More flexible controls with site-level blocking

One of the top requests we hear from publishers who manage multiple websites is the ability to block different ads for different sites. For instance, you may want to block a category of ads from appearing on a children’s site you run, but allow those same ads to appear on a separate sports-related site you also manage. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve AdSense to meet your needs and help you earn the most possible from all of your sites, we’re happy to let you know that this level of granular blocking will be available for AdSense for content within the next days.

There are two steps to getting started with these new flexible controls, once they're enabled in your account:

1. Site management:
To allow you to take actions on a site-level basis, you’ll first need to let our system know which domains and subdomains you own. Under your ‘Home’ tab, visit the ‘Account Settings’ page and navigate to the ‘Access and authorization’ section. From here, you can create your Owned sites list which already contains domains from your existing URL channels and manually add further domains or subdomains. Or, claim a site from an automatically populated “Unclaimed” sites list, which shows all sites where your ads are receiving impressions. Note that manually entering subdomains into the list will enable you to block ads from those specific pages while still allowing the ads to appear on the top-level domain.

2. Site-level blocking:
Once you’ve set up your Owned sites list, visit your ‘Allow and block ads’ tab. You’ll notice some updates, including a new navigation bar, new horizontal tabs, and an option for site-level blocking; your Owned sites list will appear under ‘AdSense for content’ in the navigation bar. To block ads from a specific domain or subdomain, just select it from the list in the left-hand navigation and make updates. If you’d like to apply any blocking changes to all of your sites, just select ‘All my sites’ from the left navigation.

With site-level blocking, you can block by URL; if sensitive and general category blocking are available in your language, you’ll be able to apply these options as well. Please keep in mind that there’s a product-wide limit of 500 URLs that can be added to a block list. And as always, we recommend blocking ads with caution, since doing so decreases the potential revenue you can earn.

Ready to get started? Visit our Help Center for detailed instructions on how to manage sites and set up site-level blocking rules. We’d also love to hear your feedback on this new feature -- visit our AdSense +page to leave a comment and discuss your thoughts with other publishers.

Posted by Adomas Paltanavičius - AdSense Engineering

HiPenpal.com makes more than 50% of AdSense revenue through mobile

HiPenpal.com is an international penpal website that facilitates the exchange of messages between people from different countries across all ages. Since its inception in 2006, HiPenpal.com, a Korea based company, has grown its membership base to 180,000 and has gained popularity in the United States and Japan.

Today, we’re going to highlight HiPenpal.com’s mobile journey, which has resulted in more than 50% of their total AdSense revenue coming from their mobile site.

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You’ve been a publisher with AdSense since 2006. How did you find out about AdSense and what has your experience been to date?

I got to know about AdSense when I was web-surfing through foreign websites. At that time, I managed various websites but because I did not have an ad sales team, I had a hard time with ad orders. However, with the help of AdSense, I no longer had to worry about this. I didn’t have to manage orders and still received good quality ads through AdSense which allowed me to focus on content management. The biggest advantage with AdSense, is that the ads are highly relevant to users, which has resulted in high user engagement and high earnings. All of my businesses depend on Google AdSense for revenue.  I’m very satisfied with the service and revenue that AdSense has been able to provide because it has replaced the need for an expensive sales force.

When did you first build your mobile site and how has this affected traffic and user satisfaction for HiPenpal.com?

In the 2008, I revamped HiPenpal.com and created a mobile site along with it. At that time, since most users had feature phones, the site was not actively used. However, since 2009, with the spread of smartphones, the usage of the mobile site has been steadily increasing. Currently, 40% of our total traffic is accessing our mobile site and the users are extremely satisfied with it.

What things did you consider when building the mobile site and what type of investment was needed to make this happen?

In the 2008, I didn’t know much about mobile web development, so building the initial site took about six months. I wanted to make sure that the site displayed perfectly across all mobile phones and browsers, so I focused heavily on the structure of the site. There are cases when your site displays perfectly on one type of mobile device, but is distorted on another. In order to prevent this, I used a mobile web emulator or browser plug-in to perform quality checks during the development of the mobile site. Before launch, I checked the mobile site on the actual mobile devices. I invested in several devices with different operating systems in order to perform bug fixes and improve quality.

Additionally, I tried to simplify the navigational tree structure, so that people could easily access the desired pages with a simple operation. Most importantly, I was able to attract more mobile traffic by adding mobile-specific content.

How did users respond to ads on your mobile site?

We implemented mobile ads in 2008 and then upgraded to the smartphone-specific ad unit in 2009, when it was first launched. The 300x250 medium rectangle is positioned towards the bottom of the page, so that it will not distract from content engagement. On the other hand, the 320x50 mobile banner is posted on the top of the page, so that it would attract more attention.

Because smartphone ad units are now integrated with general AdSense for content (AFC), AdSense implementation has become more convenient.

We have not received any feedback about the mobile ads on the site, which I’m guessing means that users are not being inconvenienced by this implementation. Our users are very vocal when they find that the ads are distracting to the use of the site.

How does mobile revenue compare to your overall monetization?

Mobile revenue is increasing proportionally to the growth of mobile users. Currently, 40% of of total traffic (over 50% including tablet impressions) is coming from smartphones and resulting in over 50% of total revenue.

The 300x250 medium rectangle is generating the majority of revenue today, due to its high user engagement. Initially, I hesitated in implementing this ad unit, due to its large size, but now highly recommend it to other publishers. Since December 2009, the monthly revenue has increased about 100 times.

What advice do you have for publishers who have concerns about implementing mobile ads?

I believe that publishers who have concerns about mobile ads are actually hesitating about managing a mobile web site. However, mobile is a technology that cannot be ignored, more and more users are accessing the Internet through mobile devices instead of the PC. In my opinion, ignoring mobile is the same as ignoring half of the users. Furthermore, ignoring mobile web ads is the same as throwing out half of your revenue. If you don’t want to miss out on half of your revenue opportunity, do not hesitate. I encourage you to start from today.


Posted by Junho Jung, Publisher Relations Specialist

Search for ads by image in the Ad review center

The Ad review center in your AdSense account is a powerful tool that enables you to control the ads that appear on your site. Earlier this year, we revamped the tool to provide you with even more robust controls, and today, we’re making an improvement that will help you find and review ads more efficiently. Using the technology behind Google Image Search, you’ll now be able to upload an image file from your computer to search for related image ads; you can then review and take action on the returned ads.

For example, you might want to find and block ads that contain the logo of a competitor. After you upload and search for the logo, we’ll return image ads that contain the logo and which are eligible to appear on your pages. Please note that you can upload images with a maximum file size of 2MB and a largest dimension of 1024 pixels. To try this feature, log in to your AdSense account and visit the ‘Allow and block ads’ tab.

As always, we recommend using filters sparingly, and only in cases where you’d prefer not to have the specific ad or advertiser appear on your pages. Please keep in mind that blocking ads isn’t a revenue optimization tool; it can have a negative impact on your potential revenue since it reduces the competition between ads eligible to appear on your pages.

This feature currently only returns image ads, but we’re planning to support more ad formats in the future. We’ll let you know as soon as any additional functionality becomes available -- in the meantime, feel free to share your feedback about this feature on our AdSense +page or visit our Help Center for detailed instructions.

Posted by Marcel Crasmaru -- AdSense Engineering

Larger, brand-friendly ad sizes available in AdSense: 300x600

As screens grow and web content continues to become richer, the format and capabilities of ad units continue to evolve as well. One of the top requests from publishers in the last year has been to add larger ad sizes to our network, and today we’re excited to announce that the popular 300x600 unit will soon be available in your AdSense account.

The 300x600 unit, sometimes referred to as a half page unit, provides a larger space for advertisers to get their message across and can offer users rich engagement. As mentioned in our recently released Display Business Trends, the 300x600 is one of the fastest growing sizes by impressions and is indicative of a trend where publishers are offering more visually impactful ad sizes that are preferred by brand advertisers. Because this unit is new to our network, you’ll currently see a large number of text ads in these placements. Over time we’ll continue to build a wide range of text and display ad inventory eligible to appear in this full slot as well.

As with all ad sizes, it’s important to carefully consider the placement of ad units to ensure both users and advertisers have a great experience with your site. If you’d like more information on the performance of potential placements, check out our heat map in the AdSense Help Center.

If you have feedback about the 300x600 ad unit, feel free to leave a comment on our AdSense +page and discuss your thoughts with other publishers.

Posted by Omer Gimenez Llach - AdSense UI Engineer

Social Fridays: A recap

Over the past weeks, we’ve shown you through our Social Friday series how to get up and running with a Google+ strategy for your site and online business. We hope our posts and recent Hangout On Air have helped you learn more about what’s possible with Google+, and that you now have new ideas for optimizing the performance of your +page. Below is a list of the subjects we’ve covered, in case you’d like to review them.

Help your site stand out with the +1 button
Create a Google+ page to connect with users
Use images to deliver a richer experience
Gain visibility by verifying your Google+ page
See how your content was shared on Google+
Track and measure the performance of your +page
The New York Times uses Hangouts on Air to cover breaking news
Temptalia discovers the beauty of Google+
Using Google+, Brazilian news portal Estadão merges news with discussion
Google+ proves a recipe for success for Epicurious.com

Before we draw our series to a close, we’d like to encourage you to register for our upcoming social-focused webinar entitled ‘Grow and engage your audience with Google+’. This webinar will take place Tuesday, November 13th at 12pm PT (8pm GMT), and will discuss how social media is impacting online publishers . If you’re not able to attend the webinar, the recording will be posted to this site.

Thanks for following along with Social Fridays -- we’ll continue to post Google+ updates and tips for publishers here and on our AdSense +page, so stay tuned. Have a great weekend!

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Announcing the Learn with Google webinar series for publishers

As we’re nearing the end of 2012, we’ve all got business goals to meet. Some of you might even be prepping for your busiest season. Today we’re excited to announce the launch of the Learn with Google series to help our publishers make the most from the web.  We’ll be hosting two upcoming webinars as part of our Learn with Google program:  

Google+ for publishers: Grow and engage your audience with Google+
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 12:00pm PT / 3:00pm ET

Join us for a discussion on how social media is impacting online publishers and how Google thinks about social. We'll also cover how you can grow and engage your audience on the web and mobile with Google+ using Google+ pages, the +1 button, Hangouts, and Authorship.

Register Here

Navigating Google's Mobile Ads Ecosystem
Wednesday, November 28, at 12:30pm PT / 3:30pm ET

Ever wonder who the buyers are in Google's mobile ads ecosystem and how their ads reach your inventory? Join us to learn the inner workings of Google's mobile ads ecosystem, including an overview of Google demand sources and the different channels advertisers can use buy your mobile inventory.

Register Here

Visit the webinar page for more information on these two events and to register. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by adding the Learn with Google webinar calendar to your own Google calendar.

We look forward to hosting many more Learn with Google webinars for our publishers.

Posted by Faith Rosen, Product Marketing Manager

Updates to the application process for host partner sites

We’ll soon be updating the application process for new publishers who apply for an AdSense account via a host partner site like Blogger or Hubpages. As you may know, host partner sites allow publishers to create and monetize their content, which is hosted on the partner site rather than the publisher’s own domain. New publishers approved for AdSense accounts via a host partner site will be able to place ads on and earn from policy-compliant content they’ve created on any host partner site. If they then decide to show ads on their own domain, from today onwards they’ll need to complete an extra approval step similar to the application process at www.google.com/adsense. Please note that publishers who were approved for AdSense accounts before today won't be affected by these changes.

Here’s an example to explain the process -- let’s say Sue runs a blog using Blogger. She applies for a hosted AdSense account within Blogger, and once approved, she begins to monetize her blog. If she then launches a second blog on Blogger, she’ll be able to show ads on that second blog and earn from both sites.

Next, let’s imagine Sue decides to purchase her own domain, example.com, and wants to earn from the content she creates there. Before she can do so, she’ll need to complete a form in her account to request a site review. After submitting the form, she’ll need to generate ad code and implement it on a live page of example.com that receives traffic. The implemented ad unit will remain blank until the domain has been reviewed by the AdSense team.

If the request is approved, Sue can proceed with placing additional ad units on the site. If the request is denied, she’ll be unable to show ads on her new domain, but there’ll be no impact to her two existing blogs; she can continue to earn from them, and can also work to resolve the issues with her new domain and resubmit her site for review.

These changes will help ensure a consistent, seamless sign up experience for publishers, whichever application process they follow, while also allowing publishers and host partner sites to continue working together as they have been. We remain committed to building a high-quality network that also provides strong business results for our advertiser partners and a positive experience for users.

Posted by Sophia Lin, Product Manager

Social Fridays: Google+ proves a recipe for success for Epicurious.com

Every Friday, we’re posting Google+ tips to help publishers make the most of all of the features and resources available. Be sure to check back each week for the latest in our educational Social Fridays series!

A Condé Nast site, Epicurious.com publishes original content from its own editors and leading food authorities from around the world every day. It incorporates more than 30,000 professionally tested and created recipes from celebrity chefs, premier food journalists and renowned cookbook authors, as well as 200,000 member-submitted recipes. Epicurious launched its Google+ page only late last year, and has now grown to over 2 million followers. Achieving the impressive milestone is down to a combination of factors: installing social sharing utilities on the Epicurious site, developing content tailored specifically to both the Google+ interface and to its audience, and embracing the features that are unique to the platform.

“We started projecting growth based on similar growth with new networks,” says Jennifer Gaonach, Digital Consumer Marketing Director, Condé Nast, about their early days on the platform. “But we’ve exceeded the expected growth by many times. It’s great to see; by far it’s our largest network. It’s really taken off.”

A number of slick design features at Epicurious.com help visitors share content and easily interact with the Google+ page. There’s a social sharing sidekick on the site that floats in the left margin alongside most content, as well as a ‘Connect with Epicurious’ module featuring social networks that sits on the top of the ad rail. These social networks also appear in the Epicurious email templates.

Epicurious continues to refine its content strategy to best suit Google+ followers. “We really want to understand how we can engage these users and give them a great experience, and then when it makes sense, drive them back to Epicurious.com,” explains Jennifer. “As our audience has been growing, our editors have increased the frequency of our posts so that anyone who’s following us can know the latest article that’s being posted.” The team usually adds between three and five posts a day, and have found that visual content on Google+ performs particularly well.

Social Reports in Google Analytics reveal that users coming to Epicurious from Google+ are more engaged than visitors from other social media platforms. Google+ is in the top 10 social referrers to the Epicurious pages, and the average visit duration from Google+ is 12% longer than it is from other social media platforms. The number of pages viewed per visit from these users is among the highest of all platforms too.

What’s next? The Epicurious team plans to use Hangouts – high-quality videoconference functionality on Google+ – to create even deeper experiences for followers, including cook-alongs and exclusive chef chats.

Hungry for more? Read the full case study on Epicurious.com’s use of Google+, and feel free to leave a comment on our AdSense +page about this story.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Uncover trends and AdSense insights with Analytics

Knowledge is power: Insightful data on account performance and user behavior can help you optimize your AdSense implementations. By linking your AdSense account to a new or existing Analytics account, you’ll gain access to additional information that can help you identify opportunities to monetize your content more effectively.

Here are just some of the questions you’ll be able to answer when combining AdSense data with reports in Analytics:

• How are my users interacting with my site? With In-page Analytics, you’ll have access to a visual assessment of how users interact with your web pages. This can help you determine the most strategic locations in which to place ads.

• Where and why are visitors leaving my site? Identify pages with high bounce rates to determine the percentage of visitors who only see one page during a visit to your site. Users might behave in this way for a variety of reasons, but you can work to provide the best user experience possible by optimizing the content and ad implementation on these pages. 

• Which traffic sources and URLs help me earn the most? Determine which pages generate the highest AdSense revenue, and then replicate those successful implementations on other parts of your site. You can also set up custom channels for pages that perform well to create attractive placements for advertisers to specifically target. In addition, try content experiments and test different page layouts to compare the performance of key metrics.

To gain these types of insights and more, be sure to link your AdSense and Analytics accounts. Based on publisher feedback, we’ve just improved the linking process to make it more straightforward. Keep in mind that you can only link one AdSense account to one Analytics account, and that the AdSense login must be an ‘Administrator’ on the Analytics account. To get started, visit the ‘Access and Authorization’ section of the Account settings page in your AdSense account and follow the instructions. For more details, please refer to the AdSense Help Center.

To help you get started with your AdSense data in Analytics and show you some relevant information at a glance, we’ve created this easy-to-use dashboard. Select one of your profiles to import, and you’ll be able to quickly see and customize the reports which matter most to you. You can access this dashboard at any time from the relevant profile by clicking the ‘Home’ tab.

Do you have feedback about using Analytics reports or the dashboard? Feel free to leave a comment on our AdSense +page and discuss your thoughts with other publishers.

Posted by Esteban Talavera - Software Engineer, AdSense Reporting