A new look for personalized ad unit optimization recommendations in your account

Just over a year ago, we introduced recommendations for individual AdSense for content ad units, directly in your account. In addition to the personalized tips you might receive via email, these recommendations provide specific suggestions for improving your account performance by changing ad unit type or format settings of individual ad units.

Based on your feedback, we’ve further improved the look and feel of these recommendations. Next to the specific optimization suggestion, you’ll now also see a graph that visualizes your expected revenue gain from the suggested optimization. The new graph allows you to assess instantly what you might gain from the suggested optimization and whether or not it’s worth updating your implementation. However, we can only perform the simulations and generate recommendations for your ad units if you have created your ad units directly via the ‘My ads’ tab in your AdSense account. If you're still using the older AdSense code, please upgrade your ad code following the instructions in our Help Center.

Our recommendations are based on ad auction simulations for a specific ad unit using different ad type and/or ad format settings. We’ll only show a recommendation if our simulation predicts that a change of settings consistently results in higher revenue for that ad unit. Please note that the new design including graph and total projected revenue uplift will only be visible for new recommendations. Recommendations generated before today’s date will remain in the old design.

We hope that the improved design of our recommendations in the account helps you continue to optimize your account performance. Let us know what you think about the new design by sharing your feedback on the AdSense +page.

Posted by Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Learn with Google for Publishers presents: Meet a Product Manager

We’ve seen from our AdSense +page and in-person events that AdSense publishers love to discuss current product features and interact with our team. With this in mind, we’re kicking off a Hangout series with AdSense Product Managers to connect you with the Googlers who look after the AdSense product roadmap. For the series kick-off, we’ve invited Allan Livingston, who has been the AdSense Group Product Manager for 3+ years, to host a Hangout On Air on our AdSense +page. Join the session to meet Allan, hear answers to your AdSense product questions, and learn some AdSense tips.

	Join the event

The event will take place this Thursday, March 28th, from 9:00am-9:30am PT (4:00pm-4:30pm GMT) on the AdSense +page. Ask your questions by joining the event and posting your questions in the comments section. Also, feel free to +1 questions previously added by other publishers that you’d like addressed. If you’re not able to view the live session, a recording will be available afterwards on our AdSense YouTube channel.

We look forward to hanging out with you online this week!

Posted by Ashli Meske, Inside AdSense Team
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

The brand revolution is underway

(cross posted from the Inside AdWords blog)

As we’ve said before, we’ve entered the next wave of digital marketing, as major brands like L’Oreal, Audi and Kay Jewelers embrace digital media and make it a core part of their marketing strategy.  We’ve seen a 65 percent increase in the last quarter alone in the number of brand advertisers using our brand formats and buying tools.

This influx of brand investment is translating into meaningful results for digital publishers.

• We looked at the 50 top publishers that enable brand-friendly ad formats on their sites.  Over the past three months we found that, on average, they experienced a CPM increase of 2x or more when running these engagement-driven ads, such as our Lightbox ad, which expands to a full page only after a user has deliberately engaged with the ad. “We've seen CPM increases of more than 3X, and our advertisers love the large canvas and pay for engagement model," says Rich Dredge, Answers.com's Chief Revenue Officer.

• We’ve seen an overall increase in higher CPMs across our exchange -- in the U.S., CPMs over $5 have increased 24% year-over-year while those over $10 have increased 23% year-over-year. Brand spend is a critical piece of these increases.

Fueling brand adoption
To continue this momentum, we’ve been investing in a suite of brand solutions over the past year to help these advertisers make the most of what digital marketing has to offer:

• New Ways to Buy -- Last year, we introduced Active View, offering for the first time the ability to not only measure whether ads are viewable, but actually buy based on it. Brands are able to “reserve” a guaranteed number of impressions on brand-friendly sites across the web -- and they pay only for impressions that are viewed. 

• Over the past year, the number of advertisers using the reserve option has increased fourfold.
• Nearly two-thirds of those are Ad Age top 100 brands.

• New Ways to Engage -- Last year, we introduced a new family of brand-friendly, engagement-focused ad formats. Engagement formats are already showing terrific early returns.  For example, L’ORÉAL PARiS was one of the first brands to run a campaign using engagement ads. They ran an expandable ad in Germany as part of their “Beauty Minute” campaign and found that 30% of those who expanded the ad watched the entire 30-second embedded video.

• New Ways to Measure -- We’re committed to providing meaningful metrics for brands, measurement that goes beyond just clicks and conversions. Earlier this week, we introduced Brand Lift in AdWords, which will enable marketers to run surveys along with their ad campaigns, to determine how their ads helped their marketing objectives (i.e., whether their ads helped build awareness, increased favorability towards their brand, etc.). Brand Lift complements our other investments in brand measurement, like Active View and Active GRP.

Digital media represents an amazing opportunity for both brands and publishers, bringing together sight, sound, motion, interactivity and measurement in ways we’ve never seen before.

Over the coming year, we’ll be continuing to invest in our products and systems that will help brands thrive in the digital space, as well as help publishers capitalize on the shift...so stay tuned for more to come.

-- Posted by Neal Mohan
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Guidelines for monetizing Flash gaming sites

Playing online games is a common pastime, and many of you implement Flash games on your site to capture your users’ interests. We've received some questions about our policies related to Flash games in the past, so we've posted a couple messages, including Using the right product and Tips for placing ads on game play pages which provide tips on how ads should be implemented. Today we’re talking about content issues on Flash gaming sites as well as common ad implementation violations for Flash gaming sites.

Family safe content
You can monetize Flash games, however our policies do not permit monetizing games with sexual or violent content. It's also important to refrain from including or allowing any explicit or profane language in descriptions or comments.

Distance between ads and game
To reduce the risk of invalid click activity, avoid placing AdSense for content ads too close to the Flash game. We strongly recommend a distance of at least 150 pixels between the ads and the the edge of a game. When users are concentrating on a Flash game and clicking frantically, invalid clicks can occur. Since each game and site is unique, some games may require a greater distance based on the type of game and how it is played. To know whether a game is likely to cause invalid clicks, we recommend that you play your Flash game, placing yourself in the user’s shoes, before placing ads on the page. Clicks on ads should always be motivated by user interest, and not by the placement of the ads on the page.

AFC as pre-roll
AdSense for games (AFG) is a product designed specifically for the monetization of Flash games. Using AdSense for content (AFC) ads as a pre-roll before, or mid-roll during a Flash game, is against our policies, as the product was not created for this kind of an implementation. If you wish to use Google ads as a pre-roll to your game, please apply for AFG. For more information about AFG, please visit our Help Center.

In order for users to enjoy the gaming experience of your site, the Flash game should be the primary focus of the page. Always keep the user in mind when placing ads and your site should remain in good standing from a policy perspective.

Posted by Ben Barkhoff,  AdSense Policy Team
Was this blog post useful? Share your feedback with us.

Preview landing pages in the Ad review center

If you're looking to manage the ads that can appear on your pages, be sure to check out the controls available in the Ad review center. To help save you time, we recently added the ability to find and review ads more efficiently. Today, we’re happy to announce a new feature which enables you to not only view a specific ad, but to also check the landing page where this ad leads -- all directly within your account.

If you're looking for more insight into your users' experience with the ads on your site, the landing page view offers you a quick and easy view of what users see when clicking on an ad. This in turn will help you make a more informed decision about whether or not an ad is suitable for your audience.

To try this new feature, simply log in to your AdSense account and navigate to the “Allow and block ads” tab. As you review individual ads in the Ad review center, hover over an ad and a small magnifying glass will appear in the bottom right corner. Click on the magnifying glass and you'll see the ad and its specific landing page.

Please note that this feature is currently only available in accounts with the language preference set to English. However, we’re planning to roll this feature out in other languages soon. In the meantime, please feel free to share your feedback on this new feature on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Pedro Diaz - AdSense Software Engineer

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

With a refreshing makeover, MakeupAlley.com boosts interactions, clicks and revenue

When users of MakeupAlley.com, one of the web’s largest beauty communities, review any of the 130,000 products that appear on the site, community engagement motivates them to add reviews. Is the product easy to use? Is it visually appealing? Does the product compare well to other products in its category?

After mastering the art of product reviews, MakeupAlley.com conducted a review of its own site and implemented changes.  In doing so, MakeupAlley.com achieved a 171% increase in on-site interactions, 21% more clicks to affiliate links, and a 50% uplift in AdSense revenue. A host of Google tools contributed to the overhaul, and to these compelling results.

Small changes, big impact
In all, the site hosts well over 2 million reviews. Aiming to improve user experience and increase engagement, MakeupAlley.com first made some simple changes to its product pages, home to the site’s latest reviews. Using Google’s tips and resources for publishers, MakeupAlley.com organized and streamlined content and design to make relevant information easier to find.

Product names and rating statistics were made more prominent to make it easier for users to gather product information at a glance. MakeupAlley.com also restructured the layout by separating review content from member profiles. To encourage deeper engagement, MakeupAlley.com grouped and clearly labeled related content. A final tweak saw an existing AdSense unit move to a more visible placement below the navigation, creating space on the page for an additional ad unit.

Tallying up through testing
To measure the effectiveness of the changes, the team set up Google Analytics Custom Variables to track and compare visitor activity, as well as Event Tracking to evaluate in-page interactions. MakeupAlley.com also created custom channels in AdSense to track the performance of ad units.

MakeupAlley.com ran a month-long A/B test, splitting traffic between the original and new landing pages. The new, user-friendly landing page demonstrated promising results. Featuring related content in a clear way helped grow on-site interactions, while organizing affiliate links in an easy-to-find “Where to buy” section encouraged clicks. And the new ad unit placements resulted in a notable upward surge in AdSense revenue.

A beautiful future
Considering that MakeupAlley.com’s revenue comes primarily from advertising and affiliates, the lessons learned are valuable to the brand. “We’re excited to continue improving the usability of our site using this methodology,” says one team member. Based on these successes, plans are already in the works to apply the same tactics to improving user experience and engagement throughout the site.

Want to replicate this kind of success for your own brand?

●      Read the full case study on MakeupAlley.com.
●      Get tips and best practices for content and design from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
●      Learn about measuring visitor activity, Custom Variables and Event Tracking with Google Analytics.
●      Find out how to use Google AdSense custom channels to group and track ad units.

Posted by Ian Cohan-Shapiro - Inside AdSense Team

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

Diversifying revenue sources in an e-commerce site - dinos’ success story

dinos is a Japanese mail order company that relies on catalogs, TV and the Internet for its business. In their online shopping site, visitors can purchase items they've seen on TV or in catalogs. Their site was established in September 2000 and, as of July 2012, dinos now receives 2.5 million user visits and 58 million page views per month. Revenue from their site accounts for about half of dinos' total revenue.

We recently interviewed Hiroyuki Kikuchi from the dinos marketing team, to find out more about the company’s experiences with AdSense.

■ Inside AdSense (IA): Could you tell us why and how you started to use AdSense?
We started to use AdSense to diversify the sources of revenue from the site and also to monetize the traffic from users leaving the site. The major reason why we decided to use AdSense is because of its flexibility: we can shut off or turn on a campaign at any time. We started out with a pilot in April 2012. Then in May, we began using AdSense more, dramatically increasing the number of pages with ads. As a result, our revenue increased significantly.

■ IA: Did you use any other service before you implemented AdSense?
We used an affiliate service before using AdSense. We piloted this service because it provided control over which ads we served. We also analyzed the results from our pilot to be able to optimize our ad network implementation later on. Our main concern with trying AdSense was that we would not be able to choose the ads we served, but after implementation, we found that we could easily control the ads at the URL and ad category levels. The revenue coming from AdSense is much higher than the revenue we earned from the affiliate network.

■ IA: When implementing AdSense, was there any opposition from within the company?
There was internal concern that using AdSense would decrease product sales on dinos.com. We explained that sales revenue had not changed since AdSense was implemented. In addition, we offered to stop using AdSense if we received any complaints from our users. In the end, sales levels remain constant and we did not receive any complaints. This shows that we're providing useful information to our users and showing high quality ads

■ IA: Was it easier to implement AdSense than you’d expected?
It was very easy to introduce AdSense. It was very helpful that we could set up the ad categories that we wanted to block in the account interface. It was also good that we could block ads on a URL basis.

■ IA: What resources do you use to manage your account?
Since we don’t need many resources to manage AdSense, only one person is managing it.

We hope you enjoyed learning about another publisher's AdSense journey. Stay tuned for more stories.

Posted by Kensuke Ishida, Strategic Partner Manager

Simplified contact resources and consultations for select accounts

AdSense provides access to a number of resources to resolve issues and answer your questions. Many of these resources are available in the Help Center, including the Fix a Problem troubleshooting section, the AdSense Academy learning modules, and answers to common (and not so common) questions.

Today, we’re excited to announce a recent addition to our Help Center: a simplified, personalized contact options page. This page serves as a single source for many commonly used troubleshooters that can help you resolve your issue in minutes. In some cases, these troubleshooters lead to issue-specific contact forms that generate emails to our team. We’ve developed automated tools, closely monitored by our support specialists, to help fix issues you’ve identified and process these incoming emails, making it possible for us to typically answer your questions in only a few hours.

The new contact options page, troubleshooters, and specialized contact forms are available to all publishers with an approved AdSense account.

For those publishers generally earning more than $25 per week, we’re now offering consultations with members of our team via email in 33 languages. We’re happy helping you manage your AdSense account or discussing strategies to grow your business. If your account qualifies, you’ll see an alert notifying you on the contact options page. We aim to reply to all consults within two business days, though turnaround may be longer during certain holiday periods.

We understand publishers want even simpler ways to answer questions and more intuitive contact options, so we’re working on a number of additional initiatives to help you resolve your issues. Keep up to date with new features and opportunities by subscribing to this blog, adding our Google+ page to your circles, and opting in to receiving email.

Posted by Chris Sater - Support and Operations Specialist

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