New industry metrics to help publishers make the most from the web

Over 2 million AdSense publishers like you create the unique and diverse content that we all love - whether it’s finding reviews for a new restaurant, or do-it-yourself furniture makeovers. Online advertising helps fuel this creativity, and we’ve been improving our products to help you make the most of every opportunity - from making it easier to earn revenue from the mobile web, or welcoming Indonesian publishers to the AdSense community.  One of the ways we can continue to support you is by giving access to new sources of industry knowledge to enable you to make the most from display advertising. With this is mind, today we’re introducing a new report, “Display Business Trends: Publisher Edition”.

What’s inside for AdSense publishers? Well for starters, there are answers to questions like:

• Which ad sizes are rising in popularity? You control the ad experience on your site by choosing ad sizes that fit the design of your pages. But with such a flexible selection, which ad sizes should you pick? We found that 80% of all ads served tend to be the three best performing ad units for AdSense publishers: the medium rectangle, leaderboard, and skyscraper. We’re also seeing fewer publishers use smaller ad units, like the 468x60 banner.
• Is the mobile web really a big deal? We think so! We saw a 250% increase in mobile web impressions over the last three months of 2011. Growth in mobile usage has exploded, and there’s never been a better time for your site to go mobile. Check out resources for publishers on our GoMo site and Mobile Mondays blogposts.
• Which sites are showing strong impression growth? In 2011, we found that Shopping, Sports, and Auto & Vehicle sites were some of the fastest year-on-year growth verticals on the Ad Exchange and AdSense. We saw impressive figures across the board, with 15 out of 25 publisher verticals displaying double-digit growth.
• Where in the world are you? All over, as it turns out. Of a possible estimated 245 different countries and territories, we saw publisher ad impressions from 235 of them. These included the island country of Palau - one of the world’s newest sovereign states - and the middle-African nation of Equatorial Guinea, with astounding growth rates of 1106% and 4635% respectively. And while the United States still accounts for the highest percentage of impressions overall, we’re seeing a significant representation from China and Japan, coming in at 11% and 6% respectively.

The Publisher Edition will be the first in a series of publications looking at aggregated global data from across Google’s display advertising solutions, so stay tuned for more industry metrics to come. In the meantime, join the conversation and tell us what you think is behind these trends on our AdSense +Page.

Posted by Mel Ann Chan, Product Marketing Manager, Display Advertising

Mark your calendars for DoubleClick Insights on June 5th

As the digital media world continues to grow and diversify, we see unprecedented opportunity for both publishers and advertisers. AdSense publishers are an integral part of the display industry community -- so what does this mean for the future of buying and selling ads?

Tune in and watch Google's Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising, sit down with industry leaders to explore the digital ecosystem's swift evolution, and how publishers and advertisers can work better together to make the most of every opportunity, while simultaneously addressing the challenges both face.

The live stream will start on June 5th, 2012, at 9:00am PDT, and you’ll be able to watch from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

Please register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.

DoubleClick Insights

Tuesday, June 5th 2012

9:00am - 1:00pm PST

Following us on Google+ or Twitter? Use the #dclkinsights as you're watching the event.

Posted by Stephen Kliff, DoubleClick Marketing

‘Hangout on Air’ and learn how to build a mobile site in minutes

Did you know that 40% of mobile web users reported that they’ve turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience? With 44% of Americans owning a smartphone, publishers have the opportunity to meet their users’ expectations by delivering a mobile experience that’s on par with the desktop experience.

If you haven’t yet developed a mobile-optimized site, we’re here to help. We recently teamed up with DudaMobile to release a free mobile site builder.  In three easy steps you’re able to get started with mobile: (1) enter your site’s URL, (2) customize your site and (3) redirect mobile users automatically to the new mobile-friendly version.  It’s free and takes just a few minutes to complete!



Join us tomorrow, May 24th at 1pm ET/10am PT and watch as we showcase how ScienceDaily.com can use the mobile site builder to build a mobile-friendly site--live on air.

You’ll also hear from the CMO of DudaMobile, Dennis Mink; he’ll talk about best practices when using the mobile site builder and walk through important questions to ask yourself when building a mobile-friendly site.

Details on how to tune in

1. Sign into Google+ on Thursday, May 24 at 1pm ET/10am PT
2. Go to the Google AdSense+ Page
3. Look for the stream post and click to enter the live stream

If you have questions before or during the Hangout, post them on Google+ with the hashtag #GoMoSite.

Posted by Joseph Corral, Google Mobile Ads Marketing

Join us at the AdSense GetMo Exhibition in London

We’ve talked a lot recently on our blog about how mobile usage is rising at a rate faster than any other technology to date. To keep up, it’s important for your business to develop a mobile strategy.

If you’re located in the London, UK area (or are willing to travel to London!) we’d like to let you know about the GetMo Exhibition we’re hosting on Wednesday, 30 May. During this event, you’ll have the opportunity to learn more about mobile trends. You’ll meet mobile site developers from the GetMo site to hear how they can help you develop a mobile site with their offerings.

The agenda will feature sessions including:

• Mobile Industry Trends with Ian Carrrington, Mobile Advertising Sales Director
• A glimpse into the world of Android with Richard Hyndman, Developer Advocate
• Offerings available from GetMo vendors
• GetMo publisher panel

Spots are filling up, but if you’d like to attend the upcoming event, fill out our interest form before Thursday, 24 May. Although we won’t be able to accommodate all requests due to space constraints, we’ll do our best to include as many interested publishers as possible. We also recommend ensuring you’re opted in to receiving ‘Special Offer’ emails so we can reach you in the future.

We hope to see you in London at our GetMo Exhibition!

Posted by Marta Lysiak - AdSense Optimisation Team

Mobile Mondays: QLife receives 560% increase in mobile app revenue with Custom Search Ads

QLife is a leading hospital finder, drug database and health-care information website. QLife’s mobile application, “Medicine Search” is one of the biggest health-care applications in Japan. The app enables users to search for information on a range of medicines. QLife reached 2.5 million downloads of their app after the 3/11 Japan Earthquake, when Japanese consumers sought to pay greater care and attention to their family’s health-care.

Recently, QLife’s Executive Producer, Yoshimasa Mine spoke to us to describe why they choose to use Custom Search Ads for Mobile Applications and AdMob mobile advertising, and shared some optimization best practices.

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Why and when did QLife choose to start building a mobile application?

In 2008, when the iPhone was introduced to the Japanese market, there was a mobile industry event, Mobitec, where I felt the potential of high-end mobile. Mobile phones are a device that's always with a consumer, regardless of whether they're at home, at work, or at play. This was a good match with our business of providing a medicine search service - a search that is done instantly at a time of need.

Next, we took a look at our own company's data. We began to see large increases in traffic from mobile, even more than PCs. We wanted to build and encourage mobile activity to complement desktop traffic, particularly during holidays and weekends where we saw mobile traffic surging.


Why did you decide to monetize your mobile app using AdSense and AdMob?

We originally started using AdSense on our desktop site. As a health-care review site, we need to protect our objectivity and integrity to our users. As a result, advertising is the best solution for monetization, over paid reviews from other health-care services and companies.

We chose AdSense because of the quality of the ads, the content matching technology, and the limited number of sales resources we had internally.  Serving relevant ads is important to our business; we view ads as useful content for our business, and irrelevant ads have not been successful in bringing revenue to us.

We used to use only AdMob to monetize our application. But last year, when Custom Search Ads for Mobile Apps was released, we decided to implement it for two reasons. First, we already used Custom Search Ads for our desktop site. Secondly, we’ve heard that using both Custom Search Ads and AdMob will increase CTR because Custom Search Ads will show more related ads in search results.  


What did you see as a result of implementing Custom Search Ads for Mobile Apps?
We’ve seen revenue from mobile increase by 560% after implementing Custom Search Ads for Mobile Applications. We’re seeing CTRs, CPCs, and RPMs maintain healthy levels in line with our internal benchmarks. Ad engagement tends to be higher with users who own our free app.

When we compare how these perform to our desktop site, we find that the mobile app generates lower CPCs but higher CTRs for us.To increase more app downloads, we are working hard to create high quality content to meet our user's needs. 

How long did it take to implement Custom Search Ads on mobile apps?
We took some time to implement Custom Search Ads on our app, since changes won’t go live until our users update their version of our app. It took us three to four days including the test period to implement this.

Could you share any publisher best practices you’ve found across using Custom Search Ads and AdMob?

1. Show Custom Search Ads on search result pages. Use AdMob on other content pages.
2. We also use the AdMob House priority level to serve direct ads to users.
3. With Custom Search Ads, you'll see a variation in the number of ads that show, depending on the amount of organic search results you're delivering.  We'll always place one ad above search results. We'll also choose to show another ad below when there are more than five search results. In doing so, we can maximize revenue while complying with the program policy, which permits only one ad per view.

What’s next for QLife?

We've found a lot of success with the medicine/health-care search and service business. We'd like to expand our business in a couple of new directions.

First, we're interested in growing our business as an app developer for the health-care and medical service sector. We saw good success with the consumer application, and so our reputation as a medical app developer has increased in the industry overall.

We're looking to take our app to new global markets. There is a need for a quality medical and health-care search service anywhere in the world. With a publisher solution like AdSense, we are excited to expand and monetize our business beyond our home market in Japan.

Finally, I’m excited to announce that we just launched a new iOS app, Find Clinic that seeks to help people easily find and access hospitals at home and abroad. We’ve implemented Custom Search Ads for mobile apps on Find Clinic as well, and look forward to seeing similar successes!

Posted by Tatsuo Sakamoto, Account Strategist

Improvements to AdSense reporting features

We’ve recently made a few improvements related to AdSense reporting to help you find information more quickly and to address some of the most common asks we’ve heard from you. Good things come in threes -- so here are three recent updates to look for in your account:

1. View all-time reports

When selecting a date range for your reports, you’ll now have an ‘All time’ option to view all earnings, impressions, and clicks accrued since your first impression. If you used the previous AdSense interface, you may remember this feature -- it now has a new home in the current AdSense interface as well.

2. Quickly access reports from the My ads tab

We’ve added quick links to your reports under the My ads tab, eliminating the need to search for ad units or channels in your reports. When viewing your ad units, custom channels, or URL channels on the My ads tab, just click ‘View report’ below a specific line item to view performance data for that particular ad unit or channel. This feature is particularly useful if you’re looking for channel data that isn’t linked to ad units in the interface, and will help you save time.

3. Download CSVs in the correct local formatting

Just as the placement of commas and periods can change the meaning of sentences, the same is true when it comes to numbers and figures. As you may know, an amount written as $1,000.00 in the US or UK would be written as $1.000,00 in most of Europe and South America. Previously, only the $1,000.00 format was available for downloadable reports, which created difficulties for a number of international publishers trying to export CSVs to analyze the data. Now, based on your language preference, you can export CSVs with figures in the relevant format.

Have any feedback or suggestions to share? Feel free to leave a comment or post them on our AdSense +Page.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Mobile Mondays: On Mobile, it’s as much about the user as it is the content

For this Mobile Mondays post we’ve invited Netbiscuits to offer you best practices and tips for creating a good mobile experience for your users.  Netbiscuits is a leading cloud platform for the development and delivery of next generation web apps across all mobile devices and connected platforms.

Cultivating a user-focused mobile experience isn’t just about shrinking your existing website to fit a mobile screen. In a single day, a connected consumer interacts with your brand and consumes your content across smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and game consoles. To meet consumer demand for instant, optimized access, marketers must design engaging “connected experiences” that respond differently for each device as they each present unique size, capability, and content consumption challenges.

In solving these challenges, marketers need to focus on a responsive design that takes the multiplatform world into account and allows for a device-optimized “Content Centric” user experience. The layout should morph depending on the size and shape of the device’s screen ensuring the experience adapts as new devices are introduced in the marketplace.

Touch enabled devices have evolved the digital user experience by providing users with a “Parallel Response Experience” to their request as opposed to a “Sequential Response Experience” found in a traditional “Point and Click” mobile user experience.  Designing a “Parallel” mobile experience with many touch enabled features ensures a more natural flow of information which  dramatically increases site effectiveness. For example, instead of re-using a traditional website interface, many mobile commerce clients use a drag and drop interface for placing items in a shopping cart which has greatly increased sales on touch enabled devices.

Along with the design layout, responsive design must adapt a content centric approach to the user experience. Your users must be served content based on the topics for which they have shown interest as well as based on time of day, weather, or geographic location. A system remembering the items in your shopping cart has been an essential element of a cohesive e-commerce experience for some time. But this concept can be expanded upon by associating a broader range of content to the individual that results in the serving of an article that interested the customer earlier in the day or weather information for an upcoming trip. To foster a good user experience, this needs to be done in a streamlined, accurate manner that limits clutter.

One of the more challenging attributes of going mobile is the varying screen sizes of tablets and smartphones. When it comes to tablets, we advise clients to take a layered approach to designing and delivering a “one-page” experience. By embedding or layering a video or photo gallery on top of a page, consumer engagements and actions happen without forcing the user to leave the page.

Being responsive to the user’s device and serving appropriate content is done by using analytics. The insights gleaned from mobile, including device models, screen resolution, device capability, service provider, and preferred user language cannot be matched by traditional marketing activities. Compared against geographic location, savvy marketers use this data to define product offerings and regionalize discounts.

Once you understand these strategic points, you should also keep in mind these simple best practices:

• Mobile is not a channel. Mobile is an integrated solution where CMS, CRM and commerce updates should occur at the same time and in the same systems as updates to your traditional website.  
• Research! Engage your team, friends and family to get insights on how they use their mobile devices. Conduct a competitive analysis to learn how your competitors illustrate and deliver their product and services. 
• Design your site to solve the main problems or situations customers might find themselves in. Consider what features, tasks or existing site elements translate best on mobile and implement them.
• And finally, don’t simply duplicate your traditional website. Consumers want and expect a different experience on mobile.

Posted by Craig Besnoy, Managing Director, The Americas, Netbiscuits

Visit Netbiscuits.com to learn more about the Netbiscuits platform.

Mobile Mondays: GoMo and DudaMobile offer a do-it-yourself mobile site builder

An important first step to attracting customers on-the-go is to create a mobile-friendly website which can sometimes be complicated and confusing. We’re happy to announce that GoMo and DudaMobile have joined forces to make it even easier for small businesses to create a mobile-friendly website.

You can create a free mobile site directly from howtogomo.com using a tool powered by DudaMobile. This do-it-yourself site builder, customized specifically for GoMo users, easily converts regular websites into mobile-friendly sites in five simple steps. And it allows you to add features like a click-to-call button, mobile maps and Google AdSense. Sites that are created with the GoMo-DudaMobile tool will be hosted free for one year.

Here’s a before and after screenshot of Dog Nanny’s site.

Dog Nanny’s website was not mobile friendly. Visitors had to pinch and zoom to read content.

Dog Nanny’s new mobile site - created in just a few minutes - looks great on mobile devices.

Please note that DudaMobile’s technology is best for converting simple sites. If your site uses a lot of Flash content, framesets or e-commerce, we suggest that you Go Mobile by talking to your agency or working with one of our suggested developers.

Many small businesses are discovering that mobile sites mean more business. Now you have an opportunity to easily create a professional mobile site which will delight your customers when they visit you on the mobile web. Visit howtogomo.com/getstarted and build your site today.  It’s time to GoMo!

Posted by Nabil Haschemie, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

Around the world with AdSense in Your City

Since taking AdSense in Your City global earlier this year, our international teams have met with over 600 publishers in cities like Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, Melbourne, Istanbul, and Mumbai, just to name a few. During these events, we’ve shared product updates and best practices for getting started with solutions like DFP Small Business and Mobile. In addition, attendees have had the opportunity to network with other local publishers and participate in one-on-one consultation sessions with our optimization specialists.

As our U.S. events take place, we’re excited to continue visiting international cities to meet more publishers. Some of the cities we’ll be stopping by in the next few weeks include:

• Week of May 7: 
• Dusseldorf / Hamburg / Munich, Germany (sessions in German)

• Week of May 14: 
• Auckland, New Zealand (sessions in English)

• Week of May 21: 
• Mexico D.F., Mexico (sessions in Spanish)

• Week of May 28: 
• London, UK (sessions in English) 
• Curitiba, Brazil (sessions in Portuguese)

• Week of June 4: 
• Sydney, Australia (sessions in English)
• Paris, France (sessions in French)
• Tel Aviv, Israel (sessions in Hebrew)
• Buenos Aires, Argentina (sessions in Spanish)

• Week of June 25: 
• Porto Alegre, Brazil (sessions in Portuguese)

If you’d like to attend one of these upcoming AdSense in Your City events, please fill out our interest form. Space is limited at each event so we won’t be able to accommodate all requests, but we’ll do our best to include as many interested publishers as possible. In the meantime, we recommend ensuring you’re opted in to receiving ‘Special Offer’ emails so we can reach you in the future.

Thanks to all of our recent AdSense in Your City attendees for taking the time to join us and share your feedback. We look forward to meeting more of you in the coming weeks!

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Introducing redesigned Payments pages

To make the payment process easier and more flexible, we’ll soon be introducing some changes to the “Payments” and “Account settings” pages in your AdSense account. At the moment, this new payments interface is available to a small set of AdSense accounts, but we’ll gradually roll it out to more publishers in the upcoming months. When the new Payments page is enabled for your account, it’ll look like this:

Here’s a summary of the changes and added benefits of the new payments interface:

1. Redesigned Payment summary and Payment settings pages
- Payment method is now called Form of payment.
- Unpaid finalized earnings is now called Current balance.
- Redesigned transaction history table shows you the latest activities at the top.
- New toolbar support allows you to filter, print, export, or download transaction information.

2. More flexibility with your payment settings
- New extended timeline allows you to change your payment information until the 20th of any month.
- You can choose any payment threshold greater than the default payment threshold based on your reporting currency.
- You can also hold your payments until a specified date.

3. Improved navigation of the payments interface
- Centralized locations to manage your Payment settings and Payee profile.
- Contextual help is displayed based on the pages you navigate to.

This is just a first step towards providing a better payment experience, and we’ll continue to add improvements over the coming months. For additional details, please sign in to your AdSense account and visit the Payments section in our Help Center.

Posted by Ernest Yip, Product Manager, Payments Team