Free video ad serving in DFP Small Business, available to all publishers

Cross posted from the DoubleClick Publisher Blog

Publishers everywhere are discovering the revenue and audience growth potential of video content. As a publisher grows a video viewership on their site, selling their own ads becomes an increasingly important revenue stream. Over the past year we’ve added mobile capabilities and tested out video ad serving features to better help publishers sell advertising across all screens and formats. So today we’re excited to announce the availability of video ad serving features plus an unlimited video ad serving trial offer to all DFP Small Business publishers.

So what’s new?

Comprehensive video ad creative management

• Show pre-roll, post-roll, and mid-roll in-stream ads, as well as overlays and companion creative sets
• Upload and transcode video ad assets to a variety of formats

Simple workflow with trusted partners

• To use the video ad management features, publishers need to integrate with video technology platforms to ensure optimal video ad playback and easy implementation
• Manage your video ads alongside your desktop and mobile display ads in DFP Small Business

Make the most from every stream

• Video backfill options with Google AdSense and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange to help maximize your video ad revenue with a high fill rate
• To apply for the AdSense for video program, send us your details

Video ad serving is free up to 400K ad impressions a month. Until April 30th, we’re offering a free unlimited trial, so you can serve as many video ads as you want. After this trial offer has ended, impressions over 400K a month will be charged a nominal ad serving fee on a CPM basis.

We’d love to hear your opinions and feedback on these new features on our AdSense Google+ page, where you’ll also be able to discuss your thoughts and share best practices with other publishers.

If you’d like to start with DFP Small Business, sign up here. The new video functionality is automatically turned on for all current DFP Small Business publishers, so if you’re ready to start selling video ads, log in now!

Posted by Andrew Kuo, DFP Small Business video product specialist

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Coming soon: international Learn with Google for Publishers events

Edited for accuracy on January 24th, 2013

A little over a month ago we announced that AdSense in Your City events will be evolving into Learn with Google for Publishers. We also published our event schedule for North America. Today we’re excited to announce that the Learn with Google for Publishers event series is international, too!

Below are some international events in the next three months:

Latin America

• Sao Paulo, Brazil - March 19, 2013
• Buenos Aires, Argentina - March 13, 2013

Europe

• Bucharest, Romania - March 4, 2013
• Dublin, Ireland - February 11, 2013

If you’d like to attend one of our upcoming events, fill out this form and we’ll send out event confirmation details two weeks before the event. Space is limited, so sign up quickly.
   
Be sure to check out our complementary Learn with Google webinar series.  And, if you’re as excited as we are about Learn with Google for Publishers, let us know on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Ian Cohan-Shapiro - Inside AdSense Team

Your optimization checklist, Part 2

Last week we covered some oldie-but-goodie optimization tips. Today, we’ll focus on some advanced tips to help you bring your AdSense strategy to the next level. We encourage you to review the full list and check off items as you complete them.

1. Ensure your site has a positive user experience: User experience (UX) can make or break your site’s success. With many other sites offering similar services, it’s important to differentiate your site in the eyes of your users by providing a better experience. Because a user’s attention is limited, you'll only have a few seconds to provide a good experience and quickly guide the user to what they’re looking for. Read these three blog posts to learn our top five UX tips.
2. Make your first ad unit count: AdSense loads the highest paying ad on a page first, so to improve your revenue make sure that your best performing ad unit is the first in your HTML code. Make the changes by following these steps.
3. Fix crawler errors: Ensure that our AdSense crawler can accurately crawl your site so that your ads are as relevant and useful as possible. Visit the Account settings section of your account to see if you have crawler errors and read this blog post for details on the steps to take.
4. Go mobile: It’s clear that mobile is growing rapidly. Ensure you have a mobile strategy for your site, and use our tips and tools to help you along the way.
5. Create a Google+ page to connect with your users: Google+ offers a number of tools to help you reach audiences in new ways. On your +page, you can share your articles, photos, YouTube videos, and even host live broadcasts. Your +page will also include a +1 button that users can click to recommend you. Think about your Google+ page as a way to complement your site, allowing you to grow and measure user engagement before directing users back to your pages for more of your great content. Get started today by reading our Social Fridays blog post series. 
6. Use DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP) Small Business: As your online advertising business continues to grow, you may have started working with other ad networks or doing deals directly with advertisers. DFP Small Business is a free, Google-hosted solution to help streamline how ads are served on your site when you’re working with AdSense alongside other ad partners. With DFP Small Business, you have a vast array of features that give you more control over when, where, and how your ads serve.

That concludes our two-part optimization checklist series. Please visit our AdSense +page to let us know your experience with these optimization tips.

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

Your optimization checklist, Part 1

With a fresh start to the year, now is a great time to review your AdSense strategy to ensure you’re making the most out of your ads. With that in mind, we’re kicking off a two-part optimization checklist series to help you increase your earning potential. In this first post, we’ll review some oldie-but-goodie tips; take a look, check off the items that you’ve already covered, and see if there’s anything you may have missed.

1. Increase ad coverage: Placing additional ad units on your site can have a big impact on your earnings. You can put up to three standard AdSense for content ad units (note only one 300x600), three link units and two AdSense for search boxes on each page of your site. Sometimes publishers find it difficult to decide whether an additional ad unit makes sense for their site. Watch this short video to help you make sure you're following best practices, as outlined on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, when placing new ad units on your site. As always, it’s important to consider the amount of ads in relation to the quality content on your site. 
2. Use recommended ad sizes: As a rule of thumb, wider ad sizes tend to outperform their taller counterparts, due to their reader-friendly format. If positioned well, wide ad sizes can increase your earnings significantly. The sizes we've found to be the most effective are the 728X90 Leaderboard, the 336x280 Large Rectangle, the 300x250 Medium Rectangle, and the 160x600 Wide Skyscraper. Keep in mind that while these ad sizes typically perform well, you should use the size that best complements your pages.
3. Show both text and image ads: Image ads compete in the same auction for your ad space that text ads do. So, choosing to display both text and image ads increases the competition for ads to appear on your site, and may help you earn more. Check this case study to see how displaying both text and image ads helped one publisher. You can also find instructions how to enable image ads in our Help Center.
4. Experiment with ad color combinations: Choosing the right ad styles can mean the difference between ads your users will notice -- and click -- and ads they'll skip right over. There are three techniques you can use to design ad styles that will be successful for your site: blend, compliment and contrast.  Experiment with ad color combinations to find the best fit for your site. See this Help Center article for additional information. 
5. Ensure optimal ad placement: The placement of your ads plays a big role in revenue earning potential and user experience. While we often recommend placing an ad above the fold, it’s also important that users can easily find the content they are looking for. Check out this resource for more tips on ad placement, and see our heat map for even more information. 
6. Add a search box (or two): As mentioned in #1, you can put up two AdSense for search boxes (along with three standard AdSense for content ad units and three link units) on each page of your site.  AdSense for search is a free product that lets you place a Custom Search Engine on your site to provide users with web search. You'll also earn revenue from relevant ads on the search results page.

We hope you find these tips useful. If you have additional tips to share, or would like to let us know about your experience with using an optimization tip, leave a comment on our AdSense +page. Stay tuned for our second part of the series, where we’ll cover some advanced optimization tips.

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team