Happy Halloween from the Google AdSense Team!
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Western Union now in Thailand
After launching in four African countries earlier this month, we're excited to announce the arrival of Western Union Quick Cash® payments for Thailand!
For those of you who are not familiar with this form of payment, Western Union Quick Cash payments are free of charge and will reach you faster than checks. Payments will continue to follow our normal payment schedule and will be available for pickup in your local currency at your local Western Union agent the day after they're issued.
A couple of things to note: We can send Western Union payments only to publishers that have an individual account at this time. Also, the payee name on your account must exactly match the government-issued ID card that you'll use when picking up your payments. For more information on how to sign up for and pick up Western Union payments, please visit our Help Center.
For those of you who are not familiar with this form of payment, Western Union Quick Cash payments are free of charge and will reach you faster than checks. Payments will continue to follow our normal payment schedule and will be available for pickup in your local currency at your local Western Union agent the day after they're issued.
A couple of things to note: We can send Western Union payments only to publishers that have an individual account at this time. Also, the payee name on your account must exactly match the government-issued ID card that you'll use when picking up your payments. For more information on how to sign up for and pick up Western Union payments, please visit our Help Center.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Make the most of your AdSense experience with our new checklist
Starting a new program can be overwhelming. What steps should you take to get off on the right foot and make the most of your account? To help you make your way with AdSense, we're delighted to introduce the AdSense Checklist to publishers viewing our U.S. Help Center.
If your language preference is set to U.S. English and you are logged in your Google Account, you'll find the checklist in the left navigation bar of the Help Center. You can recognize it by the progress bar. The checklist is divided into five parts, offering basic recommendations, required steps, and tips to help you grow your account to its full potential.
When you check an item, you'll see the progress bar update accordingly. This will help you in several ways. If you're new to AdSense, you'll get a clear overview of what steps to follow to make the most of your account. If you’re already an experienced AdSense publisher, you'll also have the chance to revisit the basics, and further develop your use of the program.
The progress bar can help you identify quickly how many of the recommended steps you’ve completed, and the checklist will suggest which step you can take next.
We hope that this Help Center feature will be useful to you and help you grow with the AdSense program! If you have other great ideas for ways to help newbies get started with AdSense or thoughts on how to make the checklist even better, join the conversation in our forum.
If your language preference is set to U.S. English and you are logged in your Google Account, you'll find the checklist in the left navigation bar of the Help Center. You can recognize it by the progress bar. The checklist is divided into five parts, offering basic recommendations, required steps, and tips to help you grow your account to its full potential.
When you check an item, you'll see the progress bar update accordingly. This will help you in several ways. If you're new to AdSense, you'll get a clear overview of what steps to follow to make the most of your account. If you’re already an experienced AdSense publisher, you'll also have the chance to revisit the basics, and further develop your use of the program.
The progress bar can help you identify quickly how many of the recommended steps you’ve completed, and the checklist will suggest which step you can take next.
We hope that this Help Center feature will be useful to you and help you grow with the AdSense program! If you have other great ideas for ways to help newbies get started with AdSense or thoughts on how to make the checklist even better, join the conversation in our forum.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Avoiding accidental clicks Pt. 2: Use the right product
We hope you found our last post on invalid clicks useful. Today we wanted to give you more advice on this topic and talk about ads on pages containing interactive media, such as videos and games.
We understand that video content pages aren't as easy to monetize as regular text-based pages and that publishers are interested in experimenting with different ad placements, but we’d like to clarify some of our policies addressing AdSense for content ads in interactive media environments:
Think about your users and advertisers when implementing AdSense ads on your sites. Make sure that ads are separated enough from the content to prevent accidental clicks, and that ads are always recognizable as such. Remember that AdSense is an ecosystem that will continue to thrive as long as all parties remain happy within it. Users are happy to see relevant and useful ads that are not obtrusive or misleading, advertisers are happy to reach their target audience and get good returns on their investment, and you - the publisher - will be happy to have an AdSense account in good standing.
We understand that video content pages aren't as easy to monetize as regular text-based pages and that publishers are interested in experimenting with different ad placements, but we’d like to clarify some of our policies addressing AdSense for content ads in interactive media environments:
- We don’t allow publishers to overlay AdSense for content ads on video content.
- We don’t allow publishers to implement AdSense for content ads as in-stream video placements.
- We don’t allow publishers to implement AdSense for content ads on interstitial pages. So if a user has decided to watch a video, you may not implement ads on pages saying “your video will start in 15 seconds." We’ve also seen this placement on Flash gaming sites in the form of an ad being shown to the user while the game is loading in the background. However, even if you allow users to skip these ads or close them, this placement is not allowed.
Think about your users and advertisers when implementing AdSense ads on your sites. Make sure that ads are separated enough from the content to prevent accidental clicks, and that ads are always recognizable as such. Remember that AdSense is an ecosystem that will continue to thrive as long as all parties remain happy within it. Users are happy to see relevant and useful ads that are not obtrusive or misleading, advertisers are happy to reach their target audience and get good returns on their investment, and you - the publisher - will be happy to have an AdSense account in good standing.
Monday, October 18, 2010
‘Tis the Season for Placement Targeting: Optimize Your Ad Units
Last week, we discussed DoubleClick Ad Planner, a media planning tool to help you improve your placement targeting. Now that you’ve made your website visible to advertisers with Ad Planner and ad placements, we want to help you ensure that your ad units are also visible to advertisers and ready to be targeted. Here’s how to take advantage of advertiser spend with your ad units:
1. Implement your ad units above the fold and near your content, where users are already engaging with your site. “Above the fold” refers to the area on a page that a user can see without scrolling down.
2. Where possible, use top-performing ad sizes like the medium rectangle (300x250), large rectangle (336x280), leaderboard (728x90), and wide skyscraper (160x600).
3. Enable your ad units to show text and image ads, so that all relevant, available ad inventory is competing to appear on your site. Many advertiser campaigns are made up of image ads, so we highly recommend activating this feature to take full advantage.
Once you've made the changes, not only will your ad placements be ready for this holiday season, but they’ll also be targetable by advertisers in future ad campaigns.
To learn more about these topics, check out our YouTube videos on image ads and high performing ad units, or read more in our Help Center.
Check back next week for more ‘Tis the Season for Placement Targeting tips!
Friday, October 15, 2010
Site Maintenance on Saturday, October 16
This Saturday, our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. You'll be unable to log in to your AdSense account during this time, but we'll continue serving ads to your pages and tracking your clicks, impressions, and earnings as usual. In addition, your ad targeting won't be affected.
We've converted the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world:
London - 6pm Saturday
Alexandria - 8pm Saturday
Hyderabad - 10:30pm Saturday
Jakarta - 12am Sunday
Perth - 1am Sunday
To learn more about what goes on during these maintenance periods, check out this Inside AdSense post.
We've converted the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world:
London - 6pm Saturday
Alexandria - 8pm Saturday
Hyderabad - 10:30pm Saturday
Jakarta - 12am Sunday
Perth - 1am Sunday
To learn more about what goes on during these maintenance periods, check out this Inside AdSense post.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Avoiding accidental clicks Pt. 1: Keeping the right distance
In the past, we've talked about ad placements that are prone to generate invalid clicks. In a past post, for example, Mike noted that publishers should be careful about placing ads too close to navigational controls or other clickable page elements.
It's in the best interest of the user, advertiser, and publisher to avoid implementations that lead to invalid click activity. As you can imagine, users aren't very happy if they accidentally click an ad instead of a link on your page and are directed away from your site. Advertisers also don’t want to be charged for a click that a user made accidentally (though of course we do not charge advertisers for invalid clicks that we detect). And why should publishers care? Well, if we see that most of the clicks coming from your pages are invalid, we may need to disable your account to protect our advertisers.
One type of site we wanted to talk about are Flash-based game sites. Playing games on these sites, you'll notice that ads are often placed very close to the Flash player where the game is played. Publishers may reason that they're providing maximum value to advertisers by placing their ads very close to the area where their users are focused. However, many of these Flash games are played with a mouse, and the action in the games can lead users to do a lot of rapid cursor movements and clicking. We've seen many cases where ads were placed too closely to where the action was taking place, generating many accidental clicks.
Since each game and site are unique, we can't advise publishers on an exact distance between ads and games, but we do recommend a minimum distance of 150 pixels between the Flash player and ads.
We've worked with publishers on these issues in the past and noticed that increasing the distance between Flash player and ads has had, on average, a positive long-term effect on CPCs. The reason for this is smart pricing. As you may know, the revenue you receive is based on the amount an AdWords advertiser pays for each click on their Google ad. The amount the advertiser pays varies per ad and from website to website, based on the likelihood that a click will result in a conversion for the advertiser. If we determine that clicks on a site are less likely to lead to business results for an advertiser (e.g., an online sale or registration), we reduce the price that an advertiser will pay for those clicks.
So, in short: Moving the ads further away from Flash games decreases the likelihood of accidental clicks and increases the number of clicks leading to business results for advertisers. A good deal for all involved.
It's in the best interest of the user, advertiser, and publisher to avoid implementations that lead to invalid click activity. As you can imagine, users aren't very happy if they accidentally click an ad instead of a link on your page and are directed away from your site. Advertisers also don’t want to be charged for a click that a user made accidentally (though of course we do not charge advertisers for invalid clicks that we detect). And why should publishers care? Well, if we see that most of the clicks coming from your pages are invalid, we may need to disable your account to protect our advertisers.
One type of site we wanted to talk about are Flash-based game sites. Playing games on these sites, you'll notice that ads are often placed very close to the Flash player where the game is played. Publishers may reason that they're providing maximum value to advertisers by placing their ads very close to the area where their users are focused. However, many of these Flash games are played with a mouse, and the action in the games can lead users to do a lot of rapid cursor movements and clicking. We've seen many cases where ads were placed too closely to where the action was taking place, generating many accidental clicks.
Since each game and site are unique, we can't advise publishers on an exact distance between ads and games, but we do recommend a minimum distance of 150 pixels between the Flash player and ads.
We've worked with publishers on these issues in the past and noticed that increasing the distance between Flash player and ads has had, on average, a positive long-term effect on CPCs. The reason for this is smart pricing. As you may know, the revenue you receive is based on the amount an AdWords advertiser pays for each click on their Google ad. The amount the advertiser pays varies per ad and from website to website, based on the likelihood that a click will result in a conversion for the advertiser. If we determine that clicks on a site are less likely to lead to business results for an advertiser (e.g., an online sale or registration), we reduce the price that an advertiser will pay for those clicks.
So, in short: Moving the ads further away from Flash games decreases the likelihood of accidental clicks and increases the number of clicks leading to business results for advertisers. A good deal for all involved.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
‘Tis the season for placement targeting: Market your site with DoubleClick Ad Planner
Last week, we introduced you to placement targeting as a great way to capitalize on the increase in advertiser spend during the holiday season. This week, we’re kicking off our three-part optimization series to help you maximize your earnings by taking advantage of DoubleClick Ad Planner. Ad Planner can help you market your site, make it easier for advertisers to search for you, and improve the data that these advertisers can see.As you may recall from last week’s post, the first step to enabling placement-targeted ads to appear on your pages is to set up your custom channels as ad placements. Ad placements are specific groups of ad units where an advertiser can choose to place their ads using placement targeting. This enables advertisers to better identify websites that reach their target audiences based on the descriptions publishers provide about their sites, describing the content of their pages or the type of users who visit them. Turning custom channels into ad placements is simple. To learn more, check out our YouTube video and visit our Help Center.
Once you’ve set up your ad placements, we encourage you to try out DoubleClick Ad Planner, a free media planning tool that helps advertisers find the sites their audiences are likely to visit and helps publishers make their sites easier to target.
In Ad Planner, you can claim the sites you own and customize their descriptions. For each site, you can also add up to five categories that describe your site's content, and the types, sizes, and formats of ads that your site supports. Doing this allows advertisers to easily find ad placement descriptions that match the interests of their target audiences. More targeted ads leads to a better user experience on your site and a greater opportunity to increase your earnings. For more information on how to get started, watch this brief introduction to DoubleClick Ad Planner and sign up today.
Check back next week for more ‘tis the season for placement targeting tips!
Friday, October 8, 2010
Western Union now launched in four African countries
We're excited to announce the launch of Western Union Quick Cash® payments in four countries in Africa! You can now select Western Union Quick Cash payments in:
A couple of things to note: We can send Western Union payments only to publishers that have an individual account at this time. Also, the payee name on your account must exactly match the government-issued ID card that you'll use when picking up your payments. For more information on how to sign up for and pick up Western Union payments, please visit our Help Center.
- Algeria
- Ghana
- Kenya
- Uganda
A couple of things to note: We can send Western Union payments only to publishers that have an individual account at this time. Also, the payee name on your account must exactly match the government-issued ID card that you'll use when picking up your payments. For more information on how to sign up for and pick up Western Union payments, please visit our Help Center.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
‘Tis the season for placement targeting
With the holiday season fast approaching, everyone is spending more online. As consumers start shopping for gifts, searching for holiday activities, and booking vacations, advertisers are putting more of their marketing dollars online to reach these potential customers. This means there is an increased demand for the ad space on your site and an opportunity for you to earn more. To help you capitalize on this trend, we recommend you take advantage of placement targeting. Many advertisers create targeted brand campaigns at this time of year that are shown on AdSense sites in the Google Display Network. In fact, 99% of Google’s 1000 largest advertisers run campaigns on the Display Network. To ensure their brand is noticed by the right shoppers, advertisers will often use placement targeting to show their ads on websites in the Display Network that cater to their target audiences.
You can take advantage of this holiday increase in advertiser spend, and help advertisers placement target specific sections of your site using a feature called ad placements. By creating an ad placement, you’ll make sections of your site available to be targeted directly by AdWords advertisers.
Imagine a sport shoe manufacturer. To ensure his shoes get to the right consumers for the holidays, he may want to select sites within the Display Network that appeal to 25- to 34-year-old athletic males looking to purchase athletic shoes. As a publisher with a sports site, you can create ad placements for specific segments of your site so that the sport shoe manufacturer can find you based on these criteria. You can provide descriptions of your site, general demographic segment / audience information, and where the ads appear on your site. Placement targeting connects you directly to the advertisers who want to reach your readers, and are ready to spend their holiday budgets to do just that.
In the coming weeks, we’ll post more tips on how to make the most of placement targeting. In the meantime, check out the Help Center and this video to learn more about placement targeting and how you can get started. The sooner you do so, the sooner advertisers can see your ad placements and potentially include you in their holiday campaigns!
Monday, October 4, 2010
Announcing beta test of expanded category blocking
Last year we launched sensitive category blocking in order to give you more control over the ads that appear on your sites by letting you opt out of receiving ads that fall into potentially sensitive specific categories such as dating, religion, and politics.
Today we’re excited to announce that we’re beginning to test a related new feature called general category blocking with a small group of publishers. General category blocking will allow you to block even more categories of ads from appearing on your site. We’re testing this feature with 170 more specific categories, including finance, travel, job, and automotive. This feature will allow publishers to block up to 50 ad categories from among a broad range of 170 fine grained categories. To help you understand potential changes to your earnings, we’ll provide you with the percentage of your total revenue and total impressions that fall under each category.
General category blocking will initially apply only to ads in English, regardless of the language of the site. We are working on expanding it to other languages in the future.
This feature is available in the new AdSense interface, which is currently in beta and being tested by a limited number of publishers.
Although we're not able to expand this test to additional publishers at this time, we wanted to give you a glimpse into one of the ways we're working to give you even more control over the ads that appear on your site. Over the coming months we’ll be working hard to refine this feature so that we can roll it out more broadly in the future. Please stay tuned to the blog for any updates, and feel free to leave us a comment in the meantime.
Today we’re excited to announce that we’re beginning to test a related new feature called general category blocking with a small group of publishers. General category blocking will allow you to block even more categories of ads from appearing on your site. We’re testing this feature with 170 more specific categories, including finance, travel, job, and automotive. This feature will allow publishers to block up to 50 ad categories from among a broad range of 170 fine grained categories. To help you understand potential changes to your earnings, we’ll provide you with the percentage of your total revenue and total impressions that fall under each category.
General category blocking will initially apply only to ads in English, regardless of the language of the site. We are working on expanding it to other languages in the future.
This feature is available in the new AdSense interface, which is currently in beta and being tested by a limited number of publishers.
Although we're not able to expand this test to additional publishers at this time, we wanted to give you a glimpse into one of the ways we're working to give you even more control over the ads that appear on your site. Over the coming months we’ll be working hard to refine this feature so that we can roll it out more broadly in the future. Please stay tuned to the blog for any updates, and feel free to leave us a comment in the meantime.
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