A look inside Google AdSense
Don't have time to read the blog daily? Subscribe to our Inside AdSense email group to receive our posts at your convenience. Also, visit our Help Forum to post your own questions.
Go fourth and prosper
To all of our U.S. publishers, we wish you a happy 4th of July! This weekend, take a chance to celebrate your liberty in patriotic (and AdSense-friendly) fashion. Exercise your first amendment right to freedom of expression by creating more of the rich, wonderful content that makes the web such a special place. Or, work on achieving future financial freedom by implementing a few of our optimization tips.You might also want to take a note from the Declaration of Independence and pursue your unalienable right to happiness! Our reporting options make it possible to unchain yourself from your computer, so get out there and enjoy the summer weather (the right to bare arms?), fireworks, long evenings, and BBQs...because suffering from G.A.S.S. would be cruel and unusual punishment indeed.
(Oh, and one last thing: the AdSense Support team will be out enjoying our freedom over the holiday as well, so it may take longer than usual for us to reply to your emails. We'll be back in the office on Wednesday, but in the meantime you might prefer to turn to our Help Center, or Help Discussion Groups for assistance instead).
On the ball
Like many of you, we have "World Cup fever" and wanted to feature a publisher who is successfully using AdSense on a football (that's 'soccer' to all our American readers) site. We asked Ralf Möbius of Fussballportal.de about his experiences with AdSense:Can you tell us briefly about how your portal got started?
Fussballportal.de was launched in August 2004 as an addition and alternative to those football sites that were already successful and established on the net. Over the last 2 years, we've built a following in the competitive area of football sites.
Why did you decide to use AdSense?
Online marketers often aren't able to fully book-out existing ad space. Therefore, AdSense is a great alternative to increase a website's revenue. Since ads are relevant to the content of your pages, AdSense provides a meaningful addition for content-rich sites with loyal visitors. You also don't have to deal with acquiring and maintaining relationships with advertisers, which can be time-consuming.
What is your most important optimization tip for AdSense publishers?
Try to blend your ads by removing the border and using the same color as the background of your page. With this simple measure you can avoid ad blindness and also considerably boost your revenue.
Does the World Cup have any effects on your AdSense stats?
With the world here on our doorstep in Germany, we've seen very positive effects since we always provide up-to-date content, interactive games for our users, special features and services surrounding the World Cup.
Who is going to win the World Cup?
Brazil. The "ball artists", behind coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, will improve their performance from game-to-game like they already proved they can do at the Confederations Cup 2005 in Germany, and they'll be at their best by the semi-finals and finals.
Have a track attack with new referral channels
We've added the option to assign channels to your referral units. Now, when you're generating the code for any referral unit, you can specify a channel to track the performance of that specific referral unit.You can use the more detailed channel reporting to track anything from whether text or button referral formats perform better, to whether Firefox referrals are more successful on your product pages or your news pages. Channels will help you experiment to find out what's most effective in referring users from your site.
With the addition of channels for the referrals feature, now might be a good time to brush up on your channel expertise by reviewing our channel guide.
Do you see video ads in your future?
Terri Wild from thecarconnection.com was one of the first publishers to beta test click-to-play video ads on her site.When Wild participated in the beta test, video ads were only supported for the 300x250 Medium Rectangle ad format, so she had to switch to Medium Rectangles from the Squares she'd previously been displaying on her site. (Video ads are now supported by Large Rectangles and Squares as well).
When video ads began to appear on her site, Wild had a positive first impression.
"The quality of the video was good," explained Wild. "It was unobtrusive and complemented the site well. It was the only video content we offered so it was not lost amongst clutter. I knew since it was coming from Google it would be the highest quality visually and technically."
Not only did Wild see a revenue gain from the click-to-play video campaign itself, but switching to the larger Medium Rectangle format resulted in an additional jump in clickthrough rate and a 42% increase in eCPM.
"The AdSense team's research is excellent and they understand how to integrate ads without intruding on the user's experience," said Wild. "All of their recommendations regarding ad size and placement have resulted in significant increases. In fact, our revenues are six times higher than they were a year ago when we had limited Google text ads!"
Wild says she would be excited about showing more click-to-play video ads in the future.
Got an interesting video ads story? Email us. Your valuable feedback allows us to further improve our product for all our publishers. Want to beta test one of our upcoming products? Let us know and we'll keep you in mind.
System maintenance on Saturday, June 24, at 10:00am PDT
We'll be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday, June 24, at 10:00am PDT. During this time, you may not be able to access your account. However, as always your Google ads will continue to display, and stats and earnings will continue to accrue in your account.Thanks for your patience!
Video mailbag: Theresa Chow answers your questions
Theresa discusses the following:
1. How many Google AdSense products can I use in each website?
2. How do I get rid of an ad that I don't want on my site? I have some disagreements with it.
3. In case we would like to add other websites, do we need to create another AdSense account?
UPDATED to provide summary of content
Inside AdSense goes video
We AdSense Googlers all have some sort of passion, like Mike's bike riding or Rob's prolific blog reading. Physical effort not being my forte, and suffering from the attention span deficit noteworthy of my generation, I think my fascination with film is easily explained. How can anyone beat sitting in a comfy chair watching images flicker by, full of sound and fury (usually signifying nothing)?Thus, I am excited to present our first video mailbag post, conceived, directed, filmed, and edited by yours truly with help from some wonderful folks. We're still a bit short on special effects, and I don't think I'll be invited to any upcoming Oscars, but hopefully this will answer one or two questions while letting you see who we are.
Let us know how you like it. If you want your question to be featured on Inside AdSense in the future, email it to us along with a photo of yourself. I can't guarantee we'll be able to use it, but if we do, I can make a star out of anyone!
Everything you want to know about the AdSense API
A few weeks ago we ran a post about the new AdSense API. Now we'd like to respond to some of your questions.Can I participate?
Because we're still in beta, we're currently accepting developer applications. We're looking for developers who are likely to have 100,000+ daily AdSense impressions through the API. After you've applied, you should hear back from us within a few weeks.
What is the AdSense API?
The AdSense API is a free beta service that enables you to integrate Google AdSense into your website offerings. Using the AdSense API, you can enable users to perform a variety of AdSense functions without ever leaving your website. Users can create or manage their AdSense accounts, modify their AdSense ads, and view ad performance and earnings reports. Furthermore, you can earn money by receiving a percentage of the revenues generated by the ads placed on your site.
How much money will I earn?
This depends on how many AdSense publishers you sign up, and how much they earn. For each new publisher you sign up, you will earn a bounty of $100 once they have earned $100. Furthermore, you will receive 15% of the revenue generated by Google ads served using your API implementation. For details, please refer to our Terms & Conditions, Section IV, Paragraph 6.
Who should use the API?
Anyone with a large user base that publishes its own content (like blog hosts, wiki hosts, ISPs, or even social networking sites) should look into integrating the API with their application. By giving your users a chance to earn money using your service, you have an opportunity to differentiate your service from your competition while generating additional revenue.
If I'm accepted into the beta program, what kind of support will I get in implementing the API?
At the moment, we're looking into different support possibilities. We've set up a Google Group for our beta partners, which we will monitor so we can answer any outstanding questions. Additionally, we have a continually-growing developer site, complete with examples. We're also considering ways to expand our support for larger partners.
Καλημέρα σε όλους! Здравейте!
Following the successful Hebrew launch in April, we've now launched AdSense for search in two new languages: Greek and Bulgarian.We're delighted that we can now offer the benefits of AdSense for search to web publishers with Greek and Bulgarian sites.
To celebrate the launch here are some fun facts about Greece:
The length of the Greece's coastline is estimated at 9,300 miles; America's coastline is estimated at 11,800 miles. The land area of Greece is slightly smaller than Alabama. The yo-yo is the second oldest known toy in the world (only the doll is older), and was born over 3,000 years ago in the days of ancient Greece. Greek people love to dance, so there are 63 different folk dances in Greece.
... and some interesting information about Bulgaria:
The territory of Bulgaria is 111 000 km², and even though it is considered to be a small country it is 2 times bigger than Denmark and 3 times bigger than Belgium. Lactobacillus Bulgaricus, the bacterium that is used to produce yogurt, was first used in Bulgaria. It is named after the country and can be found only in Bulgarian air. Some of the biggest importers of the bacterium are Japan, USA and EU. The inventor of the first electronic computer, John Vincent Atanassoff, is of Bulgarian origin. Professor John Atanassoff, together with graduate student Clifford Berry, built the world's first electronic digital computer, at Iowa State University, between 1939 and 1942.
Now, which languages will we turn our attention to next?
Inside AdSense in your inbox
If you don't have time to check our blog frequently but would like to receive the latest news and tips from our Google AdSense team, you might want to consider subscribing to our Inside AdSense email and reading at your own convenience. You can also change your settings to a digest form if you prefer by logging into the Group.Place a self-hold and reduce banking fees
Tired of losing a large percentage of every AdSense check to bank processing fees? As I mentioned in my last post, if you're outside the US and receive USD checks, you can let your earnings accrue and then receive larger checks less frequently by placing a self-hold on your account. This will help reduce the overall impact of any check processing fees charged by your bank.
Should you decide to experiment with this option, please keep in mind that changes to your hold status must be in place by the 15th of each month. For example, in order to let your earnings accrue or to remove self-holds for a June payment, you need to make the change by June 15th.
If you haven't done so already, I also encourage you to subscribe to the AdSense Calendar where you can find information about our monthly payment schedule.
UPDATED to include information about AdSense Calendar
A letter from Eric Schmidt, CEO
Freedom of access to information on the Internet is a topic that we believe is of great interest and importance to Inside AdSense readers. Our CEO Eric Schmidt has written a letter to you, our publishers, on the subject of "net neutrality" -- read below for the full text:Dear AdSense Publisher,
There's a debate heating up in Washington, DC on something called "net neutrality" – and the outcome of this debate may very well impact your business. Therefore, we are taking the unprecedented steps of calling your attention to this looming crisis and asking you to get involved.
Sometime in the next few days, the House of Representatives is going to vote on a bill that would fundamentally alter the Internet. That bill would give the big phone and cable companies the power to choose what you will be able to see and do on the Internet.
Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access to everyone else. On the Internet, a business doesn't need the network's permission to communicate with a customer or deploy an innovative new service. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all broadband Internet access, want the power to choose who gets onto the high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build tollbooths to block the on-ramps for those whom they don't want to compete with and who can't pay this new Internet tax. Money and monopoly, not ideas and independence, will be the currency of their Internet.
Under the proposed "pay-to-play" system, small- and medium-sized businesses will be placed at an automatic disadvantage to their larger competitors. Those who cannot afford the new Internet tax – or who want to compete directly with the phone and cable companies – will be marginalized by slower Internet access that will inevitably make their sites less accessible, and therefore less appealing.
Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight. Imagine an Internet in which your access to customers is constrained by your ability to cut a deal with the carriers. Please call your representative in Congress at 202-224-3121. For more information on the issue, and more ways to make your voice be heard, visit www.ItsOurNet.org.
Thank you for your time, your concern and your support.
Eric Schmidt
CEO of Google Inc.
P.S. -- If you are unsure of who represents you in Congress, you can look them up by zip code at http://www.house.gov. And if you would like to stay informed about this issue, and other policy issues affecting Google, you can opt-in to our policy mailing list at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/googlepolicy/subscribe (powered by Google Groups).
So you're a successful, savvy AdSense publisher...
Want to work for us? Well, AdSense is hiring. In fact we're always looking for new team members in many AdSense-related positions, so if you're looking for a challenging and rewarding role and you think you'd be a good fit for our team, we encourage you to apply. Who knows--maybe you'll be the next face of AdSense featured on this blog.If you're interested in working directly with AdSense publishers like yourself, take a look at our Mountain View, California openings.
Google also has positions in sales, marketing and product management.
Located outside of the U.S.? Be sure to take a look at our international openings, too.
More than ads: video on your site
After our recent foray into video ads, there's been a lot of news and questions. So we thought we'd remind you that there are plenty of other ways you can leverage video to make your site more engaging for users, in addition to video ads.By embedding Google Video content into your site, you can also add color to a story, illustrate complicated steps on a how-to page, or give content for a review (check out our new movie preview page). Recently, we made it much easier to let us host your content - you can upload from within your web browser and your videos will be available for your site within minutes. You'll also be able to get full reporting on any videos you've uploaded.
We've received feedback from publishers that adding video to your site is a great way to draw in more readers. It's easy to start: just find a video you like from Google Video or upload your own, then click on the embed link on the right side of any playback page to add it to your site.
Make a date with AdSense Calendar
Today we're launching the AdSense Calendar. You can use it to find our monthly payment schedule, a record of AdSense blog posts, future system maintenance periods, and upcoming events--all backdated to the beginning of April 2006.To subscribe to the calendar, simply follow these instructions. While most of you will choose to subscribe via Google Calendar, you can also easily view it using a feed reader or your favorite iCal-compatible program, like iCal for Mac.
Once you've added the AdSense Calendar to your Google Calendar, AdSense events will show up alongside your own events. Here's what your calendar might look like after you've subscribed to the AdSense Calendar (events in orange are AdSense events).
We'll be keeping it updated, so don't forget to check it before asking about your next payment date ;)
We hope you find this new tool to be useful and informative, and as always, don't hesitate to send us your feedback.
Copyright © 2006 Google Inc. All rights reserved.
Privacy Policy -
Terms of Service
Subscribe
We Love Feedback
Got a question or comment about Inside AdSense?Send us an email.
Inside AdSense is powered by Blogger. Start your own weblog.
