10 for 10 publisher stories: Pronounced success for Forvo

In each of the 10 weeks leading up to AdSense’s 10th anniversary on June 18th, we’ll be sharing a new publisher success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to submit your own success story to our team.

For those learning a new language or just wondering how words are pronounced in different parts of the world, Forvo provides a solution. Launched in 2008, the online pronunciation guide offers recordings of over 1.5 million words in 36 languages, uploaded by native speakers. A team of four based in Guipúzcoa, Spain maintains the site, which has 250,000 registered users and receives around nine million visits a month.

According to CEO Félix Vela, “the income from AdSense has allowed me to take on two new employees over the past couple of years.” Félix has been happy with the quality and relevance of the ads, and regularly uses other Google tools like Analytics to understand the site’s visitors.

Looking ahead, Félix plans to continue improving the site and increasing the number of pronunciation examples available. “There’s absolutely no doubt that AdSense will continue to play a fundamental role in this growth,” he says.

Read Forvo’s full story, and join us here again next week to meet our next publisher.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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A tenfold revenue increase in just three months - nanapi.jp's success story

nanapi.jp is a Japanese site which provides helpful tips for everyday life.  From tips on romance to how to use web services, it has all sorts of advice for everyone.

Recently, nanapi started using AdSense and has seen a steady revenue increase. We spoke to Mr. Furukawa, the CEO, and Mr. Saito, the Director of Ads, and asked them about their experiences with AdSense.

■ Inside AdSense (IA): Please tell us the history of nanapi and how you built your site.  
We established nanapi in September, 2009.  We realized that there was a need for an information site where people could find tips for everyday life, so we decided to provide this content in the form of articles on various topics.

Initially, we only had a desktop site but now we’ve created a mobile site for smartphones too. As of August 2012, we receive 42 million page views and 9 million unique users per month.  The number of unique users is bigger on the desktop site, but the smartphone site receives more page views.

■ IA: How and why did you start using AdSense?
When we first established the site, we decided not to implement ads as we wanted to focus on creating quality content first. After our number of monthly visitors reached 10 million, we implemented a medium rectangle (300x250) in the upper right corner of the site.  As a result, we earned higher revenue than we’d anticipated.

We were surprised by the quality of the ads and how well they matched the content of our site. We’d been concerned that ads might damage the design or usability of our site, but we didn’t feel that way about the site post-implementation.  That’s why we decided to use AdSense more.

■ IA: What results did you see after implementing AdSense?
We started to use AdSense more after the pilot in April 2012.  More specifically, we switched from another ad network to AdSense, and increased the number of ads per page. Our revenue increased more than ten times in just three months!

nanapi covers a lot of topics, and it can be difficult to show relevant ads, but with AdSense's contextual targeting, relevant ads are shown automatically.  People visit nanapi before they take action, and that's why it's natural for our visitors to click relevant ads and leave the site. We implemented 336x280 ads below our articles to capture this kind of user behavior.

■ IA: Did you have any issues after implementing Google AdSense?
We didn’t have any difficulty in implementing or setting up AdSense. Compared to the ad network we used before, AdSense’s account interface is easy to use. It was also very easy to implement AdSense on our smartphone site. We pasted the ad code from the account interface, just as we’d done for the desktop site. It’s very good that AdSense allows us to check performance by platform too.

As for resources, we only need one person to manage AdSense. The account interface is very easy to use. For example, when we experiment with changing an ad format, we can check its performance immediately.

We were concerned that ads would deteriorate the usability of our website.  However, ad quality was very good and we didn’t have to worry.  Since the ads match our content, they enhance the information on the site and we haven’t received a single complaint from our users

■ IA: Please tell us about your plans for the future.
We plan to keep adding more and more articles to our site. Our goal is to make users think that “if you visit nanapi, you’ll find answers for all kinds of topics.” From an ads perspective, we’re considering using DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) to manage our ad units more easily.

Posted by Ayaka Sakakibara - Strategic Partner Manager
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Understanding the dynamics of the AdSense auction - Part II

Earlier this week, we started a two-part series to help you better understand the AdSense ad auction and how it helps you earn the most money possible. We shared how text and image ads compete in the same auction, and that our system selects either ad type based on the predicted value -- sometimes resulting in one image ad winning out over multiple text ads. Following on that discussion, today we’ll turn our attention to just text ads.

If you’re using one of our large ad unit sizes like the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper, you may have noticed that you’ll sometimes see multiple text ads in the ad unit, while only one or two ads at other times. As we noted earlier this week, our system predicts the value of each competing ad for every impression, based on historic performance and comparison across a variety of scenarios. There can sometimes be cases where our system determines that one or two specific text ads are significantly higher-performing than the other eligible text ads, and that showing them separately would result in higher performance than if the ads were shown together with lower-performing ones. When this occurs, we’ll show them alone, and this means you’ll see less than the full number of text ads in the ad unit.

We know that it can sometimes be confusing to see fewer text ads appearing in an ad unit, and that it can create extra white space, but please know that this behavior is intended to help you earn the most from all of your impressions. As we continue to make improvements to the rendering of the ads and develop new ad formats, we’ll keep you posted right here on our blog.

Thanks for joining us for this series. We hope you found it useful; please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Johan Land - AdSense Product Manager

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Richer user engagement with the new 970x90 ad size

It’s been just a few months since we launched a new, larger 300x600 ad size, giving you the opportunity to attract brand advertisers looking for large spaces to engage with users. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback and are happy to let you know that we’ll be expanding our range of available ad sizes to include the brand-friendly 970x90 ad unit.

970x90 ad units are a newly adopted IAB standard and are also known as ‘super leaderboards’. This larger ad size is another visually impactful placement for advertisers to promote their products and services even on wider screens.

970x90 Text Ad

970x90 Image Ad

Please note that since the 970x90 unit is new to our network, you’ll currently see mainly text ads appearing in this format. The new super leaderboard ad unit can show up to four text ads organized in a column layout but, as with other ad sizes, the number of text ads per unit may vary per impression. When enabling image and rich media ads for this unit, display ads in the size of a 728x90 unit will be displayed initially. Over time, we expect that the inventory of image and rich media ads for the 970x90 will grow and you’ll see more full-size display ads being served.

As always, we strongly recommend considering your content when placing your ad units to ensure both users and advertisers have a great experience with your site. Please note that the limit for AdSense for content ad units still remains at three per page.

We look forward to hearing what you think about the new 970x90 ad size. Feel free to share your thoughts and feedback on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Omer Gimenez Llach - AdSense Software Engineer & Johan Land - AdSense Product Manager
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10 for 10 publisher stories: Lessons from Teaching Ideas

In our third ‘10 for 10’ publisher success story leading up to AdSense’s 10th anniversary, we’ll hear from U.K. publisher Mark Warner of Teaching Ideas. The site offers thousands of free learning resources for teachers around the world, from ideas for classroom activities to printable posters. Mark launched the site in 1998 as a hobby while training to become a teacher, and it now attracts an average of 25,000 unique visitors a day.



Today, Mark generates 90 percent of the site’s income with AdSense, and also uses DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business to manage additional sources of advertising. “AdSense has had a big impact on my life,” says Mark, “allowing me to work part time, work from home, and spend more time with my family. My long-term goal is to continue building the website, making it bigger so more teachers have access to even more resources.”

For more of Mark’s story, read the full case study. We know there are many more success stories out there in the publisher community, so please feel free to share your own with us as well.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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Understanding the dynamics of the AdSense auction - Part I

We often hear questions from publishers about why the number of ads that appear in an ad unit can vary, and what that means for revenue. If you’ve ever wondered why less than four text ads sometimes appear in larger formats, or why one image ad can show instead of four text ads, keep reading -- today, we’re kicking off a two-part series to shed more light on the topic.

The answer ultimately boils down to the AdSense ad auction, and is a way to maximize your revenue. As a refresher, in the ad auction, advertisers bid to show their ads on your site: The number and price of ads in the auction changes from impression to impression, based on how much advertisers are willing to spend and how they've set up their ad campaigns. This is why we call the ad auction ‘dynamic’. In addition to their bids, advertisers are also ranked based on their Quality Score to ensure a good user experience.

To help you understand how our system selects between different ad types, today we’ll first focus on how text and image ads compete within the same auction for your ad space. Let’s say you have a 728x90 leaderboard and have enabled both text and image ads to appear. For every impression, our system predicts which ad type will be more valuable. When selecting the “winning” ad(s) for your page, our system takes the advertisers’ bids and Quality Scores into consideration and also considers historical data for specific ads, in order to predict overall performance.

So, even though a leaderboard could show up to four text ads, it may sometimes be the case that the one image ad will outperform all of the competing text ads. In other words, if you see one image ad appearing in your leaderboard, it’s because it is more valuable than the eligible text ads combined. By maximizing competition for your ad space, you’re also maximizing your revenue potential -- this is why we always recommend enabling both text and image ads for your ad units, which maximizes competition for your ad space.

Don’t miss the second part of our series later this week to learn more about how the number of text ads per ad unit is determined in AdSense ad auction. In the meantime, feel free to leave your feedback and thoughts on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Johan Land - AdSense Product Manager
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Increase user engagement with link unit ad previews

To increase performance for our publishers, we recently launched an update to link units in select countries and site verticals. When users click on a link unit keyword, the resulting page now shows thumbnails of the advertisers' landing page. We ran extensive experiments on this change and found that users were more likely to click on the results with thumbnail images, leading to increased publisher revenue and more conversions for advertisers.

This change will happen automatically for publishers using link units in the affected countries and site verticals, so no action is required if you’re an existing user of the format.  For publishers not using link units, we’d recommend trying them out!

• Link units are an efficient way of monetizing smaller areas of your website.
• Link units are a non-intrusive way to monetize, as the simple layout doesn’t distract from your content.

As a reminder, our program policies state you may have three link unit ad formats in addition to the three standard units.

We encourage you to test out the link unit format.  For more information visit our Help Center.

Posted By Kwanho Lee - Software Engineer
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Coming soon: Updates to our Terms and Conditions

In order to keep pace with changes in our products, we regularly review our Terms and Conditions to make sure they're up to date and in line with those of other Google products. As a result of our recent review, we’ll be making some updates to our Terms, starting April 23rd. If you're based in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, or North America, you'll see a notification in your account when you log in after this date. It will present you with the updated Terms and prompt you to accept them. For publishers based in the Asia-Pacific region, the change to our Terms will happen slightly later as we’re rolling the changes out gradually across all regions. 

You'll have 30 days to fully review the new terms in detail before action is required. Before the updated Terms appear in your account, we'd like to give you an idea of what's changing:

• With this new version of the Terms and Conditions, our goal has been to make them as clear and transparent as possible. As a result of this, we hope that it’ll be even easier to navigate and find what you’re looking for.
• With mobile being one of the big trends in 2013 and beyond, we’re expanding our Terms to cover mobile properties more specifically. We’ve also incorporated guidelines for using the AdMob SDK and other publisher products.

The updates outlined above are the main areas that will be affected by the change. However, we’ve made smaller changes throughout, so please be sure to review the Terms as a whole before accepting them.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager

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10 for 10 publisher stories: Complementing Videdressing’s profitability

Welcome back to our ‘10 for 10’ series, where we’re sharing publisher success stories each week as we count down to AdSense’s 10th anniversary in June.

Today we’re heading to Paris to say bonjour to Videdressing, an e-commerce site founded in 2009 by American expat Meryl Job. After looking for a medium to sell some of her clothes and noticing that a number of fashion bloggers were opening wardrobe sales, Meryl started the site to enable others to buy and sell fashion items they no longer wear. Today, the site employs over 20 people and receives over 25 million visits each month.

Since joining the AdSense program last year, Videdressing has used its AdSense revenue to complement the earnings it generates from sales and transactions. The additional income adds to the profitability of the site and is used to offer better services to its customers. Company chairman Renaud Guillerm sees advertising as “being first and foremost an additional service that we can offer our customers. Our conversion rate is only two per cent, as 98 percent of visitors browse the site without buying anything. By using AdSense we can monetise these many visits.”

Videdressing uses AdWords to advertise the site, and also makes use of Analytics to understand the site’s visitors. To date, the company has seen strong growth in France, and is looking to expand to additional markets in the future.

Read more about Videdressing’s success, and feel free to share your own AdSense success story with us. We’ll be back next week to introduce you to another publisher!

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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Share your feedback on AdSense and other Google publisher products

Over the last few years, Google’s offering for online publishers has grown dramatically: in addition to AdSense, our products now range from AdMob, to DoubleClick for Publishers and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

As we continually work on improving our existing offerings, as well as developing new products and service for publishers, we’d like to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Our semi-annual satisfaction survey is a great way for you to share your feedback on AdSense and other publisher products you’re using. Later this month, we’ll be sending our survey to a sample of publishers opted in to receiving “occasional surveys”, so if you’d like to participate, make sure to update your email preferences and contact information.

Your suggestions are valuable, whether they come in via surveys, our product forum, or in-person events, and we regularly use your feedback to make improvements. For example, we recently introduced a new, brand-friendly ad size in AdSense and announced a closer collaboration with you when it comes to fighting invalid activity. Based on your feedback, you can now also benefit from video ad serving in DFP Small Business and AdMob Academy - our comprehensive guide to everything AdMob. It often takes time to develop new ideas and make improvements, but be assured that we read every single one of your comments and take your thoughts on board.

If you want to let us know your thoughts and ideas, don’t miss our survey in the week of April 28th. We look forward to hearing from you, and we appreciate your time.

Posted by Sahar Golestani, on behalf of the AdSense Publisher Satisfaction Team
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We’re simplifying earnings reporting for YouTube partners

One of the most exciting things about YouTube is all the partners building businesses around doing what they love. We now have thousands of partners who are making video creation a full-time endeavor. And, we’re listening to feedback and working to improve the process of earning money on YouTube.

So, in an effort to ensure we deliver our partners the most accurate and consistent financial performance data for their videos, we are making some changes in how YouTube interacts with AdSense. Starting April 1, 2013, AdSense will no longer calculate and report AdSense for Content Host earnings for YouTube partners. Instead, AdSense earnings from YouTube videos will only be calculated by YouTube and displayed in YouTube Analytics.

What does this mean for you as a YouTube partner?
First, expect no change in how you are paid. The payments tab in AdSense will show your monthly YouTube payments as one total amount as you will continue to be paid via AdSense. Rather, this change means that if you want to view your YouTube financial performance, you should go to YouTube Analytics where you can continue to find a comprehensive view of all your sources of earnings for your YouTube videos. YouTube Analytics has improved the timeliness of earnings reporting to within 24 hours after the end of the day, Pacific Time. You can still view page views and clicks and also manage ad blocking in the AdSense interface for your YouTube videos. If you use other AdSense products, their calculation and reports will be unchanged in the AdSense reporting interface.

Have you ever wondered what the difference between AdSense earnings and YouTube earnings was? As a bit of background, many YouTube partners have ad earnings from two sources: auction-sold ads (AdSense earnings) and reserve-sold ads (YouTube earnings). YouTube serves the optimal ads when a viewer watches the video. Previously, AdSense calculated and reported the auction-sold AdSense earnings. YouTube calculated reserve-sold and miscellaneous earnings and reported both AdSense and YouTube earnings. Now, having only the YouTube system calculate all your earnings will simplify and streamline your video reporting.

We take accurate financial calculation and reporting very seriously, and believe this change will reduce reporting confusion and prepare all our partners for new ways to grow their earnings.


Andy Stack, YouTube Product Manager
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Introducing 10 for 10 publisher stories: Crafting with Cut Out + Keep

This June 18th is a major milestone: the date marks the 10th anniversary of AdSense’s launch. Over the years, AdSense has evolved from a small contextually-targeted text ad network to a complete publisher solution, serving Display, Mobile, Video, and more for over 2 million publishers -- with powerful new features, reports, and controls to boot. As we’ve grown over the last decade with your support and feedback, we’ve heard inspiring stories about how you and your businesses have done the same.

June 18th falls exactly 10 weeks from today, so we’re kicking off a ‘10 for 10’ success story series here on the blog. Each Tuesday leading up to the anniversary, we’ll introduce you to a publisher who has grown their business with AdSense and other Google tools. Stay tuned for more information on AdSense’s 10th anniversary -- but in the meantime, let’s get started by meeting Cat Morley and Tom Waddington from Cut Out + Keep:



Cat originally launched Cut Out + Keep as a blog where she could share her craft ideas. With the help of her business partner and fiancé, Tom, she transformed the blog into a popular crafting community where over 140,000 registered users now share their own projects. As the site grew, the Edinburgh-based couple turned to AdSense to earn from their site without needing to spend time selling ads. “Both of us are bad at sales,” Tom admits. “We don’t want to sell ads -- we want to focus on building the site, which is our true passion. We regard AdSense as our third employee.”

Thanks to the revenue from AdSense, Tom was able to quit his day job to focus completely on the site. More recently, the couple attended a Learn with Google for Publishers workshop in Edinburgh to learn how to improve the performance of their site. Since making changes recommended to them by an optimization specialist at the workshop, including updating their ad formats and getting started with DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business, Cat and Tom have seen their revenue quadruple.

Hear more about Cat and Tom’s AdSense experience by reading the full story. Do you have a success story to share as well? We’d love to hear from you. Join us here on Inside AdSense next Tuesday to hear another AdSense story and meet another publisher.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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Watch our recent Learn with Google for Publishers Hangout On Air

User experience is an important focus area for every publisher, so we recently provided you tips in this three part blog series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). We wanted to provide you even more information, so we recently hosted a Hangout On Air.

If you missed the Hangout or would like to watch it again, you can view the recording on our AdSense YouTube channel.

Watch the recording to learn:

• How to better understand your users
• How to delight your users
• How to increase your users’ engagement and
• How to measure success of changes to your website.

We hope you’ll join us for our future Hangouts - be sure to stay connected with us by adding Google AdSense to your circles on Google+.

Posted by Marta Lysiak - Inside AdSense Team
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