[Google Adsense] New Interface Wednesdays: Bulk edit

You might have read in a previous AdSense blog post that opting in to both text and image ads increases the pool of advertisers bidding for your site inventory -- which can in turn increase the amount of revenue you make from AdSense. In the past, changing all your ad units to accept both text and image ads might have taken a lot of time. But now, the new interface allows you to easily find and edit all or some of your ad units with just a few clicks.


Simply go to the 'My ads' tab in the new interface and under 'Content,' choose the 'Ad units' page. Using the checkboxes, select the ad units you’d like to edit, or simply select the checkbox at the top of the list to select all of your ad units. Using the 'Actions' dropdown, select 'Edit ad type.' Choose 'Text & image/rich media ads' and then click 'apply ad type.' Now any ad units that can be opted into both text and image will have this set as their ad type.

We recommend opting your ad units into both text and image to increase auction pressure, ensuring you will get the highest RPM possible. Keep in mind that some units such as link units and certain ad sizes cannot contain image ads, so you will not be able to modify these ad types.



Try it now! Navigate to the new interface and click on the My ads tab, and then 'Content,' followed by 'Ad units.'

Posted by Alex Benton - AdSense Engineer

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Killer Campaigns Volume 2: Making Emotional Connections

By Jerry Bader (c) 2009
We live in an age of clones: somebody makes a very profitable movie about vampires, and the next thing you know we're all inundated with movies, television shows, books, blogs, websites, and every form of blood-sucking permutation you can imagine.


CSI begets CSI Miami, which begets CSI New York, which begets NCIS, which begets NCIS Los Angeles, which is just about as much as anyone can take. If something is successful, you can be sure more of the same will follow.

Despite the occasional success story, most clones either fail completely, or never live up to the success of their groundbreaking predecessors.

Most of the copycats fail because the clone-masters behind them don't understand why the original worked, and as a consequence, they clone all the wrong elements. This is as true of commercial presentations as it is with broadcast programming.

Cloning a successful format is not the same as Slipstreaming. Clone marketing is just rote copying of technical elements without any reference to why the original worked, whereas Slipstream marketing takes a familiar idea and plays off it like a great jazz musician reinterprets an old standard.

Kleenex "Let It Out" Campaign: Recognizing The Emotional Value Proposition

What is more generic than facial tissue? A consumable paper product that you use once and discard; it is the very definition of a commodity, and as we all know commodity-sales are primarily based on price. Enter Kimberly Clark, one company that has managed to turn their commodity product into the industry standard to the extent that the commodity itself has become known by Kimberly Clark's designated brand name - Kleenex.

The Kleenex, "Let It Out" campaign is just one example of a company that recognizes that in order to turn their commodity product into something of higher value, they have to link it to what we refer to as "an emotional value proposition:" the implied psychological or emotional connection between the product and the consumer.

The original series of Web videos was housed on a dedicated video microsite. The series of videos showed a casually dressed interviewer with an engaging personality asking people to sit down on a couch in the middle of a busy street to chat about some significant emotional moment in their lives. Some people talked about their children; one woman even discussed Katrina and the impact it had on her. People cried, and people laughed, until tears came to their eyes, at which point, the interviewer handed each person a Kleenex: Kleenex and emotions go hand-in-hand. Let It Out, the concept was brilliant.

The following version was created for television; it is a compendium of clips from various videos, and as good as it is, it doesn't have the same emotional power of the Web video versions that concentrated on each person's emotional response to the interviewer's questions. It's good, but not as good, but it does serve to illustrate the point. Unfortunately the individual videos are no longer available.

Everything in the commercial works: the interviewer's manner and personality, the visual imagery of the couch in the street, and the memorable music message. It's all good, very, very good.

On The Other Hand...

Rogers Communication Inc. is a large Canadian communication company that provides digital cable TV, high speed Internet, and mobile phone services. Their primary competition would be Bell Canada.

In order to promote their new Home Phone service Rogers initiated a series of commercials featuring a man on the street interviewing people passing by, asking them to compare their phone service to their competitors. They used a red and blue couch in the street with the red side of the couch representing Rogers and the blue side representing Bell. They handed each person a blue phone and asked them to call a friend or relative; then they handed the person a red phone representing Rogers, and asked them to call the same person. Then the interviewer asked them to compare the service, which according to the commercial was the same. The difference of course was in the price.

Anyone who has seen both campaigns could come to only one conclusion, and that is the Roger's commercials were patterned after the Kleenex, "Let It Out" campaign. Did it work? Take a look.

On a very superficial level, the commercials are eerily the same, both have a couch in the street, an interviewer, and a passerby; but on an emotional and psychological level, they are as far apart as you can get.

Kleenex tied the use of their product to people's most personal feelings, their response to emotional reminiscence, while Rogers relied on price only. Their service isn't better, it's the same; it's just cheaper so the ad says. The Kleenex interviewer is courteous, interested, and responsive, while the Rogers representative is glib, and a bit smarmy.

The Technique and Why It Worked

The Kleenex campaign works for all kinds of reasons, the most important of which is that it engages the audience with an intriguing visual presentation that resonates on a psychological level by providing an emotional value proposition associated with their brand. On the other hand, Roger's value proposition is price.

You may say, price is important, but pricing tactics are a dangerous game. Competitors aren't just going to sit back and let you drive them out of business. If you fire a price missile across your competitor's bow, you can bet they'll respond, and that's exactly what Bell did.

Whoops!

By not understanding what Kleenex had done in their campaign, and not following Kleenex's precedent by associating their brand with an emotionally resonant value proposition, they laid themselves wide open to a slipstreamed response by their competitors, who created a campaign that riffed on their imagery, and one-upped them with an alternate price comparison.

Conclusion



If a commodity product like facial tissue can become a major
brand by employing marketing strategies that emphasize their
emotional value proposition, then so can your product or
service. Delivering a marketing message based on it's
underlying emotional value is a better strategy than price and
feature selling, a tactic guaranteed to be short-lived. Features
are forever being added and prices are continually under
competitive pressure, but emotional relevance is sustainable.



For many companies, it is very difficult for them to see the
emotional value their offering brings to the table, but the
conceptual basis of any effective marketing campaign starts with
discovering that underlying human connection your product or
service has with its audience.

About The Author

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm
that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit
www.mrpwebmedia.com,
www.136words.com, and
www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at
info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

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[Inside AdSense] A deeper look at channels: Targetable channels Part III

During the past 2 weeks, we walked you through the basics of URL and custom channels. In the final episode, Laurence Moore talks about the two ways in which advertisers can target your website: contextual and placement targeting. You'll also learn how to make your channels targetable by advertisers and label them with information such as size, location, and audience so the advertiser can easily find your channels and make an informed decision when choosing to target your site.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W8liKWj1k0&feature=channel

Thank you for watching the videos in our channels series, we hope you found them useful. If you'd like to watch more videos from the AdSense team, visit our official channel on YouTube.

Posted by Dia Muthana - Inside AdSense Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/03/2009 01:43:00 PM

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The AdSense Product Ideas page: Now accepting your submissions and votes

This past year, we've been working on building features based on your feedback, and we'd like to offer you the opportunity to tell us what's on your AdSense wishlist for 2010. What features or product updates would you like to see? Whether it's an idea for a brand new feature or just a small tweak that would simplify your workflow, we'd like to hear it.


With that in mind, we've created a Product Ideas page just for AdSense, and invite you to sign in with your Google Account and submit your suggestions during the next two weeks. You can also look through all submitted ideas and vote on the ones you like.

While we aren't able to guarantee that all the ideas on this page will be implemented, we can guarantee that we'll take the top ideas (as voted by you), and bring them to the AdSense Product Management team for review. By submitting an idea, you agree that Google may use the idea to develop and enhance Google's products and services.

This Ideas page will be open until December 15th, so be sure to add your ideas and vote soon!

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/01/2009 11:54:00 AM


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[Inside AdSense] Update your tax forms this holiday weekend

We hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Here in the U.S., we on the AdSense Team are spending the Friday after Thanksgiving enjoying holiday shopping, American football, and leftovers.

On this vacation day, we'd like you to remind you that tax season is approaching quickly, so you may wish to take a moment to review your address information and even re-submit your tax information to make sure it reflects your most current tax standing.



If you haven't entered tax information before, you can choose a form directly or follow our handy tax wizard within your account. If you're updating your tax information, feel free to click the 'change your tax information' link.

In addition, now would be the perfect time for our publishers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to verify their bank accounts for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) payments. If you're eligible for a payment at the end of December, you have until December 15, 2009 to select your bank account for payment, so we hope you give it a try!

Posted by Elizabeth Ferdon - AdSense Payments Team


Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/27/2009 08:04:00 AM





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[Inside AdSense] A deeper look at channels: URL channels (Part I of III)

As many of you know, channels are a great tool for tracking the clicks and impressions on your ad units, as well as figuring out which ad placements, sizes, and colors generate the most revenue. With that in mind, three of our very own Mountain View-based AdSense optimization specialists have created videos showcasing best practices for setting up channels within your AdSense account.




In the first episode, Matthew Carpenter-Arevalo talks about URL channels which can help you track revenue on a specific URL or domain. You'll learn how to set up a channel within your AdSense account, what metrics you can track using channels, and how to use that data to increase your earnings by generating more clicks on your ads.




You can find more information about URL channels in our Help Center. Check back next week, when we'll cover custom channels.

Posted by Dia Muthana - Inside AdSense team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/18/2009 03:38:00 PM

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Killer Campaigns Volume 1

By Jerry Bader (c) 2009


How To Think About Webmedia

We've all seen Web video campaigns and television commercials that we actually enjoyed watching, not once, but over and over again. Whether it's the Mac Versus PC ads or the thoroughly entertaining Visa Pizza Twirling Commercial, great campaigns are as memorable as great movies or television shows. When commercial presentations meet that standard, they transcend mere commercial status, and reach the level of Experiences.

Killer Campaigns is all about marketing campaigns that are memorable experiences, but why is that important; why should you care? Well if you want to grow your business, create, establish, or enhance a brand, or just plain sell more stuff on the Web, then you have to learn how to turn "advertising into content and content into an experience."

What We'll Show You

Each segment will feature an example of what we consider a great campaign that achieves memorable experience status. It may be a television commercial, a YouTube video, or even a video microsite, but whatever form it takes it will be worth watching, or more to the point, worth experiencing.

But just watching excellent advertising is not enough to understand why and how it works. You have to understand the technique used, and why it is effective. In some cases we may even show you failed examples of the same technique used, and explain why one campaign worked and one didn't.

Our Perspective

We start with a particular point-of-view. You may agree with it or you may not, but by the time you've been through several segments of The Killer Campaign series you will at least understand how to think about great marketing concepts, and you will watch webmedia from a whole new frame-of-reference, and with a more critical eye.

Our perspective is deceivingly simple: we create marketing communication, that's video campaigns, websites, and video microsites based on the notion that Web traffic is an audience, not prospects, clients, or potential suckers, but an audience.

The Technique and Why It Worked

The analysis we use to evaluate the effectiveness of these techniques is based on the preceding perspective of treating website traffic like an audience. Why you may ask don't we do what everybody else does, and look at the numbers? And the answer is simple: numbers lie. Numbers themselves don't tell you the whole story.

An effective campaign may fail because of poor implementation or faulty targeting, or any number of other reasons that don't speak to the creation and effectiveness of the media itself. After all, one of the greatest commercials ever made, the introduction of the Macintosh computer, hardly ever got shown because certain members of the board of directors got cold feet.

Killer Campaigns: Words & Music

As powerful and important as visual communication is, without finely crafted, supportive words and music, the visuals will fall flat; they will lack the emotional impact that connects you the advertiser, with them, the audience.

The Visa Pizza Twirler Commercial with the Morgan Freeman voice-over is a tour-de-force of commercial communication. Take a look and listen:

But what would this presentation be like without words and music? Here's a video of the filming of the pizza-tossing scene without any voice-over or music. The pizza-chef is brilliant but without the words and music it's merely a pleasant distraction without emotional or commercial relevance.

The Web and television are both multimedia communication venues that rely on visual impact and sound design combined with the element of performance, but at least one major difference makes commercial presentation on the Web a more difficult challenge: television watching is a passive exercise, while Web surfing is a proactive activity. You'll suffer through bad television commercials to watch your favorite program but on the Web, people won't tolerate it. That said, there are some great commercials that do get it right.

HTC You Campaign

The HTC You Campaign hits the proverbial marketing nail right on the head. This is a company that communicates the right message in the right way, because the message is not about the phone, it's about what you need in a phone. Just listen to the tag line: "you don't need to get a phone, you need a phone that gets you, and you, and you, and we are HTC."

This is a presentation that transcends commercial status. At the heart of the video are words and music that form a hypnotizing poetic social commentary on our over-stimulated hectic lives, and it provides a human solution, not a technical one. The concept is brilliant: this is not a product, it's a life enabler, and who couldn't use one of those. There is no discussion of features or price. It's not even about the phone; it's about making life easier for you, and it does it with a brilliant script and a hypnotic musical score.

Conclusion
In order for a commercial, a website, or a webmedia campaign to attain the level of an effective content experience, it must connect with an audience on an emotional level, the level at which decisions are made, and actions approved.

The HTC You Campaign illustrates how poetic words, delivered in an inspiring voice-over, supported by a hypnotic musical score, with associated images, turn advertising into content and content into an experience.

Does your website presentation or webmedia marketing strike this kind of cord with your audience, or are you still trying to win the hearts and minds of your audience with just another feature or price adjustment?

The Web is a different kind of communication venue. The old broadcast scenario of repeat, repeat, repeat, until they say your brand name in their sleep, just won't work on the Web. You may only get one shot at any individual audience member, don't screw it up.

About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com, www.136words.com, and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

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Study Finds Organic Results Increase Paid Search Clicks

A study from a couple of NYU Stern professors has found that organic search engine results can play a direct role in whether or not a paid listing is clicked. Basically, if this research is any indication, if your business has both a paid result and an organic result appear at the same time, you have a better chance of your paid result getting clicked than if the organic result had not appeared.


Professors Anindya Ghose and Sha Yang have highlighted the following findings:

- On average, the impact of organic listings on paid advertising is 3.5 times stronger than vice-versa, possibly because of the tendency of consumers to trust organic listings more than paid ads.

- The positive association between paid and organic listings increases advertisers’ profits by at least 6.15% when compared to profits in the absence of either of them. The positive association is strongest when advertiser-specific keywords are used and weakest when brand-specific and generic keywords are used.

- Click-through rates, conversion rates and total revenues are higher when both paid and organic listings are present simultaneously than when paid search ads are absent.

- The combined click-through rates are 5.1% higher when paid and organic listings are present simultaneously than when only the organic listings are present.

- The combined conversion rate increases 11.7% when paid and organic listings are present simultaneously than when organic listings alone are present.

- Paid search advertising drives up to 54% of total revenue growth.

The professors used "a unique panel dataset of consumer responses to keyword ads on Google" to conduct their research. The complete findings from the study are evidently available in a paper entitled "Analyzing the Relationship between Organic and Sponsored Search Advertising: Positive, Negative or Zero Interdependence?" It's 52 pages long.

"These findings have important implications for the incentives of search engines to strategically modify the rankings of their organic search listings in order to boost their revenues from paid search advertisements," says Professor Ghose.

Ghose's point is an interesting one. Nobody's making any accusations here, but would search engines tweak organic results specifically with the goal of increasing the performance of paid results, and bringing in more revenue?

Other popular WebProNews articles: Google Exec: Docs Can Supplant Office In One Year Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

Some think the idea is absurd. For example, one WebProNews reader commented:

No additional CPC is incurred when an organic listing is present, and the CPC certainly does not change depending on the organic listing's position. The PPC auctioning process has nothing to do with the organic SERPs.

Lastly, manipulating the organic SERPs in order to charge more for PPC clicks is cutting your own throat, from an SE perspective. In effect, telling advertisers: "You got a better organic position, therefore you will be charged more for your PPC clicks." Under which business model does this make sense? Exactly none. (respond here.)

Even if a search engine did engage in such a practice, it is highly unlikely that anybody would know about it. I think the larger point is still just that it pays to optimize your site for organic listings, even if you are paying for listings. This may seem like common sense, but it is easy to dismiss the time and effort that go into an optimized site if you think you can just buy your way to clicks.

About the Author: Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

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[Inside AdSense] Political ads on AdSense sites

During the recent U.S. election period, our team heard your concerns and feedback regarding political ads appearing on publisher sites. As a Product Manager who helps build the AdSense product, I'd like to take a moment to explain our ad targeting technology and policies, and what we're working on to offer you even more controls.

Ad Targeting

I wanted to help clarify first how advertisers are able to target your sites. As you know, ads that appear on AdSense sites are provided by advertisers participating in the AdWords program. To help publishers earn revenue, advertisers are able to target ads not only based on the content of a site, but also based on the audience of the site. When we first started AdSense in 2003, we only offered contextually-targeted ads; advertisers bid on keywords, and our system matched those keywords to the content of publishers' pages. As we developed the product, we expanded these targeting capabilities. For instance, placement targeting allows advertisers to select specific topics, sites, and pages on which they want their ads to run. In the U.S., our placement targeting tool also allows advertisers to find sites serving a specific audience, such as "Males ages 18-24."

To help new and existing publishers better understand our targeting options, our support teams will be reviewing and expanding the material available on our Help Center and homepage to make sure it better communicates our offerings. In addition, we'll be exploring different methods of explaining this information, such as through webinars and videos, and demonstrating how publishers can optimize their sites to take advantage of these targeting options.

Advertising Policies

We also received questions about why political ads are able to run on Google and AdSense sites. The Google advertising program is managed by a set of editorial policies that we have developed based on various factors, including user and customer experience. While Google or its executives and employees may express opinions about specific political issues and candidates, Google's advertising system does not favor one political position over another. Our network provides advertisers with a way to reach their audience, whether they are companies selling products or political campaigns promoting candidates or issues. Just as Google's advertising system does not favor one car manufacturer's ads over a competitor's in our auction, we also allow ads regardless of the particular political position they represent.

Publisher Ad Control

As we've expanded to new forms of advertiser targeting, we've also added controls for the ads that can appear on your sites. Our automated targeting technology will never understand your users as well as you, so it's important that you have the ability to control their ad experience. For example, we mentioned earlier this week that tools such as the Competitive Ad Filter and Ad Review Center are designed for you to prevent specific ads from appearing on your pages.

We've heard your feedback about how quickly filters take effect and the ability to block specific categories of ads, and we're working hard to improve our current controls and provide more powerful ones in the near future. Over the next couple weeks, we plan to improve the speed of your filters, and we're working towards filters in the future that will take effect in less than an hour. We'll also continue improving the Ad Review Center, giving you ways to block entire categories of ads in addition to individual ads. We are also working on ways for you to establish guidelines for the type of ads that will be acceptable to your users, so you can "set it and forget it," while feeling comfortable that users will have a good ad experience.

One of our goals with AdSense is to help you easily generate revenue for your site without much work, so that you have more time to focus on developing great content. Many of our best ideas, like the Ad Review Center, are inspired by your feedback and suggestions. Please keep letting us know how we can make AdSense a better product.

Posted by Jason Miller - Group Product Manager, AdSense

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/07/2008 04:24:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] 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 learn more about the reports you'll

have access to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S97HYyFwfsM

Posted by Vineesha Malkani - AdSense Publisher Support

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 11:04:00 AM

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[Inside AdSense] The case of the delayed data

Do you frequently log in to your account to check your stats? We've heard from some publishers that they check their accounts every hour, or even multiple times an hour, and we're definitely happy to see your enthusiasm for the program! (For all of our blog veterans reading this post, you might recognize these as the symptoms of G.A.S.S..)

On that note, many publishers have asked us why they don't see any changes in their stats each time they log in, or why they sometimes see a 'No data available' message in their reports. This is because your reports are generally updated every 15 to 30 minutes, but there can sometimes be a delay of up to 24 hours. In addition, it can take up to 24 hours to fully verify our internal logs and finalize your reports -- as a result, you may sometimes see changes in your earnings during the course of the day. Please also keep in mind that your reports won't show data for impressions on public service announcements (PSAs).

How often do you check your account? Let us know in our comments field below :)

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/14/2008 10:54:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Get in the game with 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 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.

Posted by Ryan Hayward - Ads Product Marketing

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/07/2008 09:01:00 P
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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.

Posted by Steve Olechowski - AdSense Product Manager

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/02/2008 01:47:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] 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

Posted by Nopparat Yokubon - AdSense Thai Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/30/2008 02:26:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Lucy's final tips for Friday newbies

As the summer draws to a close, it is with a heavy heart that I bring you our last Newbie Friday post. I hope you've enjoyed our words of wisdom over the past few months and have found the information useful. Our team will continue to update this blog with the most up-to-date AdSense news and information, so please don't let this be goodbye. If you missed part of the series or want to re-read specific posts, just visit our Newbie label at any time and look for our summer-themed logo. So, from one oldie to many newbies, I'll close out this season with a few final tips for our new publishers.

Go wide and get rich (media)
If you've just recently started with AdSense, there are two format-related tips I would instantly recommend. The first is to enable both text and image ads, which will increase competition among ads to appear in your ad units and may result in higher CPMs. Second, use some of our wider units, such as the 160x600 wide skyscraper, the 300x250 medium rectangle, or the 728x90 leaderboard. There are more rich media (image, flash, video and gadget) ads available in wider ad formats, and wider ad units are the preferred formats for advertisers looking to target your site. Again, increased competition or your ad space will help you maximise your earnings potential.

Use channels
Channels are powerful reporting tools, sometimes overlooked by new publishers. They allow you to view the AdSense performance of a site, a specific page, or even a specific ad unit, which can help you see where your ads are performing best. You can name these channels, give them descriptions, and then define them as ad placements so that they are visible to AdWords advertisers.

The secret
As top AdSense earners will tell you, when it comes to earning with AdSense, the most important thing is a policy-compliant site with good-quality, original content. Such sites attract users, relevant ads and, ultimately, revenue.

Finally, we constantly maintain online resources like our AdSense Help Forum, Newbie Central, and our Known Issues page to share useful information with you. We hope you'll use them to make the most of AdSense.

Posted by Lucy McKenna - AdSense UK Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/26/2008 11:12:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Is it right to search on your own site?

If you've added an AdSense for search box to your page, you're probably aware of the relevant search results it provides your users. That being said, a few publishers have asked us if it’s a violation of our program policies to perform searches in their own AdSense for search boxes. The short answer is no, this activity is not explicitly prohibited by our program policies.

However, we strongly advise against using your own AdSense for search box for a couple of reasons. First, it can increase the chance of accidental or invalid clicks on the ads that appear on the search results pages. Second, this will inflate the number of queries in your reports, giving you an inaccurate picture of the activity on your site.

If you’d like to use Google search, we recommend visiting Google.com or installing the Google Toolbar. And if you're using Google Chrome, don't forget that you can type search queries directly into your address bar.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/19/2008 02:39:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Continuing to improve our ads

Readers with sharp eyes will notice that on some rare occasions, your ads may appear or act slightly differently than what you're accustomed to. Rest assured that this is normal behavior that results from our efforts to improve the experience for all members of the advertising ecosystem. (You may have noticed a similar post about our search results on the official Google blog.)

One way in which we achieve this is by making continued tweaks and innovations to the user behavior and appearance of our ads. In the past, these experiments have included changes to the font styling, coloring, spacing, and other aesthetic components. More specifically, changes such as redesigned ad units and arrows to show additional ads have stemmed from these tests. The purpose of these tests is to identify changes to our product that can bring long-term benefits to our publishers, your site's visitors, and advertisers.

Before rolling out a change to our ads, we test performance for a limited number of ad impressions, which may not apply to all publishers. Although we don't notify publishers of these specific changes in order to prevent bias, we closely monitor the performance of these tests. We also welcome feedback from publishers, users, and advertisers, so feel free to drop us an email.

Posted by Keith Mander - AdSense Product Specialist

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/18/2008 09:19:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Quality, not quantity

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, you can use your AdSense account to display ads on any policy-compliant sites you own. This has often sparked the question among new publishers of 'How many sites do I need to earn money with AdSense?'

We'd like to stress that it's not the number of sites you have, but the quality of those sites that will help you increase your earnings with AdSense. If you're just getting started with your first website and the AdSense program, we recommend taking the time to build up your site with plenty of original, quality content -- write about topics you're passionate about, or which you have expertise in. When designing your website, keep our Webmaster Guidelines and, most importantly, your users in mind.

Then, take advantage of our Webmaster Tools to help increase your site's visibility in the Google search index, and try out the tips our Search Quality Evaluators have provided. Once you've built up organic traffic to your site, use Website Optimizer to understand how users interact with your pages and make improvements to your layout. And of course, during all of this, experiment with AdSense optimization tips to learn which colors, formats, and placements monetize best on your site.

Finally, as we blogged about during this Newbie Fridays series, your earnings potential can go up as advertisers find that you're sending high-quality leads to their sites. This won't happen overnight, but with patience and hard work you can watch your efforts convert into a high-quality site and higher AdSense earnings. And you won't even need a hundred sites to do it :)

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/12/2008 01:46:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Western Union launched in Panama

Following our announcement a few weeks ago, we're happy to announce that 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!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/10/2008 11:12:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] 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 optimization tips? If so, we'd love to hear from you.

Posted by Sandra Tsui - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 9/08/2008 11:04:00 A
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