So long 2013 - looking back at this year’s highlights.

We’re fast approaching the end of another year and it’s time to take a look back over the last 12 months. Here’s some of our 2013 highlights:  

• We can’t talk about 2013 without remembering that AdSense turned 10 in June. To celebrate 10 years of partnerships with publishers, we took a look back and heard from some of you who have been with us since the very beginning. Over 12,000 of you also joined in by taking part in the AdSense 10 Challenge.

• We looked at ways to drive a positive experience for your users, giving our text ads a more modern and user-friendly design and announcing the launch of our brand new mobile anchor ads. 

• We launched a number of new ad formats, giving you more flexibility and supporting your multi-screen strategy. In fact, we spent a lot of time talking about your multi-screen strategy, with our recent multi-device series and our newly launched multi-screen optimization score in your scorecard.

• We were lucky enough to meet many of you at our events and hear about some of your experiences with Google as well as your future plans. Take a look at what some of our European publishers had to say.

• Lots of you gave really valuable feedback on changes and new features you’d like to see in your account - with this in mind, we introduced time zone reporting, currency reporting, and launched our new AdSense homepage.

• You told us that more communication on our AdSense program policies would be really helpful so we launched a new notifications feature in your account, and many of you also joined our Policy Refreshers Hangout On Air series. Coincidentally, our Policy Refreshers announcement was the most visited blog post of 2013.

• Lastly, we gave the Inside AdSense blog a bit of a makeover with a new, cleaner interface - we hope you like it!

We’d like to thank each of you for your continuous feedback and engagement over the past year. Please keep sharing your comments and suggestions through our AdSense +page.

We’ll be back in January - stay tuned for lots more AdSense updates plus a series on Google Analytics and an inspiring showcase of publisher success stories from around the world.

Happy Holidays from all of us here at Google AdSense! 

Posted by Suzy Headon- on behalf of the Inside AdSense Team

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Boost your multi-screen strategy with our new tools.

We’ve been talking a lot recently about why you should have a multi-screen strategy in place for your site. Today we’re happy to share some product updates to complement and strengthen your strategy, with new features for our responsive ad units and a multi-screen optimization score now available in your publisher scorecard.

New features for responsive ad units

Earlier this year, we launched responsive ad units to help you enhance the user experience on your site across devices. You’ve shared a lot of positive feedback on our responsive ad units and also made some great suggestions on new features you’d like to see. We’ve incorporated these suggestions into our next iteration of responsive ads with the following changes: 

• Ad refresh for screen orientation changes:  If your responsive page changes its layout following a screen orientation change (e.g., when a tablet or phone goes from portrait to landscape), we’ll request and load a new ad to fit the new page layout.

• Smart sizing based on the space available:  Our ad code will now automatically adapt all newly created responsive ad units to fit your page layout. All existing responsive ad units that have their width and height explicitly specified via CSS will continue to function as before. Please see our Help Center for information on switching to the smart sizing mode.

• Reporting by ad size served: To better understand the mix of ad sizes served by your responsive ad units, your ad unit reports can now be broken out by the size of the ad served. 

More information on responsive ad units can be found in our Help Center.

Multi-screen optimization score in publisher scorecard

To help you understand how well your site is optimized for the many screen sizes of your users, we’re introducing a new multi-screen category in our publisher scorecard. For example, if users need to zoom and/or scroll often, this may negatively impact their experience. Your score in the multi-screen category will measure what percentage of your pages are multi-screen optimized and compare this percentage to that of other AdSense publishers. Please note that you may not see this category in your scorecard if you have a low percentage of mobile traffic on your site.

This new score will be visible in the scorecard on your AdSense home page. Don’t forget to follow the ‘Learn more’ link displayed in the scorecard to learn how you can optimize your site for multiple screen sizes.

More information on your scorecard can be found in our Help Center.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on these new features. Feel free to share your feedback on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Google Publisher Toolbar, now integrated with DFP Small Business

Many of you are already using the Google Publisher Toolbar to view your AdSense performance and control your ads. If you also use DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business, we’re pleased to let you know that your DFP account can now also be directly integrated with the Google Publisher Toolbar.

The Toolbar is a Chrome extension that gives you a clear overview of which ads are serving on your site and why, through an overlay for each ad showing which line item and creative was served. You can get more information by clicking on any overlay. When you sign in to the Toolbar, you’ll see complete information on each ad -- regardless of whether AdSense or DFP served the ad.

Please visit our Toolbar Help Center article for further information and support. 

Download the Toolbar and start using it with DFP Small Business today. We're continuing to improve support for DFP in the Toolbar, and are always happy to hear your feedback.

Posted by Ilia Malkovitch - DFP Product Manager

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us

Introducing custom ad sizes: More ad formats to fit your site

Today, we’re happy to announce the launch of 434,216 new ad unit sizes! Or in other words, we’ve just made it possible to create custom ad sizes to give you more flexibility and enable you to better design your content for your users. 

Custom sized ads behave just like their standard size counterparts, showing a text or display ad depending on which is likely to have the best performance for the impression. 

Text ads

For text ads, we’ll determine the optimal number of text ads to display for a given impression, and show the ads the same way they appear inside standard sizes. Our system predicts the value of each competing ad for every impression, based on historic performance and comparison across a variety of scenarios. For unique ad unit sizes, our system will need some time before it can optimize the number of ads shown. Please see our blog post Understanding the dynamics of the AdSense auction - Part II for more information. Here are three examples of custom-sized ad units displaying text ads:

Display ads

For display ads, our system will determine the appropriate size ad to fit into the space you select; the selected ad will not be larger than the space requested. In the example below, we’ve shown the same three custom sizes as above, but this time with display ads. Please note that the dotted border is only present to show the total size of the ad unit, but won’t actually appear on your pages.

To ensure that ads continue to deliver a positive user experience, we’ve put a few restrictions in place around maximum and minimum pixels for ad sizes. Any custom ad size that falls outside of the restrictions won’t appear on a page. As always, all of your ads must adhere to the AdSense ad placement policies. Remember that users value your content, and that they appreciate a balance of content and ads, knowing that the ads support the content creator. Forcing too many ads into the users viewable screen is not likely to tempt them back to your site.

Ready to get started with custom ad sizes? Create an ad unit in the usual way, select “Custom ad size” from the Ad size drop-down and set the desired width and height for your ad unit in the process. Copy and paste the ad code into the HTML source code of your page where you'd like the ad to appear.

You can also find more information in our Help Center. We’re excited about the possibilities of these new custom ad sizes, and appreciate your ongoing feedback as we continue to improve this offering. Please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions about this update on our Google+ page.

Posted by Omer Gimenez Llach - AdSense Software Engineer & Johan Land - AdSense Product Manager

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us

Optimizing AdSense revenue using Google Analytics

The most important asset of any publisher is your audience. And the key to growing your audience is to understand it. Google Analytics helps you understand your users better and drive the right strategy to grow a loyal and engaged audience.

Recently Google Analytics launched two important new capabilities for its AdSense integration: AdSense Exits reports and AdSense Revenue as an experiment objective. They both come as a great additions to websites that use AdSense for monetization. In this post I will go over the AdSense Analytics integration and how it can be used to optimize AdSense revenue.

Integrating AdSense and Google Analytics

Before going further into the wonders of the Analytics AdSense marriage, you should first be sure that your accounts are linked properly. Here is how to do it. First follow the steps in the screenshot below after logging into Google Analytics (Admin => AdSense Linking => Link Accounts):

AdSense and Analytics Integration 

You will be sent to your AdSense account in order to confirm the linking and then you will be sent back to Google Analytics to choose which profiles should include this data. If you have any problems or additional questions, take a look at the AdSense Help Center. After the integration is complete the following metrics will be available on your Google Analytics account:

• AdSense revenue: revenue generated by AdSense ads.
• Ads clicked: the number of times AdSense ads were clicked.
• AdSense CTR (clickthrough rate): the percentage of page impressions that resulted in a click on an ad.
• AdSense eCPM: AdSense revenue per 1,000 page impressions.
• AdSense ads viewed: number of ads viewed.
• AdSense Page Impressions: the number of pageviews during which an ad was displayed.

AdSense reports on Google Analytics

Currently, there are 3 out-of-the-box AdSense reports available on Analytics: Pages, Referrers and Exits.

1. AdSense Pages

This report provides information about which pages contributed most to AdSense revenue. It will show each of the pages on the website and how well they performed in terms of AdSense. For each page in the website that contains an AdSense unit we will be able to analyze the following metrics: AdSense revenue, AdSense ads clicked, AdSense CTR, AdSense eCPM, AdSense ads viewed and AdSense page impressions.

This report provides an interesting view of which page performed best, and it can be used to optimize website content. For example, if you find that posts about celebrities generate more revenue than posts about soccer, you might consider writing more about celebrities (if your main objective is to make money on AdSense).

2. AdSense Referrers

This report provides information about the performance of domains that referred visitors who generated AdSense revenue. This information is extremely valuable; however, I suggest using a different report, since it provides more in-depth information: “All Traffic”.

The AdSense Referrers report only displays information about websites that generated AdSense revenue, it does not provide information on other types of traffic sources and campaigns. For this reason, I believe the All Traffic report presents a more complete view. To find the report, go to this page and click on the AdSense tab just above the chart.

3. AdSense Exits

The AdSense Exit report shows the number of sessions that ended due to a user clicking on an AdSense ad. This is an interesting metric as it can show which pages have a "high conversion rate", i.e., the ratio of visits to a page and those that left the website clicking on an AdSense unit through it. If your monetization is made through AdSense this report will give just that: AdSense conversion rate per page.

Optimizing AdSense revenue using Google Analytics

Below is an example of how to use the integration from my Analytics for Publishers eBook. Most websites work with templates and each template may have different AdSense placements; this means that an important analysis would be to compare performance by template (or by category) rather than by page.

In order to analyze template performance, we will need to create one segment per template. If you want to learn more about creating Segments, check this Help Center article. For example, let’s suppose your website has the following page templates:

• Analytics pages with URLs structured as example.com/analytics/...
• Testing pages with URLs structured as example.com/testing/...
• Targeting pages with URLs structured as example.com/targeting/...

In this case you would create three segments using the dimension Page, each containing its unique pattern: /analytics/ for analytics pages, /testing/ for testing pages, and /targeting/ for targeting pages. Below is an example of how the segment would look for the analytics pages:

Analyzing template performance using segments 

After creating the segments for all three templates, you will be able to choose all of them in the top-left corner of the screen (just above the chart, see bubble #1 above) to see a comparison between them. Below is a screenshot showing how such a comparison would look like:

Table comparison metrics for different visitor segments 

In the table above we are able to compare pages by all metrics available. For example, we can see that while the Analytics section has higher revenue, this is related to the number of impressions, which is also significantly higher. When we analyze further, we see that the Testing and Targeting sections have a good potential, with the same CTR but significantly higher AdSense eCPM. Based on these metrics we can understand which templates and content types are the most effective.

As mentioned above, once you find out which pages are performing well and which pages are not, you can use Content Experiments to optimize them. Here is a Content Experiments guide.

Closing thoughts

Here are a few takeaways for you to start optimizing today!

1. Understand which content type and subject generates the highest revenue and create content based on this data.
2. Understand which page templates bring the best results by using advanced segments.
3. Analyze AdSense performance to learn which segments have a good CTR; this might bring insight into which audience to target.

This post was originally posted on the Google Analytics blog. Stay tuned for an upcoming series on the Inside AdSense blog on how to grow your business with Google Analytics insights.

Posted by Daniel Waisberg, Google Analytics team
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us

Updates to the currency feature in performance reports

We’ve been hearing from many of our publishers around the world that you’d like to have the option to view your performance reports in currencies other than your payment currency. We’re happy to let you know that this is now possible with a new currency feature in your AdSense account. 

This feature can be accessed directly in your account and will allow you to see your performance reports in a variety of currency options.

Please note that when viewing performance reports in a different currency from your payment currency, monetary values might not be completely accurate due to currency fluctuations.  In addition, changing your reporting currency will not affect the currency in which you get paid.

To find out more details about this feature, check out this Help Center article.  

We hope that with the launch of this feature, you'll be able to better understand your ad performance.

Posted by Miki Noda - AdSense Payments Specialist

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Google AdSense + AdMob: A New Strategy to Improve Revenue for Gaming Apps

As the holidays approach, you can expect an increase in smartphone usage, especially in activity with gaming apps. Each year around this time, millions of new mobile devices are activated and billions of apps are downloaded. A recent AdMob study* also revealed that downloading and playing gaming apps are users’ top priority when getting a new smartphone, which represents a special opportunity for developers.

A new strategy for game-app developers can help them make the most of this increase in usage. Game developer Izumi Artisan used this strategy to increase his revenue by 60%, and so today we’ll share the details on how he achieved these results. 

Step 1)  Create a strategy guide for your game and post it on your website

Game guides, strategy manuals, and walk-throughs have become commonplace for gamers looking to get the edge or just take the easy path through a tricky section of a game. As a result, numerous third party game-strategy sites have popped up, and are attracting users in mass numbers.

This represents a great opportunity for you as a game developer, as you can create your own strategy or walk-through guide and host it on your website. There are many examples of successful game guides on the Web that you can use as a model when creating your own. The guides will vary in structure and length depending on the format of the game, so we suggest browsing a few to find the most suitable format. If there are already third-party guides competing for your users’ attention, try releasing the “Official” guide to separate yourself from the rest of the pack.

Step 2)  Monetize your new website with AdSense

Creating great content and putting it on the Web is an important step for those looking to generate income online. To start earning revenue from your online content you can use AdSense to show highly relevant ads on your website. 

With AdSense, advertisers will bid against each other to show their ads next to your content. The ads that appear are highly targeted, so they’re likely to be interesting to your visitors. AdSense also offers a number of great features including customization options to control the appearance, placement and type of ads that will show up on your site, as well as the ability to restrict the subject matter of the ads. 

If you’re not already an AdSense publisher, sign up for a free AdSense account. 

Step 3)  Use house ads in AdMob to drive users to your new website

One of the most difficult pieces of building a successful website is attracting visitors. As a game developer, you have the benefit of an existing and engaged audience -- your users. By taking advantage of this built-in audience you can quickly generate demand for your new web content...you just have to point them in the right direction.

You can do this by using AdMob’s house ad feature, which lets you display your own promotions to your users at no cost. By creating a “house ad”  promotion for your new website and displaying it in an appropriate section of your game (i.e., on the home screen, or in-between game play, etc.), you can easily generate awareness for your web content while preserving a good experience for your users. The great part is, you won’t need to push a new version of your app since the house ad can be updated directly within the AdMob interface.

Sign up for an AdMob account here**. It’s free.

Be sure to make the most of the app usage increase that comes with the holiday season by trying this strategy. Have these tips worked for you?  Do you have other tips to share? Let us know in the comments!

**Update: There is a known issue for users who currently have a new AdMob account, that restricts them from signing up for AdSense. A solution is being worked on and is expected in the new year.

In the mean time, if you are currently using the new AdMob and would like to sign up for AdSense, please fill out this form and after reviewing your request we will enable AdSense on your account.

Please note: if you are an existing AdMob user and your account has not yet been migrated to the new version of AdMob, you will still be able to sign yourself up for AdSense. If you do not yet have an AdSense or AdMob account, please sign up for AdSense first, before signing up for AdMob.

Posted by Max Sack - Publisher Advocate

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

*Mobile Apps Consumer Study, AdMob and Parks Associates, Oct 2013

Saying thanks to our AdSense Top Contributors

Last month, hundreds of Top Contributors (TCs) from around the world joined us at the Googleplex for the annual Top Contributors Summit, including some of our very own Top Contributors. 

Every day, these 95 volunteers (84 AdSense Top Contributors and 11 Rising Stars) answer questions and help publishers find the resources they’re looking for by responding in the Help Forum. We want to say thank you to all of these individuals for their consistent help and dedication. 

If you’re interested in becoming an AdSense Top Contributor, we encourage you to get involved in the AdSense Help Forum and learn more about the Top Contributor program on this website. 

Posted by Ayaka Nishino - Inside AdSense Team

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Building an Audience: Making Social Media Work for You

Looking for a way to grow online engagement with your users?

Social media is a great way for you to build an audience and increase traffic to your website, which can help you earn more revenue. Learn how other people just like you are using AdSense and Wildfire to do just that.  If you haven’t yet perfected a way to utilize social media, you should tune in to our Hangout on Air on December 12th.  

In this Learn with Google Hangout on Air, you’ll hear directly from successful AdSense publishers and a Wildfire social media expert to learn their perspective on best practices for attracting and growing an audience through social media. They’ll also share their tips on how to increase your revenue by monetizing with AdSense.

Join this event page to live stream the Hangout on Air on December 12th from 11:00-11:30am PDT.

Hope to see you there! 

Posted by Felicia Rosado - AdSense Strategic Partnerships Team

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Improving the user experience with new mobile anchor ads

Over the past few months, we’ve regularly talked about the growing number of users accessing publisher content via mobile devices, and the importance of creating a positive user experience across all devices. In this same spirit, we’re happy to let you know about mobile anchor ads for smartphones, a new feature we’re starting to make available that’s focused on giving users a better experience with ads on mobile devices. 

Mobile anchor ads work by allowing a 320x50 banner ad unit to be anchored to the bottom of the smartphone screen, staying there when your users scroll up or down the page. At the same time, users remain in control -- they can dismiss an ad when they find it’s not relevant or want to free up the screen space, simply by swiping the ad left or right. When this happens, the anchor ad will fade and be dismissed and no other anchor ad will display unless the user reloads or visits another page.

The mobile anchor ads experience reflects our continued focus on providing users with control. As we’ve seen from our TrueView video ads and Mute this ad feature, users prefer having choice and control when it comes to viewing ads. In addition, the prominence of mobile anchor ads will give advertisers enhanced visibility while helping improve performance for you, and also remove the need to overload your mobile pages with ads. 

We’ve started enabling this feature for a select group of publishers today, and will gradually roll it out to everyone over the coming months. 

Thanks for all of the feedback you’ve provided to date on adapting to the multi-screen environment. Please do continue to share your suggestions so we can keep improving AdSense for you. Watch this space for more news and updates in the near future!

Posted by Pasha Nahass - AdSense Product Manager

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Got an app? Increase revenue by building a website too

At some point most app developers will be faced with the question: ‘What’s the best way to monetize my app?’. There are many business models, but many don’t think about the additional opportunities to earn revenue from content they’ve already created. Izumi Artisan is a Japanese developer who’s been successful in earning money from his app, then using the content to create a website to earn additional income. We will explore his strategy in this post.

------------------------------------------------------------
[Goal]

• Maximize revenue from the web
• Improve user experience
• Expand business overseas

[Approach]

• Monetize both website and app
• Create an environment where the users can help each other to finish the game

[Results]

• 40% of the total revenue came from the website 
•  Improved profitability and usability with low overhead

------------------------------------------------------------

‘Old Offender was the very first app that we made’

At the time of building our first app, my brother and I didn’t have engineering skills. So I went to a local book store and bought "Java for the First Time", and taught myself how to make a mobile app. I chose to make escape games because the programming needed to build one was relatively simple. Also, there were not many other similar apps for smartphones in that category. So we worked together and published ‘Old Offender: Escape from Prison’ as our first gaming app.

‘Ads are better than a paid business model’

When considering the monetization method, we chose ads. At that time, paid apps were not that popular in Japan. Now, we’re using multiple ad networks using a mediation tool, and for foreign countries we’re only using AdMob.

‘We saw a 60% revenue increase by using Google AdSense’

After we launched the app we had feedback from users asking for hint-and-tips, so I immediately decided to take action. We chose to make a bulletin board website where users can interact with each other to find the answer to a challenge in the game. My brother designed the website and had it ready within a week. We also signed up for Google Adsense to post ads on the website. Signing up and implementing AdSense did not take more than 2 days and we were able to stat monetize our website with the least resource but high impact. Furthermore, we saw a 60% revenue increase by using Google AdSense and the web business is now 40% of the sales of the company.

Posted by Yuya Sumida - Account Manager
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Get the right insights quickly with the new AdSense homepage

As the first thing you see when you log into your AdSense account, your homepage is an important source of information on how your site is performing. We know it’s essential that this page gives you access to the most relevant and actionable information possible. With this in mind, we’ve been gathering and closely analyzing your feedback; today, we’re happy to share our newly-designed homepage and invite you to give it a try!

Some publishers have let us know that they want more insights from Google on ways to increase revenue, while others who log in to their accounts throughout the day want to be able to quickly access the right performance data. The new homepage has been designed to give you easier access to our recommendations and insights, not only to increase your monetization but also improve the user experience on your site. At the same time, it emphasizes the key information you need to know and any immediate actions to take.

Here are some of the main enhancements you can expect to see:

• The new Insights stream on the right-hand side of the page provides personalized recommendations for your account, such as monetization opportunities and tips to enhance user experience, which can be put into action in just a few clicks.
• Your key account stats for today are quick and easy to view and now provide comparison data such as earnings so far this month versus the same period last month.
• The new Performance Today section gives you quick access to more detailed information like your countries and platforms reports, without requiring additional clicks.
• Your Scorecard will continue to be prominent on your homepage, providing quick benchmarking information on how your site is performing relative to the sites of other AdSense publishers.

Try out the new homepage directly from your account. You’ll still be able to revert back to your old homepage layout if needed. We encourage you to share your feedback on these updates with us so we can continue to improve the homepage for you. Head over to our AdSense +page to let us know if you’ve enabled the new homepage, and stay tuned for additional account improvements we’re working to develop. 

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Tune in to our Hangouts On Air on going multi-screen

We’ve recently been sharing a lot of information about how user behavior is changing in our multi-screen world, and the importance of having a multi-device strategy. To continue the conversation and help you find the right multi-screen strategy for your site, our team based in Asia-Pacific will be hosting three online Learn with Google Hangouts On Air. 

During these sessions, we’ll also take a look at some of the most common questions around implementing a multi-device strategy, share some examples, and provide tips on how to get started. 

See below for more information about these sessions.

Introductory: Go Multi-Screen - Principles & Recommendations 

Date: 26th November  Time: 14:00 - 15:00 SGT (GMT +8)**

• Gain insights into the most common mobile consumer behaviour and learn about the most common approaches to building a mobile solution. 
• Hear insights on user experience, content optimization, and page speed. 
• Recommended for all publishers. 

Advanced I: Responsive Design: What, Why & How

Date: 28th November   Time: 14:00 - 15:00 SGT (GMT +8)**

• Hands-on session to learn more about going responsive.
• Followed by a Q&A session and best-practice sharing with the AdSense Team.
• Recommended for those who are considering designing a responsive website.

Advanced II: Building a Mobile Application

Date: 5th December   Time: 14:00 - 15:00 SGT (GMT +8)**

• Building an app can be an alternative to building a mobile solution or can be created as part of your multi-device strategy. Learn why and how to build a great app for your content. 
• Find out how to promote and monetize your apps.
• Recommended for those who have built or are considering building a mobile app.

Interested in live streaming the Hangouts On Air?

Click here to RSVP

** Can’t watch the sessions live? Don’t worry, a recording of each Hangout On Air will be added to the event pages shortly after the live broadcast so you can watch the material when it’s most convenient for you. 

Posted by Fouad Howayek - Inside AdSense Team 

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Make the most of the holiday season - tune in to our e-commerce Hangout On Air

As one of the busiest times for e-commerce publishers approaches, make sure you’re ready to optimize for a holiday bump in traffic. There’s a couple of critical key factors to consider. First, is your site as user-friendly as it could be? Your site should provide a great experience for your users across their devices — this will help you maintain relationships with your returning visitors and engage new ones.

Another important area to look at is whether you have a complete monetization strategy in place. On average only 1-5% of traffic on an e-commerce site will convert to a sale, so it’s important to know what options are available to monetize the visits that don’t convert.

Tune in to our e-commerce Hangout On Air on Tuesday, November 26th, where we’ll talk through some of the steps you can take to ensure your site is well set up to capture the seasonal opportunity. We’ll also answer a few of your questions, which you can submit when you RSVP to watch the live stream. During this session, we’ll cover the following topics:

• Principles of user experience for e-commerce publishers
• The importance of a user-friendly mobile site
• How to maximize your non-conversion revenue with advertising solutions

Click here to RSVP

Register to watch the Hangout On Air today and don’t forget to check out the AdSense +page for the latest updates.

Posted by Anntao Diaz - Inside AdSense Team
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Monetizing your mobile site

As a part of the multi-device series, we previously looked at the importance of going multi-device as well as three different structures for building multi-screen websites. Regardless of which approach you choose there’s a monetization solution to help you optimize revenues through your digital content. 

Google AdSense is the main Google product for monetizing mobile sites, while AdMob is the Google product for monetizing mobile apps. Today we will focus on using AdSense for content, (AFC) and Custom Search Ads, (CSA) to fit your mobile solution. Both AFC mobile and CSA mobile can be implemented inside your existing AdSense account. Mobile websites that supports older, feature phones still using WAP will need to use the older solution, AdSense for mobile. However, it’s more likely that your site has been designed for iPhone, Android, or another high-end device, in which case you simply use standard AFC ad units that fit your mobile site. 

The AFC ad code you use with your desktop site is the same code used for your mobile site, the only difference is that you’ll want to choose ad sizes optimized for mobile. As you can see here, the ad-size we've selected is ‘320 x 50’ Mobile banner:

What’s even easier is that most of the same optimization tips used for desktop, also apply with mobile. We’ve found that the 320x50 and 300x250 tend to monetize best on mobile. Here we’ve listed some initial optimization tips to get you started: 

• Try different ad sizes (320x50, 300x250, 200x200, 250x250) and note that you can now also create ad units to fit your responsive site.
• Try different ad positioning 
• Change the look and feel of the ad (color, font, borders)
• Implement up to three ad units 

If your site contains a proprietary search functionality, you’ll be able to monetize with CSA mobile. However, if you use the Google search bar then this won’t be the solution for you. Some verticals that tend to be good candidates for CSA are job search, classifieds, travel, real estate, and e-commerce sites. Along with the monetization benefits, CSA ads are highly customizable so it’s very easy to modify the look and feel of these ads, to align them to your mobile site.

Next week we’ll look more at AdMob, our mobile solution for apps. In the meantime, don’t forget to keep an eye on our Google+ page to find out what’s going on as well as staying up to date with product enhancements in our Help Center. If you missed the first posts in the multi-device series, you can find them here: 1. Get your multi-device strategy off the ground, 2. What’s the best mobile solution for you?.

Posted by Federico Gomez Kodela - Mobile Specialist
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

A/B experiments for ad unit settings - the easy way

If you’re a regular blog reader, you know that we regularly emphasize the importance of testing changes to your ads to ensure they’re performing as well as they could be. The most effective way to do so is by running an A/B experiment to compare how one setting performs against a slight variation of that setting. To make it even easier for you to run A/B experiments, today we’re releasing a new AdSense experiments feature for your ad unit settings.

This new feature is available directly from your AdSense account and lets you quickly create, run and analyze A/B experiments for specific ad units -- all without needing to make any changes to your ad or page code. It works by comparing your original ad unit settings to a variation you choose, and ultimately tells you which one performs better. Here are just a few examples of the types of tests you can run:

• Compare the performance of text-only ads to ads that have both text and display enabled
• Determine how ads with a visible border perform compared to those that are ‘borderless’ (where the color of the border matches the background of the page)
• Analyze the effect of changing the color of ad text on ad performance 

Approximately 24 hours after you set up an experiment in your account, you’ll see a confidence score for the two ad units settings. This score indicates how likely the original or the variation is to be the better performing setting in the long term. Confidence scores may change as the experiment progresses, and we recommend waiting until one of the scores reaches at least 95% before choosing that setting as the winner. Once you chose the winning setting, the experiment ends and the setting is automatically applied to the specific ad unit. Please note that while an experiment is running, our system will automatically optimize the traffic split between the two ad unit settings. The better one setting performs, the more traffic it will receive, helping you maximize your revenue potential even during the experiment.

Give A/B experiments a try using this new feature to ensure you’re getting the most out of your ad units. To learn more about AdSense experiments, visit our Help Center. We look forward to hearing what you think - feel free to share your thoughts and feedback on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

What’s the best mobile solution for you?

Last week we looked at how to analyze your traffic to get an understanding of which platforms your audience is using to reach you. By comparing the content that your users are accessing via desktop, mobile, and tablet, you'll gain insights into which implementation will best suit your business. In today’s post, we’ll look at the three most common ways of doing this. We’ll explore building a responsively designed site, dynamic serving solutions, and lastly, a separate mobile site.

Responsive Web Design (RWD):

A responsively built site automatically rearranges and resizes content to fit the screen of any device used to access the site. This allows you to optimize the user experience across different devices - without needing to create redirects or make unique pages that cater to each platform. For the user, this means a smooth user journey, and for a content manager, it means content only needs to be updated once. From a developer viewpoint, RWD may require rebuilding your site framework with flexible templates, grids, style sheets and JavaScript but with very rewarding results. Take a look at this case study to see how TowerGate Insurance adapted RWD to increase mobile and tablet users by over 200%.

Dynamic Serving of Content:

Another solution is to dynamically serve content. Similar to RWD, with this approach the web server detects the type of device the visitor is using and presents a custom page on the same URL. This allows for a fully customised device experience, but also means that your content will need to be maintained separately for each platform. To ensure your users have a smooth navigational experience, prioritize building dynamic content for the most popular pages that users are accessing through mobile, and similarly apply the same for tablet.

Separate Mobile Site:

The final implementation you might want to consider is creating a separate mobile site, where smartphone users will be directed to a mobile-optimized version of your site. This implementation allows you fully customise your content for a mobile audience, since it’s often an independently hosted solution. Similar to creating dynamic serving content, this means you need to make separate updates for content or styling pieces to ensure a smooth user experience. Take a look at how Adidas reached a winning formula with their dedicated mobile solution.

To read more about what we’ve discussed today or to find a list of recommended vendors that can help you to develop your mobile solution, check out this article by the Google Think Insights team. Also, join us next week when we’re going to take a look at how you can best use AdSense to monetize your mobile sites.

Posted by Federico Gomez Kodela - Mobile Specialist
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Introducing the Google AdSense Certified Partner Program

Since 2003, AdSense has helped publishers from around the world earn from their content and grow their businesses. Over time, we’ve also seen growth in the number of consultants and service providers who have built their own businesses around helping publishers succeed with AdSense. With this in mind, we’ve created the Google AdSense Certified Partner Program to work more closely with these service providers and recognize the expertise they’ve developed.

If you use AdWords or Analytics, you may be familiar with the similar Certified Partner programs we offer for those products -- qualified companies can become certified to help you manage your account, should you require additional support for your business. Just like in these other programs, AdSense Certified Partners are carefully vetted by Google, and meet rigorous qualification standards. AdSense Certified Partners can assist with dedicated services ranging from setting up AdSense ad code on your pages to running ongoing optimization tests for you.

For service providers interested in this new program, we’ve put together comprehensive training and testing resources that cover all aspects of AdSense. Once a company has passed our qualification exam and met additional criteria to become a Certified Partner, they’ll be added to our official program website and receive a program logo for their own site. Certified Partners will also have access to marketing resources and tools to help them manage client accounts, and will join a group of accredited companies. We currently have 13 active Certified Partners, and will be adding more to the list throughout the year.

If you’re a prospective Certified Partner or a publisher interested in the services offered by these Certified Partners, you can visit our program website or Help Center for more information. We look forward to working with this group of partners and continuing to expand the range of options available to publishers in the AdSense program.

Posted by Catherine Downes - AdSense Certified Partner Team

Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Get your multi device strategy off the ground

As tech-savvy consumers, we’ve all contributed to the growth in online traffic coming from mobile and tablet platforms, and as publishers you've likely heard the importance of adapting a multi-device approach to cater for this growing trend. But exactly how important is it? How do you develop a multi-device strategy? And how does all of this equate to increased revenues for you? 

Over the coming weeks, we’ll run a series of posts that aim to answer exactly that. We’ll explore building mobile solution options to suit you, and also explain how you can use AdSense to monetize your mobile sites or AdMob.

Where are your users coming from?
We're living in a multi-screen world where users expect to have access to information, people, and computing power from any screen. Here are just a few findings from a recent survey*:

• 81% of consumers use their smartphones while also watching TV
• 66% use their smartphone at the same time as their laptop
• 83% of mobile users said that they wouldn’t leave home without their smartphone
• 63% of users said that while they may not make their final purchase through a mobile, they would definitely use their phone to gather info and help them with their purchasing decision. 

To see how these shifts in consumer behavior are relevant to your site, check the Platforms report in your AdSense account. It’s a good idea to pull a comparison report and track the growth in your percentage of mobile and tablet users over the past quarter or year. Chances are, you’re going to see a shift away from desktop with more of your online content being reached via tablet and mobile. If your site isn’t designed to cater for this growing market then now is the time to start building your multi-device strategy. And we’re here to make you aware of some of the options open to you! Join us next week when we’ll be covering a range of mobile solutions to help you discover the right one for your business.

If you’d like to learn more about what we’ve discussed today, you can also check out a recording of our recent Hangout, “Mobile - The Time is Now”.

*Study completed by Google in collaboration with Sterling Brands and Ipsos, on a sample of 1,600 users, (2012).

Posted by Federico Gomez Kodela - Mobile Specialist
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.