You should include at least one ad slot per placement, as campaigns are all linked to a placement. For instance, you can create a placement for all of your ad slots on your sports pages, or the top banners on all pages of your site.

Then, to create campaigns, you’ll use the following terms:

• Order: This is a summary containing information about an ad campaign including the campaign dates, the advertiser or agency, and the contact numbers.
• Line Item: You’ll enter all the details of an ad campaign including the flights dates, the cost, the priority level, the targeting criteria, and the delivery information.
• Creative: This is the actual media being delivered in your ad slots.

I'm ready to start using my Ad Manager account. How do I serve my first campaign?
There are three parts to serving your first campaign: setting up your inventory, tagging your pages, and creating your campaigns. Follow our three-part guide below for instructions:

A. Setting up your inventory
There are two main steps to follow to organize your inventory. In the Inventory tab, you’ll need to:

1. Create your ad slots: At this stage, you can choose to enable AdSense Optimization in order to fill your unsold inventory with AdSense and to make it compete with your ad networks. The baseline for the competition is the Value CPM that you set for your networks.
2. Group your ad slots into placements: In order to allow advertisers to target their campaigns to your specific placements, you'll need to enable placement targeting.

B. Tagging your pages
Once you've set up your inventory in Ad Manager, you’ll need to tag every page on which you want to use Ad Manager to deliver your ads. For each page, you’ll need to define all the ad slots that should appear and generate html code:

1. Go to the Inventory tab and click on “Generate HTML code”.
2. Select the Ad Slots you want to appear on the page you’re tagging
3. Generate the code and use it to tag your page

You can also review our tagging guide if you need help implementing the code.

C. Creating your campaigns
Once your inventory is ready and your pages are tagged, then you can start creating your campaigns. To manage your campaigns, you should always refer to the Order tab. Here are the 3 key steps to remember in order to create a campaign:

1. Create the advertiser’s Order: Choose between the Default Order (for Directly sold inventory) and the Ad Network Order.
2. Create the advertiser’s Line Items
   
   • Select a level of priority (there are 5 different levels)
   • Select a cost type: CPC, CPM, CPD
   • Specify goals and settings, such as targeting, daily and user capping, and creative rotation.
3. Upload the creatives
   
   • Select the creative type (we currently support Flash, Image and Rich Media)
   • Choose to add a click macro or a cache buster
   • Test the creative in the preview tab or directly on your website

We hope that our two-part series has helped you better understand Ad Manager and get started with it on your site. If you need further information on specific topics, we encourage you to visit our Help Center and review how Ad Manager works.

Inside...Google Ad Manager

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 announcem 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 announcem

Upcoming referrals changes

Are you currently displaying a referral unit for AdSense on your website? Then read on, because there are some upcoming changes to the referral program that you should be aware of. But first let me clarify that only referral units promoting AdSense will be affected by this change; referrals to other products and services remain unaffected at this time. This change to referrals promoting AdSense will differ depending on your location, regardless of where your users are located.

- If you're in North America, Latin America, or Japan, the pricing structure for AdSense referrals is changing.

About a year ago, as an experiment, we changed the pricing structure for AdSense referrals so that when a user you referred to the program earned $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you would also earn $5. When that publisher earned $100 within 180 days and removed all payment holds, you'd receive $250. We have decided to conclude this experiment and return to the original pricing structure. As a result, we'll soon no longer be offering the $5 bonus or $2000 bonus, and the payout for referring a user who generates $100 with AdSense in the first 180 days will return to $100.

These pricing changes will take place during the last week of January. A referred user who reaches $100 within 180 days of signing up and who removes all payments holds before the change occurs will generate earnings of $250 for the referring publisher. Any referred user who meets this conversion criteria after the change occurs will only generate $100 in earnings for the referring publisher. In addition, the $5 bonus will be removed at that time. Please note that the date a user was referred will only affect where the 180-day window is set but not necessarily the payout the referring publisher receives. For example, it's possible that a user referred in early January will meet the conversion criteria before a user referred in early November, and so the resulting payout may differ.

- If you're outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan, AdSense referrals will be retired.

For publishers not located in any of the three regions detailed above, we'll soon be retiring referrals promoting AdSense. We've found that this referral product has not performed as well as we had hoped in these regions. Again, please keep in mind that you can still generate referrals for the other products listed under the 'Referrals' section of your AdSense Setup tab.

Soon, you'll no longer see the option to create a referral button for AdSense in your account, although existing buttons will display as normal. This specific referral type will then be retired during the last week of January - any users who meet the conversion criteria (reaching $100 in earnings within 180 days of sign-up and removing all payment holds) before the change will generate earnings of $250 for the referring publishers. Any conversions which occur after this change is made will not be recorded in your account. You may wish to begin replacing any existing referrals promoting AdSense with referrals for another product or an AdSense for content unit.

We appreciate your support of this referral product, and hope it won't cause you any inconvenience.

Diagnosing and treating revenue fluctuations (Part I)

You love your website and you want it to thrive. You create content, manage your community, and keep an eye on your AdSense performance. If AdSense revenue is down, you're understandably concerned. If AdSense revenue is up, you're happy, but you want to know why. Revenue fluctuations are obvious enough when they occur, but the root cause isn't equally clear. It can be challenging for both new and experienced publishers alike to analyze their AdSense data and respond effectively to changes.

The goal of this post, and our follow-up later this week, is to help you understand the AdSense revenue model so you can diagnose and treat revenue fluctuations like an experienced MD.

Study up

The first step is knowing how the figures reported in your account (such as eCPM, CTR, and page impressions) interact to describe your total revenue. Think of each number as a variable in the revenue formula for your site. At the highest level, you can calculate revenue by multiplying your page impressions by the effective cost-per-thousand impressions (eCPM) and dividing by 1000.

Revenue = Page Impressions * eCPM / 1000

eCPM = Revenue / Page Impressions * 1000

The eCPM metric provides an estimate of how much revenue you can expect to earn for every 1000 page impressions. For example, if you serve 10,000 page impressions and earn $40, your eCPM is $4. If page impressions increase to 30,000, you can predict that you'll earn $120 given the $4 eCPM.

Most AdSense ads pay on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, so eCPM is really a measure of your average ad performance. Breaking eCPM into the click-through-rate (CTR) and the average cost that advertisers pay per click (CPC) gives you a more accurate measure of performance.

Revenue = Page Impressions * CTR * average CPC

Once you know your average CTR and your average CPC, you can predict how much revenue you'll earn for a given amount of page views. You can also analyze your revenue by looking at placement-targeted ads versus contextually-targeted ads.

Total Revenue = Revenue (contextual) + Revenue (placement-targeted)

While contextually targeted ads always pay per click, advertisers can pay for placement-targeted ads by impression (CPM) or by click (CPC). To account for both of these bid types, you should look at the average eCPM for placement-targeted ads. More simply, you can just add placement-targeted revenue to your contextually targeted revenue.

Revenue = (Page Impressions (contextual) * CTR * average CPC) + (Page Impressions (placement-targeted) * eCPM (placement targeted) / 1000)

Revenue = (Page Impressions (contextual) * CTR * average CPC ) + Revenue (placement-targeted)

Even though we're looking at contextual and placement-targeted revenue separately, don't forget that these two types of ads compete against each other in the auction. We'll always show the best performing ad, regardless of targeting type, so more competition creates higher winning bids.

Identify the symptoms

Now you're ready to diagnose any revenue fluctuation. Just like the revenue formulas above, let's start simple and gradually get more complex.

The first question to ask is: Did either your page impressions or your eCPM change? You can compare trends in both page impressions and eCPM using the Advanced Reports in your account.


If your AdSense page impressions have declined, you should determine if traffic to your entire site is declining as well. A web analytics tool such as Google Analytics can provide you with this information. In addition, you should check your pages for unpaid public service ads (PSAs).

If your eCPM is down, you'll need to dig one level deeper and find out if your contextual or placement targeted ad performance has dropped. You can also find this data in the Advanced Reports tab using the options shown below.


Let's consider your contextual ads first. The two key metrics to investigate are CTR and average CPC. CTR is given in your reports, but you'll need to calculate your average CPC using your favorite spreadsheet. (My favorite goes without saying). Please keep in mind that this is still an average CPC for your account and doesn't necessarily correspond with the price paid by any specific advertiser. Once you've narrowed the change to CTR or average CPC you're ready to start treatment.

For placement-targeted ads, you should analyze how much total placement-targeted revenue you are receiving and the average eCPM. Changes in either of these metrics usually indicate that advertisers are beginning or ending campaigns targeted to your site. Again, placement-targeted campaigns are more likely to be short-term than contextual campaigns.

That's all we have time for today -- now that you have a better understanding of what factors can affect revenue, don't forget to check back later this week for the second part of this series. We'll be discussing ways to treat revenue fluctuations based on the symptoms you've discovered.

Read Part II

Updated to fix typos

Make a date with data in Google Analytics

Here 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

Euro reporting for more European countries

If you're a publisher located in Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Slovenia, or Vatican City, you can now switch to local currency reports to view your earnings in Euros. Once you make this change, any earnings generated from advertisers paying on other currencies will be converted to Euros each day. This also means that if you're receiving payments in Euros, there won't be any additional conversions at the end of the month when payments are issued.

Before you switch to local currency reports, we suggest you download and save copies of your past reports in U.S. dollars for your records. Once you've done that, look for the green prompt in the upper right hand corner of your Reports Overview page. Click the link in the prompt, and you'll 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, since we'll be requiring this update in the future. You can learn more about these new reports in our Help Center, and we also recommend reviewing answers to a few FAQs we covered on the blog before.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:09:00 PM

Expanding availability of local currency reports

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

Euro reporting for more European countries

If you're a publisher located in Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Slovenia, or Vatican City, you can now switch to local currency reports to view your earnings in Euros. Once you make this change, any earnings generated from advertisers paying on other currencies will be converted to Euros each day. This also means that if you're receiving payments in Euros, there won't be any additional conversions at the end of the month when payments are issued.

Before you switch to local currency reports, we suggest you download and save copies of your past reports in U.S. dollars for your records. Once you've done that, look for the green prompt in the upper right hand corner of your Reports Overview page. Click the link in the prompt, and you'll 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, since we'll be requiring this update in the future. You can learn more about these new reports in our Help Center, and we also recommend reviewing answers to a few FAQs we covered on the blog before.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:09:00 PM

Expanding availability of local currency reports

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

Chasing the perfect layout with AdSense for search

Chasing the perfect layout with AdSense for search

AdSense publisher Next Small Things has long understood that search is the entry point for users to find what they're looking for on the web. In fact, the idea for CoolChaser.com, a MySpace layout creation and customization site (and Next Small Things's largest business to date), came from the observation that many web surfers were using the company's search engine to find instructions to change their MySpace backgrounds. The observation and ensuing business idea has paid off, and in just one year CoolChaser.com has gained a loyal user base: over 200,000 users are now finding or creating layouts on the site every day. "CoolChaser has become a one-stop-shop for layouts because of the ease of use and the choice and ability for users to express what they feel at the time," says founder Chao Lam.

With over 20 million user-submitted layouts (and 3,000 created every hour), it was becoming increasingly difficult for users to find the layouts they were looking for. "We were getting a lot of requests from users to provide some sort of search mechanism so that they could easily find what they were looking for," developer Sachiko Kwan says. As an existing AdSense publisher, Kwan decided to try AdSense for search and was immediately impressed by the quick setup process and the accuracy of the results. With the new SiteSearch feature, Kwan was able to restrict the searches so users didn't have to leave the site to find what they were looking for. In addition, the new watermark feature allowed Kwan to add the search box without any rearrangement in the navigation bar.

Most recently, Lam and Kwan began optimizing their search for better performance and user experience. If a user wasn't creating a layout, they were looking for one. So Kwan moved the search box from the upper right corner of each page to the center of the header and also added a second search box to the bottom of every page, in case users who were done browsing needed to search again. On the search results page, she changed the ad borders to a lighter color to better blend in with the site's pages.


Within a week of making these changes, Lam and Kwan saw their daily search queries on CoolChaser increase by 40% and earnings more than double. Since implementing AdSense for search on CoolChaser, search has become the second most popular functionality behind creating layouts. Lam and Kwan continue to focus on user experience, and they are now working to refine search results using keywords and labels. "There's such an enormous variety of things people search for," Lam says. "AdSense for search is really working for us."

Have you had success with AdSense for search, or our new o

Get Goghing with AdSense for search

A few months ago, we shared a number of AdSense for search optimization tips with you. Here's the story of one AdSense publisher who recently tried some of these techniques and saw substantial results after making a few small changes.

VanGoghGallery.com is an art resource site that provides information about the life and work of Vincent van Gogh. Site owner Greg Alexander runs the Van Gogh Gallery to educate and share information about the artist, and has also used the site to explore new Internet marketing techniques. Greg joined AdSense in 2007, and although he didn't know much about the program at first, he found it "a great opportunity to generate some revenue without spending the effort to sell ads." He also tried other ad providers, "but none of them yielded the results that AdSense did. In addition, AdSense was the only one that provided relevant ads for our visitors."

To help users navigate through the many pages of the Van Gogh Gallery, Greg added an AdSense for search box to the right column of his pages. By enabling SiteSearch and displaying search results on his own pages, he was able to help users find what they were looking for while staying on his site.

As an optimization experiment, Greg recently moved his search box to the center column of his pages and extended it to twice its original width.

Before

After

In addition, Greg made slight changes to the search results pages -- he removed the borders from the ads and search results, and added a new search box to the search results pages. According to Greg, "altogether, these changes took less than 15 minutes to do."

After making these updates, Greg noticed a dramatic and immediate increase in the usage of search on the Van Gogh Gallery. He found that "the number of queries performed each day increased 8 to 10 times, and search ad clicks and revenues increased even more." His search earnings quickly grew from less than a dollar a day to double digits since his optimization test. "Now we frequently receive more search ad clicks than our total number of searches pre-optimization," says Greg. "I'm still amazed at how simple changes can have such an incredible impact."

Greg has started using the earnings from his AdSearch optimization efforts to build and host additional websites about other artists. "Ultimately," Greg says,"we hope to use the earnings to fund research trips to Europe to see the works of the masters and expand the quality of information we offer visitors to our sites."

Have you also tried our AdSense for search optimization tips and found success? Let us know.

You may remember that last year, we added arrows to the bottom of cost-per-click (CPC) ad units. These arrows allow users to browse through additional relevant ads, helping them find exactly they're looking for.

We've been hearing your requests for new ways to generate revenue in AdSense, and new ways to maintain control over the ads that appear on your sites. With that in mind, we're pleased to announce plans to give you the ability to allow multiple Google-certified ad networks to compete for display ad space on your site.

You may remember that we began to accept display ads served from qualified third-party vendors over a year ago, which helped increase the number of display ads competing on AdSense publisher sites. With this new change, participating ad networks can also bid in our auction to appear on AdSense sites. This new capability will help you generate the most profit for every ad that appears on your site, whether the ads come from AdWords advertisers or Google-certified ad networks.

Who are these ad networks? They're ad agencies and companies that partner with advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ads on sites they don't own themselves (much like AdSense). You'll now be able to allow advertisers from these networks to compete with AdWords advertisers for your ad space. All reporting and payments will still run through AdSense as they always have, and the available ad formats will be the same as those offered for AdWords ads.

We take the quality of ads delivered to your site seriously, so we'll be certifying all participating ad networks for adherence to our standards for user privacy, ad quality, and speed. You'll have control over which networks can show ads on your pages -- you can choose to opt out of receiving ads from specific networks, or all networks completely. This means you can continue to show ads from only AdWords advertisers if you like. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing these account settings.

We'll slowly begin allowing ads from Google-certified ad networks to appear on AdSense pages over the coming months, so you won't see an immediate impact on your ads or earnings. As new networks are certified, you'll see them appear in your account. This feature will initially be available to publishers in North America and Europe, but we hope to roll it out to additional parts of the world in the future.


Finally, some ad networks use tools similar to Google's interest-based advertising to show more relevant ads to users on the sites they visit. We'll allow certified networks who comply with user privacy guidelines to show ads using these tools, but they won't be permitted to collect data from your site for the purpose of subsequent interest-based advertising. You'll be able to opt out of receiving ads based on user interests from these certified networks, and we have changed our requirements for third-party ad serving to reflect this.

We're dedicated to providing users with a positive experience, while helping publishers effectively monetize the ads appearing on their sites. We believe you'll find that more competition translates into better ads and increased revenue in the long run.

Touch-ups for your ad units

You may remember that last year, we added arrows to the bottom of cost-per-click (CPC) ad units. These arrows allow users to browse through additional relevant ads, helping them find exactly they're looking for.

We've been testing slight updates to the look of these arrows, and our experiments have shown improvements in the user experience. As a result, we'll soon be making a few minor aesthetic changes, including darkening the arrows to make them more visible and orienting all arrows to point left and right. In addition, to help users understand what the arrows do, hovering over the arrows will soon show the labels 'previous ads' and 'next ads'. You'll see these changes appear in CPC ad units in all languages gra

YouTube Promoted Videos to appear on AdSense sites

As the number of YouTube content producers continues to grow, many are looking for new ways to reach new audiences. That's why we're happy to announce the launch of YouTube Promoted Videos in AdSense ad units.

Promoted Videos are YouTube videos -- from movie trailers to product demos to really almost any kind of video on YouTube -- promoted by their creators so they can reach a wider audience. (You may have already noticed Promoted Videos on YouTube.com, as they appear on partner watch pages and alongside YouTube search results.) Extending Promoted Videos to AdSense sites will enable these content producers to broaden their reach, while providing you with another way to earn from your ad space. At this time, these ads are only available in English to US publishers, but we're looking forward to expanding to additional regions and languages in the future.

Promoted Videos feature a thumbnail image with three lines of text, and when clicked, will bring the user to watch a video or view a channel on YouTube. They're contextually targeted to your pages, and you'll earn from these ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. In addition, they can appear in the following ad formats, as long as you've opted these formats in to displaying both text and image ads: 300x250 Medium Rectangle, 336x280 Large Rectangle, 728x90 Leaderboard, 250x250 Square, and 200x200 Small Square. Just like other ads, Promoted Videos compete in our standard ad auction, so they'll help drive up competition among advertisers bidding to appear on your pages. When a Promoted Video wins the ad auction, it'll be shown alone in one of the eligible ad formats.

All Promoted Videos are required to comply with the YouTube Advertising Policies, and the advertised videos with our Terms of Use and Community Guidelines. You can prevent Promoted Videos from appearing on your pages by adding 'youtube.com' to your Competitive Ad Filter list. Please note that currently, this method will block all Promoted Videos from your sites.

Finally, we'd like to mention that these new Promoted Videos are separate from our video ads offering, which stream ads in video format and are classified as image ads.

We're continuing to look for additional revenue opportunities for publishers, and we hope these new ads will help you earn more.

AdSense for mobile goes high-end

With the growth in popularity of high-end mobile phones with full (HTML) Internet browsers, like the iPhone and phones running Android, advertisers are increasingly extending their campaigns to mobile devices. Because these devices offer a rich content experience similar to desktop, advertising on them is a natural extension for many advertisers.

Today we're launching a new feature for AdSense mobile publishers that will allow you to take advantage of the high-end mobile phone browsing experience. This feature offers publishers the ability to run larger AdSense ads visible on high-end phones. Before this launch, AdSense mobile publishers were only eligible to serve smaller text and image ads on their website content.

We've done this by introducing a new JavaScript snippet that is easy to implement and specifically optimized for mobile to reduce latency on high-end mobile phones. Furthermore, this new snippet will allow publishers to select additional ad unit sizes from common AdSense formats.



However, if you're targeting all mobile devices, or if you're unable to make changes to your website, you don't have to update your AdSense code in order to enable larger AdSense ads to show on high-end devices. We'll automatically detect if the user is browsing with a high-end phone, and instead of serving a smaller mobile WAP ad, we'll return a larger ad optimized for high-end mobile devices.

For more information on earning money from your mobile content or to get started with mobile AdSense, visit the Help Center or check out past posts on the Google Mobile Blog.

Spotlight on the Custom Search Element

Recently, we introduced Google Web Elements as a new way to easily add dynamic content to your site. In this post, we'd like to focus on one of the Web Elements which you can use to earn more revenue: the Custom Search Element.

As our optimization tips point out, adding search functionality to your site can improve the user experience on your pages and overall make your site "sticky". Here are some commonly asked questions about the Custom Search Element to help you get started:

Q: What do I need to do in order to start earning revenue with the Custom Search Element?

The first thing you should do is activate AdSense for search in your AdSense account. Sign in to your AdSense account and visit the AdSense Setup tab. Then, choose 'AdSense for search'. Once you click the "Get started" button, your account will be activated.

After you've activated AdSense for search, the next steps depend on whether you're creating a Custom Search Element that searches your own site or one that uses an existing Custom Search Engine to search across multiple sites of your choice.

If you're creating a Custom Search Element that searches your own site:

• You can create your Custom Search Element from the Web Elements site at www.google.com/webelements/customsearch/.
• Under "Configure", be sure to select "Search my site and use AdSense for search."
  
• In the AdSense Publisher ID field, be sure to enter your unique publisher ID properly (should start with "pub-"). You can learn how to find your publisher ID in our Help Center.

If you're creating a Custom Search Element that uses an existing Custom Search Engine:

• Link your AdSense account to your Custom Search account from the Custom Search control panel as follows:
  
• First, go to your search engines at www.google.com/cse/manage/all.
  
• Click the "control panel" link for the corresponding Custom Search Engine.
  
• In the left-hand navigation bar under "Control panel", click "Make Money". 

You'll be taken to a page like below where you can link your Custom Search Engine account to your AdSense account. All you need to do is input your AdSense account information.

Q: Do I need to create a Custom Search Engine in order to use the Custom Search Element?

No. By default, the Custom Search Element wizard gives you the option of searching only your own website. However, if you wish to have your element search websites other than your own, you'll need to first create a Custom Search Engine at www.google.com/cse/manage/create.

Here are a few examples of publishers who've implemented the Custom Search Element:

Yin Yang House

On the Yin Yang House site, search results using the Custom Search Element appear inline on the page, allowing users to search without leaving the current page context.


Digital Inspiration


Villiard.com


For publishers who like to tinker with code, you might find this post useful - it outlines how to further customize your Custom Search Element with CSS and JavaScript.

If you'd like to share your use of the Custom Search Element, leave us a comment! We'd love to see what you've done.

A more customized search experience for your website

We've posted a couple times about how the Custom Search Element can help provide a more customized search experience for your users while enabling you to earn money. Today we're excited to announce two new features for the Custom Search Element that will enable you to further customize your website search to the look and feel of your site: themes and rich snippets.

Themes

You can now customize the layout and styles of your Custom Search Element. To select a theme for your Custom Search Element, just go to your Custom Search Engine account at http://www.google.com/cse/manage/all and click Control panel. On the Control panel page, in the left-hand menu, click Look and feel.


You can now choose from a number of layouts and color styles for your Custom Search Element. You can also preview your selected theme. Here's an example of the 'Shiny' theme:


If you'd like to tinker further with the look and feel of your Custom Search Element and you're familiar with CSS and JavaScript, take a look at this Custom Search Control documentation.

Rich snippets

Rich snippets are another new feature that allow you to customize the actual Custom Search Element search results with additional relevant content, like thumbnail images and actions. We like to think of rich snippets as a way to add more flair to your Custom Search Element search results.

Here's an example of search results from a Custom Search Element which uses both themes and rich snippets. The thumbnail image next to each search result shows rich snippets in action.


Rich snippets require you to mark up the page with metadata. For more information, check out the Custom Search Developer's Guide.

If you have any feedback for us on either of these new features or on the Custom Search Element itself, please leave a comment. We love hearing what publishers have to say about

A new AdSense interface: now in beta

Today, at the Content Revenue Strategies conference in New York City, we announced that a small group of publishers will begin testing a new AdSense interface in limited beta.  Inspired by the feedback we've heard directly from you, the new interface includes features designed around your top three requests:

Provide insights to help you make more informed decisions about your sites.

The new AdSense interface includes more detailed performance reports and enables you to view daily stats in graphical formats. It also will provide you with additional metrics such as the amount you've earned from various ad, targeting and bid types. Here's a glimpse at what the new reports currently look like in our beta:


Offer you more control over the ads that appear on your sites.

We're also continuing to make improvements to the Ad Review Center. Upcoming enhancements will give you more options to manage the ads that appear on your site, as well as a cleaner interface that makes it easier to find and review them within the Ad Review Center.

Help you manage your account more efficiently.

We've streamlined the AdSense interface to simplify common tasks, such as making a change to several ad units simultaneously. Additionally, to help you get the most out of AdSense, we've added more relevant help on every page, a message inbox for tips from our team, and alerts with important account related notices.

In order to collect feedback on these enhancements from publishers in multiple countries, we're rolling out the beta test of the new interface today in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Japanese.  Although we aren't able to extend invitations to additional publishers yet, we're planning to roll this test out to thousands of publishers over the coming weeks. We'll be sending email notifications to the beta test participants to let them know.

Thanks again for all of your feedback so far, and we'll be sure to let you know when we're able to offer the new interface more widely.

A new AdSense interface: now in beta

Today, at the Content Revenue Strategies conference in New York City, we announced that a small group of publishers will begin testing a new AdSense interface in limited beta.  Inspired by the feedback we've heard directly from you, the new interface includes features designed around your top three requests:

Provide insights to help you make more informed decisions about your sites.

The new AdSense interface includes more detailed performance reports and enables you to view daily stats in graphical formats. It also will provide you with additional metrics such as the amount you've earned from various ad, targeting and bid types. Here's a glimpse at what the new reports currently look like in our beta:


Offer you more control over the ads that appear on your sites.

We're also continuing to make improvements to the Ad Review Center. Upcoming enhancements will give you more options to manage the ads that appear on your site, as well as a cleaner interface that makes it easier to find and review them within the Ad Review Center.

Help you manage your account more efficiently.

We've streamlined the AdSense interface to simplify common tasks, such as making a change to several ad units simultaneously. Additionally, to help you get the most out of AdSense, we've added more relevant help on every page, a message inbox for tips from our team, and alerts with important account related notices.

In order to collect feedback on these enhancements from publishers in multiple countries, we're rolling out the beta test of the new interface today in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Japanese.  Although we aren't able to extend invitations to additional publishers yet, we're planning to roll this test out to thousands of publishers over the coming weeks. We'll be sending email notifications to the beta test participants to let them know.

Thanks again for all of your feedback so far, and we'll be sure to let you know when we're able to offer the new interface more widely.

Category filtering for French, German, and Spanish ads

We recently expanded category filtering to publishers in additional English-speaking countries, and we're happy to announce that the feature is now available for ads in French, German, and Spanish. With category filtering, you can prevent ads from up to 8 specific categories from appearing on your pages. Ads in these categories will be filtered if they're in any of the four supported languages, regardless of how they've been targeted to your pages.

To set up category filtering, sign in to your AdSense account and visit your Ad Review Center, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. Once you click 'change', you'll be able to view the full list of categories you can filter. In addition, we'll show you the percentage of revenue and ad impressions you've been receiving from each category in the last 30 days, which can help you understand the impact that applying filters might have.

For more information about category filtering, feel free to visit our Help Center. We're still working towards making this feature available in more languages, and we

Search for ads in the Ad Review Center

When we announced the new AdSense interface a few weeks ago, we mentioned how we've been working on building more functionality into the Ad Review Center to make it easier for you to find and manage your ads. Today, we'd like to let you know that we're introducing the ability to search for ads in the Ad Review Center. This option is currently available to a limited number of publishers using the new AdSense interface, but we're working on rolling this out more widely as we invite more publishers to test the new interface.

The search feature has been designed to improve your efficiency when finding ads to review. You'll be able to search for ads by keyword, display URL, or destination URL. For example, you can now search for all ads that have been placement targeted to your site with the destination URL of one of your competitors' websites. In addition, you can search across multiple AdSense products, like AdSense for mobile content and AdSense for feeds, and also specify whether you'd like to view allowed, blocked, or new ads.



Although we aren't able to add more publishers to the test at this time, we wanted to give you a glimpse into one of the ways we're working to make the Ad Review Center easier to use. We'll be collecting feedback from the first group of publishers testing this feature, and plan to improve it and then expand to additional publishers in the coming months.

AdSense for Domains Expands Use of Keyword Hints

You asked for it, you got it! AdSense for Domains, which launched a year ago to help publishers earn revenue through ads placed on undeveloped domains, now uses optional keyword hints more often. These keywords are suggestions supplied to Google by domain owners about the types of content users are looking for when they arrive on an undeveloped domain. They are used to help our system determine the best ads to place on these domains. For example, with the domain www.rockstarsand.com, a publisher might suggest the keywords "bitumen" and "mining" so that ads may appear from advertisers offering oil extraction products.

Keyword hints remain optional. When keyword hints are provided by the publisher, our ad-matching systems will use them more often. As always, we aim to provide the most relevant ads for the user, the best value for advertisers, and the best returns for publishers. This means in some cases, keyword hints will be ignored when we have evidence that other targeting approaches perform better.

Instructions for setting keyword hints for your domains can be found here.

The AdSense for Domains team is continuing to work on additional product improvements, that we will be announcing in the coming months.

Troubleshooting tips part IIb: Ad relevance and targeting continued

To follow up on our previous post about ad relevance and targeting, let's look at some other reasons why you may experience ad targeting issues on your site.

• Have you blocked the AdSense crawler's access to your pages? The AdSense crawler is an automated program that scans your web pages and tracks content for indexing. Sometimes we don't crawl pages because the AdSense crawler doesn't have access to your pages, in which case we're unable to determine their content and show relevant ads. Here are a few specific instances when our crawler can't access a site:
• If you use a robots.txt file which regulates the crawler access to your page. In this case, you can grant the AdSense crawler access by adding these lines to the top of your robots.txt file:
  
  User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
  Disallow:
  
• If the sites you place the ad code on are behind a login, our crawler won´t be able to access your site. To grant access to such pages, please follow these instructions. Also, be sure to regularly check your site diagnostics tool to be aware of any blocked pages.
• Is your site language supported by AdSense? Check to make sure that your site has a substantial amount of text-based content in one of the languages supported by AdSense. When there's enough content, our technology detects the primary language of each of your pages and delivers relevant ads in the appropriate language, even if your site contains multiple supported languages.
  
  
  • The crawlers used by Google AdSense index content by unique URL. As a result, if the URL is the same regardless which language the user chooses to view the pages in, our system will only have the language version it received when indexing this URL. This means that we'll show ads according to the page our system has in its cache, which might not match the language the user is viewing the page in. In order to resolve this, we suggest either of the following:
    
    • Create separate directories for each language, such as http://www.site.com/en/index.html
      
    • Send GET variables (encoded user information appended to the end of the URL after the ? character) in the URL to determine which language should be shown such as for example http://www.site.com/index.php?lang=en
• Do you see public service announcements (PSAs) on a site which previously showed paid ads before? If your AdSense account requires PIN or phone verification, you'll see a prompt in your account when you sign in. If you fail to verify your PIN or phone number (requirements vary depending on your location), then you may see PSAs on your site. If this is not your case, please visit our Help Center for further information.

If you continue to have ad targeting issues or are unable to see your ads we recommend visiting the ad troubleshooter in our Help Center.

Troubleshooting tips part IIa: Ad relevance and targeting

Last week, we took a closer look at implementing your ad code, and today, we'll address some of the common issues related to ad targeting.


If you're seeing irrelevant ads or public service ads (PSAs) on your pages after you've pasted the ad code into your HTML source code and waited the recommended 48 hrs, here are a things to check:

• Have you placed the AdSense ad code in frames separate from the main content of your website? If so, you may experience ad targeting issues. In order for our crawlers to match the ads to the content of your website, it is important to place the ad code in the same frame as the main content of your webste. If you're familiar with HTML, and your website is talking about several different topics you could also consider implementing section targeting on your site to highlight relevant content.
  
• Do you have mostly dynamic content on your site? Our crawlers currently can't derive meaning from these types of files:
  - audio and video files (.wma, .mpeg, .mov)
  - mp3 files (.mp3)
  - images (.jpeg, .bmp)
  - Macromedia Flash movies
  - Java Applets
  
  To receive more relevant ads, we recommend including plenty of text-based content on your site, including complete sentences and paragraphs.
  
• Do your pages use session IDs? A session ID is a piece of data serves as a unique identifier for a session. If your pages use session IDs, you may not receive targeted ads on those pages. Since this session ID - and therefore the URL - changes every time a different user views a page, the URL will not be indexed and will need to be crawled from scratch. Once the URL is crawled, however, the session will most likely have expired. This means that pages seen by the users are rarely in the index. You'll need to remove the session IDs in order to show more targeted ads to your users.

We hope these tips help you resolve any targeting issues you experience with your ads. Next week, we'll take a look at some other reasons why you may see irrelevant ads or PSAs on your site, and how you can best resolve them.

Posted by Ulrike Jung - Inside AdSense Team

More webinars coming your way

We've just published a new webinar schedule for the next month. In our live webinars, we'll highlight changes you can make to your ad implementation in order to maximize your AdSense revenue. We're also trying something new with our upcoming webinars: we've set up open Google Moderator discussions, where you can raise questions related to the specific webinar topic or vote on questions from other participants. We'll then answer your questions live in the webinar.

To sign up for our webinars, please visit our Help Center. Even if you're not able to attend the live sessions, we'll make sure to upload each webinar recording within 24 hours of the event.

Posted by Siobhán McCormack - AdSense Optimisation Team

Introducing the new DoubleClick for Publishers

You may have read previous posts on this blog about Google's ad serving platforms for publishers, such as Google Ad Manager. Publisher ad serving helps website owners better manage and deliver ad campaigns that they've sold directly to advertisers. Ad serving platforms are also used to better manage how unsold ads are allocated to third parties, such as the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, AdSense and other ad networks. If you do a lot of direct media sales and ad network management today, you may already be using an ad server or have investigated using one. Google offers two ad serving products for publishers - Google Ad Manager, for growing publishers, and DoubleClick's DART for Publishers (DFP), for large media companies with complex needs.

Since Google's acquisition of DoubleClick in March of 2008, we've been working to leverage the combined knowledge of our companies and the combined strengths of our product suite to develop an even more effective solution for ad serving and management. Today we announced the new DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) from Google, our next generation ad serving platform as well as DFP Small Business, a streamlined version of our new platform designed to meet the needs of growing publishers. The new DFP offers an even more intuitive workflow to help publishers of all sizes manage campaigns quickly and easily, while providing access to sophisticated feature set including advanced reporting, forecasting, and optimization capabilities.

Google Ad Manager publishers will automatically be upgraded to DFP Small Business in the coming weeks and we will be working closely with DoubleClick customers to upgrade them to our premium platform on a schedule that makes sense for their business. New publishers signing up for Google Ad Manager today will be automatically upgraded to DFP Small Business on the same schedule as current GAM publishers. To learn more about both versions of our upgraded ad serving platform you can visit this link.

Adsence for feeds

It's about time these two neighbors got to talking to each other. Most Saturday afternoons you'd find them politely waving as they passed at each other by with their push mowers, tending to their neatly manicured tables, charts, and graphs. It just made sense that the grounds would look that much more complete if they removed a bit of fence between them. And so they've done just that.

If you use either AdSense for feeds or Google FeedBurner to track item clicks and also use Google Analytics, as of today, you will automatically start to see your feed item click analytics show up in Google Analytics with some additional information added to help you understand how distributing your feed with FeedBurner leads to traffic on your site.

Specifically, we will help you classify your links by tagging the Source as "feedburner", the Medium as the channel in which we sent out your feed such as "feed" or "email", and the Content as the actual endpoint application in which the user viewed your feed content such as "Google Reader" or "Yahoo! Mail". In order to slice your traffic by these endpoints, in the All Traffic Sources view in Google Analytics select the "Ad Content" field in the second column.

In the coming weeks, you will start to see many more distribution endpoints in your reports. The represent ongoing additions to our database of applications that process feeds.




By default, these analytics will show up in the "All Traffic Sources" and "Campaigns" views in Google Analytics. You can filter the results just to only the traffic that comes from Google FeedBurner by filtering on "feedburner" on the All Traffic Sources page or "Feed:" on the campaigns view. You can also use these sources in the Advanced Segments views.

In this view below, we actually have two separate feeds driving traffic to this blog, and that can now be tracked easily in one view.





If you have item click tracking enabled, we are now automatically tagging your item URLs with Google Analytics parameters. If you're not using Google Analytics, or for some other reason don't want these parameters in the requests coming to your website, you can turn off Google Analytics tracking on the "Configure Stats" page on the Analyze tab at http://feedburner.google.com. If you don't have item click tracking enabled, this is also the perfect time to turn it on, which can be done on this same page.





For instance, if you would rather see the detail of where your feeds are read directly, you can add ${distributionEndpoint} as the medium, and then you will get views that look something like this.





Again this will happen automatically except in one specific case: if you are already tagging your feed item URLs with Google Analtyics tags such as "utm_source" and "utm_medium" - we have disabled this feature and you will have to turn it on manually by selecting "Track clicks as a traffic source in Google Analytics." Note that if you do this, we will replace any existing "utm_" tags that may be in your permalinks with the values generated from FeedBurner.

In the coming weeks, we will be releasing more features in Google FeedBurner that take advantage of this functionality, so we highly recommend that you register and set up your site with Google Analytics if you haven't done so already.


Posted by Steve Olechowski on behalf of the Google FeedBurner team

18 comments
AdSense policy clarification on using AdSense for feeds and AdSense for content

Monday, November 9, 2009 | 8:05 AM

Labels: Policy Issues

This is just a quick clarification on AdSense for feeds as it relates to the AdSense for Content specific policy of only allowing three ad units and three link units per page.

Many publishers have asked the question "Since feed items often get displayed with many feed items on a single web page, can using AdSense for feeds jeopardize the status of my AdSense account?"

The answer is no. Having three ad units per page is a product specific policy for AdSense for content. Product specific policies can be read about here.

In essence, the variable ways in which feed items are displayed are controlled and optimized automatically by the AdSense for feeds application and the choices you make as a publisher in your AdSense account when configuring your AdSense for feeds ad units. This means we may automatically suppress ad impressions when we detect there are too many feed ad units being displayed, resize ads based on the size and length of your content, and adjust the ads that are displayed based on the device in which the feed is being read.

Better contextual matching

As an AdSense partner, you know that Google is continually making improvements to the way we match ads to your content so that users see even more relevant ads, which should help you make more money over time.

A "referral URL" is one of many signals we use to deliver contextually relevant ads on your website. The referral URL contains information about the link a user followed to arrive at your website, whether from a search engine or another site on the Internet. Any webmaster for any site can look at referral URLs to see how users arrive at their site.

Let's see how this works today when a user arrives at your golfing advice website from a search engine results page. Imagine that someone searches on Google for [golf shop atlanta] and clicks on a search result that takes them to your site. The referral URL that is passed to your site may look something like this: http://www.google.com/search?q=golf+shop+atlanta. I'm using Google as an example here, but the same type of information is transmitted if a user arrives at your website from another search engine.

To deliver the most relevant ad, we treat the query words [golf shop atlanta] in the referral URL as if they're part of the content of your webpage. We can then better tailor the ad we deliver on your site. In this example, we could use the additional information from the query words to show an ad for a golf shop in Atlanta rather than for one in Chicago (depending on the other words in the page).

We've recently started to expand the use of the query words in referral URLs to a few hours so we can so we can continue to deliver more relevant ads. The technical way that we're doing this is by associating the relevant query words in the referral URL with the existing advertising cookie on the user's browser. After a short period of time (a few hours) the query words are no longer used for the purposes of matching ads. Of course, users can continue to opt out of our advertising cookie at any time here.

This allows us to deliver more relevant ads on a wider range of AdSense partner sites that a user may browse over the course of a few hours. Let's assume the user in our example leaves your golf website and browses through to a news website that is also an AdSense partner. Since [golf shop atlanta] is in a referral URL that was visited in the past few hours, we may use those query words, along with the content of the news webpage itself, to determine the most relevant ad to show the user on the news website.

Using signals from the referral URL is just one part of our teams' continuing efforts to deliver even better contextually matched ad