Policy refresher: Appeals process

We’re continuing our policy refresher series today, taking a closer look at what happens when we detect content that doesn’t comply with our policies.

As we've talked about often on this blog we maintain a set of policies for AdSense designed to foster a healthy ecosystem and protect our publishers, advertisers and users. The vast majority of content on AdSense publisher sites follows these policies. However, sometimes, our systems do find content that doesn't comply, in which case we'll send a notice to the affected publisher. Notifications can be viewed by signing in to your AdSense account and visiting the Messages page, under your Home tab. Additionally, notifications are sent to the email address associated with your AdSense account. A notification will outline whether it is a site warning/disabling or an account disabling issue. If it is a site warning then you have 72 hours to make changes and do not need to contact us. If your account has been disabled then you should review this help center article to find out more about why we would disable an entire account. The rest of this post will deal with what to do if you receive a site disabling notification.

The first step is to understand the nature of the violation. For more about the different causes and how we define them, you can visit our Help Center and review our program policies.

In some cases, you may be eligible to appeal. If this is the case, please take note of the following considerations in formulating your appeal:

• Make sure you understand the violation: each time we send a notification we include a snippet explaining the violation. If you still have questions following this, our Help Center contains a variety of information on program policies. We also encourage you to seek advice in our Forum - our Top Contributors have a lot of policy knowledge.
• Check your entire site: with each notification we send you a URL as an example of the violation. Keep in mind that this is only an example, the violation may be present on other pages on your site, and we expect you to take appropriate action throughout your entire site. In many cases publishers have found Google’s search operators, specifically the “site:” operator, to come in handy, particularly for content violations.
• Be thorough: we understand that AdSense means a lot to you, and having ad serving disabled may cost you revenue. Take your time when filing your appeal and look through your entire site. Writing a thorough appeal is more important than filing an appeal quickly.
• Tell us how you ensure that this won't happen again: if you were notified about a content violation, tell us what systems you have put in place to ensure that content violating our program policies won't be placed alongside AdSense ads again. Webmasters with large websites might talk about updating filters or hiring human reviewers, while blog owners may tell us that they have familiarized themselves with our adult content policy better, and ensure not to post certain type pictures again.
• Send us examples: were you notified for content violations? In that case send us some example URLs where you removed AdSense ads from. Were you notified because of ad implementation issues? Send us an example URL with your improved implementation - for some cases we will require pages with AdSense ad code implemented, even though ad serving is disabled.
• Err on the side of caution: you may disagree with our decision to disable ad serving to your site, but keep in mind that our policies exist to protect the entire network of users, advertisers and publishers.

We know that your sites are important to you. Please understand that we don't take these decisions lightly. For more information on appeals best practices, take a look at this help center article.

Posted by Dan Zilic - AdSense Team
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New controls and transparency in the Ad review center

Publishers often tell us that they would value more information on the ads displayed on their sites, along with greater control over which ads are displayed. The Ad review center is a key tool for publishers giving you the option to review individual ads and choose whether to let those ads show on your pages.

To further increase transparency and control, we’re happy to announce that we’ve launched several enhancements to the Ad review center, improving overall usability and giving you better insights into the ads shown on your site.

First, the Ad review center now includes an impressions-based progress bar, which shows you the total coverage of the ads you have reviewed so far. This new feature tells you the percentage of ads you have reviewed relative to the total impressions on your site. For example, if the bar reads 79% you have already reviewed ads that total 79% of your impressions.

Next, you now have more access to information on a specific ad simply by hovering over the creative and clicking on the magnifying glass in the bottom right corner. You can preview the landing page of an ad to learn about the user experience and we have also added additional information such as the time remaining before an ad in the ‘upcoming ads’ queue is auto-approved, advertiser and ad network details plus the duration of video ads.

Finally, publishers can now review and block visually similar ads by simply uploading a screenshot or logo, or searching for text in images, thanks to the integration of Google image search technology into the Ad review center. Try out these new features in our Ad review center and share your feedback on our AdSense+ page.

Posted by Fiona Herring - AdSense Product Manager
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10 for 10 publisher stories: El Androide Libre moves its business forward

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. 

Madrid-based elandroidelibre.com (“the free Android”) is a Spanish-language blog that features news, reviews, games and other apps for Android smartphone users. Launched in 2009, it now employs six people and receives 6.5 million visits each month.

Administrator and editor Paolo Álvarez got started with AdSense right from the start, which has accounted for around 40 percent of the site’s income. “Much of elandroidelibre’s growth is due to AdSense,” Paolo says. “We regard it as an essential tool that’s helping us to set up more blogs, take on more staff, and earn more revenue.” So far, he’s been highly satisfied with the ads appearing on his site, and notes that the 300 x 250 Medium Rectangle and the 728 x 90 Leaderboard formats work particularly well.

Paolo also uses other Google products to manage the site. He relies on Analytics to gain a better understanding of the site’s visitors, and also DoubleClick for Publishers, Google’s free ad serving solution, to manage his online advertising more effectively and segment traffic from different countries.

Hear more from Paolo in the full case study. We’ll see you next week for our next ‘10 for 10’ publisher success story as we continue counting down to AdSense’s 10th anniversary.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

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Policy refresher: family-safe content

For our next installment of our policy refresher series, we’re talking about a topic we’re frequently asked about...adult content and keeping AdSense family-safe.

We’ve made a commitment to our users, advertisers and publishers to keep the AdSense network family-safe.  A general rule of thumb when it comes to the adult content policy is: if you wouldn’t want to share this content at a family dinner or view it in your boss’s office, you shouldn’t place AdSense code on it.

Let’s take a closer look at our adult content policy:



Still have questions? Don’t forget that we’ll be hosting a number of Hangouts on Air as part of our policy refreshers series.

Check the schedule below to sign up for our Hangout on Air about adult content.

View our Hangouts schedule

Posted by Pamela Malone - AdSense Policy Team
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Updates to our ‘Modifying Ad Code’ Policy

Web trends and technology demand that your site evolves quickly to maintain a growing user base. We’ve heard your questions and feedback on areas like responsive design, and we’re happy to let you know that we’ve updated our existing guidelines around modifying the AdSense ad code. We hope that this increased flexibility will help you continue enhancing the user experience on your site.

Going forward, we will permit publishers to make modifications to the AdSense ad code so long as those modifications do not artificially inflate ad performance or harm advertisers and otherwise comply with our Terms and Conditions and program policies. This will enable you to try a range of techniques on your site such as:

• Responsive design: Enabling publishers to create a single webpage that will adapt to the device on which it’s being viewed, whether it’s a laptop, smartphone or tablet, to maximize user experience.
• A/B testing: Running a test by creating multiple versions of a page, comparing user behavior to see which page is the most effective.
• Setting custom channels dynamically: Tracking performance of segments of users, sections of your site, or other behavior to maximize ad and user experience.
• Ad tag minification: Enabling your site pages to load faster by reducing the amount of data to be transferred.

For more details and to find the specific code snippets related to the bullets above, visit our updated Help Center article.

Even with this new flexibility, it’s important to proceed with caution to ensure the ecosystem remains balanced for publishers, users and advertisers. Please note that publishers must not make modifications to the AdSense code if those modifications are not permitted by our program policies. Publishers should always use caution when modifying the AdSense code and must not use techniques like hiding ad units, implementing the AdSense code in a way that covers content, creating ‘floating ads’, or manipulating ad targeting as they are a violation of our policies. More information about these types of prohibited techniques can be found in our updated Help Center article. In addition, please be aware that some types of code modification may prevent ads from appearing correctly, which may negatively impact your revenue.

We also look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions on our AdSense +page.

Posted By Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager
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Explore the Future of Digital Marketing with Google and Industry Executives on June 4th

On Tuesday, June 4th we’ll host our annual digital leadership summit, thinkDoubleClick, with provocative conversations about the future of digital marketing and media, and you’re invited to join via live stream by registering here!

Hear executives from advertising, agencies and publishers discuss some of the big questions in digital such as:

• How do creatives leverage, but not be overwhelmed by, technology to deliver next-generation consumer experiences?
• What unique experiences are publishers developing that add value to consumers and advertisers alike?
• How do CMOs best use social with other marketing channels to build strong brands?  

The full agenda for the thinkDoubleClick event is listed below.  You can join in the conversation on June 4 by using the #thinkDCLK hash and commenting during the live stream at www.youtube.com/doubleclick.

Register here for the thinkDoubleClick summit
June 4, 2013
9 am - 12:15 PDT

9:00 - 9:30 am	Connecting Digital, Accelerating Growth Neal Mohan, VP Display Advertising, Google
9:30 - 10:00 am	The Coca-Cola Company's Liquid & Linked Marketing: How a 127-year-old company is pivoting for success in a real-time, socially-connected world The Coca-Cola Company sells over 500 brands in 207 countries, with over 700,000 System associates and 1.8B+ servings of their beverages everyday.  Hear insights and lessons learned on how the world's most valuable brand is remaining relevant by becoming more connected, transparent and nimble in real-time. Wendy Clark, Senior Vice President, Integrated Marketing Communications and Capabilities, Coca-Cola
10:00 - 10:35 am	Advertisers Must be Inventors This year, Volkswagen and Deutsch LA partnered with Google to work on a briefto re-imagine how to build a stronger, bigger community around its brand.  In today’s connected world, telling stories alone isn’t enough; we need to create tangible value and utility to bring the brand’s promise to life. In this session the creative team from Deutsch LA will be talking about the process for developing more rewarding and shareable experience. Winston Binch, Partner/Chief, Digital Creative Officer, Deutsch LA David Kim, Group Creative Director, Deutsch LA
10:35 - 11:15 am	Time to Rethink the Marketing Mix? Emerging trends in digital marketing -- including new ad formats, the rise of social media, and proliferation of channels -- are creating new challenges and opportunities for brand marketers. What are the key trends marketers should be concerned about -- and how should they respond? AdAge deputy editor Michael Learmonth poses the hard questions in an executive dialogue on what’s next for brand marketing. Fireside chat with: Michael Learmonth, Deputy Managing Editor, Advertising Age Lorraine Twohill, VP, Global Marketing, Google Jonathan Nelson, CEO, Omnicom Digital
11:15 am - 12: 15 pm	New and Native: Extending the Conversation Technology has had a profound impact on the media industry. This disruption, though, has brought along significant opportunities for creative publishers to thrive. In this session we’re bringing in three executives to show how they’ve leveraged the digital revolution to deliver more engaging content and differentiated solutions to advertisers. Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau (provocateur) Jim Lanzone, President, CBS Interactive Peter Horan, President & Chief Operating Officer, Answers Meredith Kopit Levien, Group Publisher & Chief Revenue Officer, Forbes Media

We look forward to seeing you on June 4th at thinkDoubleClick.

Posted by Yamini Gupta - Product Marketing Manager
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Introducing the revamped Google Publisher Toolbar

Over 234,000 of you have installed the Google Publisher Toolbar since it launched early last year. The Toolbar is a Chrome extension that gives you up-to-date information on your AdSense account such as earnings and performance and access to ad overlays that offer reporting and blocking controls directly on your site.

We’ve spent a lot of time looking at ways to further enhance this tool to give you richer functionality and more control over the ads displayed on your site. Today, with your feedback, we’re happy to share the revamped Google Publisher Toolbar.

The Google Publisher Toolbar will continue to include the same popular functionality as before in addition to a new feedback mechanism and blocking capabilities.

The new user interface makes detailed and up-to-date information on your account instantly accessible and includes the following features:

• Pop-up account overview: Giving you quick access to your estimated account earnings summary for today, yesterday, this month and last month as well as information on your top 5 channels or sites by revenue over a variety of date ranges.
• Ad Details: Giving you detailed information and full insight into a specific impression including buyer and advertiser details, the creative associated with the current view and now includes the ability to block the ad by buyer.
• Feedback box: You can now share your feedback directly with Google through our new feedback box embedded in the user interface.

As always, please be assured that clicking the ad overlays generated by the toolbar is permitted, and won’t generate any invalid clicks. If you haven’t already installed the Toolbar, you can download it from the Chrome Web Store. If you’re already using the Toolbar, no action is needed on your part as it’ll automatically update with the revamped version. Tell us what you think of the revamped Toolbar on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Fiona Herring - AdSense Product Manager
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10 for 10 publisher stories: Sportonline.de’s winning approach

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. 

While managing a number of technology-related websites, Matthias Sandner and two colleagues decided to create a new site to address one of their shared passions: soccer. They brought this vision to life in 2011 with the launch of German site Sportonline.de, which they now run with a small team of employees. Matthias had been an AdSense publisher since 2007, so implementing AdSense on Sportonline.de was one of the first things he did on the site.


(To enable captions in a number of languages, click on the ‘Captions’ link in the bottom right corner of the YouTube player once the video starts playing.)

AdSense currently generates between 50 and 60 percent of Sportonline.de’s total advertising revenue, and has helped financially support the new site. Matthias has found that the 728 x 90 Leaderboard with both text and image ads enabled performs the best on his site. Since Sportonline.de is still new and growing, the team mainly invests the AdSense earnings into new content and employees. “Not only does AdSense offer a convincing performance,” says Matthias, “but it’s also clear and easy to use.” As a result, the team can focus on developing the website rather than devoting time to selling ads.

Matthias has been happy about the performance of AdSense, and is currently working to continue growing the user base and revenue from the site. He makes uses of other Google products like Analytics, which provides insights to help the team continue improving the site. In addition, Sportonline.de has already developed a large following on Google+, where the team shares content and interacts with over 35,000 fans.

For more on Sportonline.de’s start-up success, read the full story. Join us here again next Tuesday for another inspirational publisher story, and feel free to share your comments on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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Join our Policy Refreshers

In order to help you better understand our policies, we’ll be holding a series of policy refreshers online in the coming weeks. We’ll discuss the policies we’re asked about most, explain how we enforce them and share tips on how to stay compliant.

In this series, we’ll review:

• Our general policies
• How to keep your content family- safe
• How to ensure your ad placements are policy compliant 

Check the schedule below to sign up for our Hangouts on Air, and look out for more blog posts on AdSense policies in the coming weeks.

View our Hangouts schedule

Posted by Pamela Malone - AdSense Policy Specialist
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Doing more with the reporting dimensions in your account

The performance reports in your AdSense account are key to understanding your earnings and to identifying optimization opportunities. We’re continuously reviewing your feedback in order to improve the reporting functionality for you. Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of two new, long-awaited features that provide you with a more detailed segmentation of traffic in your reports.

Combining different reporting dimensions
The Countries report shows your performance broken down by the country of users who engaged with the ads on your pages. In addition to viewing a country breakdown for reports by ad type, bid type, and targeting type, you’ll now also be able to see a Countries report when viewing the reporting dimensions URL channel, custom channel, and ad unit. This will allow you to segment your traffic further and get a better understanding of your account performance in different locations.

Please note that the country breakdown of reports by URL channel, custom channel, and ad unit will only be available for reports with date ranges starting March 9th and later.

Introducing a new reporting dimension
In order to help you get more granular insights into your performance on a site level, we’re introducing a new reporting type for Owned sites. “Owned” sites are all sites specified as owned in the site management feature, and the new reporting dimension for Owned sites will be a subset of the Sites report. In contrast to the Sites report, however, you’ll be able to combine the Owned sites report with the Countries report. This will allow you to segment your traffic in more detail and understand the performance of your sites across different countries

Please note that historical data in Owned sites reports will be available from the date that a site was added or claimed as “owned”. You’ll only be able to view country breakdowns for Owned sites for reports with date ranges starting March 22nd 2011 or later. If a site is removed from the “Owned” sites list, it will no longer show in the report.

We hope that the improvements to our reporting features will help you better segment and understand where your users are coming from and whether there are performance differences across different countries.  You can also use this information to isolate potential invalid activity. Unexpected use can be a sign that you are receiving potential invalid activity. Please share your feedback on our AdSense+page and let us know what you found out thanks to these new functionalities.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager
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10 for 10 publisher stories: Expat blog expands horizons and its business

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. 

After finding few sites devoted to expats around the world, in 2005 Julien Faliu decided to launch a community platform for that audience. An expat himself, Julien has since grown his site into a company based in Mauritius that now employs 15 members of staff. Expat blog receives 12 million pageviews per month and is now available in four languages.

Julien initially turned to AdSense as a way to cover the costs of running his website, but as his revenue increased, he decided to focus on advertising. Today, Julien is responsible for all of the advertising space on the site. “At the start, AdSense allowed me to get my website set up by covering my costs,” Julien says. “Now, I can truly say that AdSense has enabled me to grow and recruit staff.”

Beyond AdSense, Julien also uses a number of other Google tools to continue developing his business. For instance, Analytics enables him to view his site’s growth, and DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business helps him manage all of the advertising on the site.

What’s next for Expat blog? Julien and his team are currently developing a strategy to monetize their mobile site, and looking towards bringing private investors on board to fund the next stage of growth.

For more details about Julien’s success with Expat blog, be sure to read the full story. We’ll be back again next Tuesday to introduce you to another AdSense publisher.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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AdSense now speaks Vietnamese

The Google AdSense team is pleased to announce the official launch of Vietnamese language support for AdSense for content.

Why Vietnamese language is important to Google
Vietnam is one of the fastest growing online markets in the world, with huge potential ahead. The online landscape has evolved rapidly in the last few years, becoming as vibrant and colorful as the streets of Hanoi.

We hope that introducing Vietnamese language support will help fuel even more great quality content creation, while helping advertisers reach out to a booming online user base through display ads.

How to get started

1. Please start by familiarizing yourself with the AdSense program policies. Need a refresher? Update your understanding of the policies by taking this AdSense policy quiz.
     
2. Sign up for an Adsense account by enrolling your Vietnamese language website.
     
3. Once your AdSense account has been approved, congratulations, simply add the AdSense code to your site to start displaying relevant, contextually targeted ads.

Chào mừng đến với chương trình adsense!

Posted by Emanuele Brandi - Product Sales Lead
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10 for 10 publisher stories: Canal Sur thrives with digital tools

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.

Seville’s Radio y Televisión de Andalucía (RTVA) broadcasts TV and radio programs online as well as the news via its website, Canal Sur. The site, which employs 18 people and receives about 6.5 million visits a month, joined the AdSense program four years ago. According to Antonio Manfredi, Director of Interactive Media at RTVA, “the economic crisis affected us like the rest of the media throughout Spain, so we decided to look for new ways to improve. We realized that AdSense was the simplest and most profitable option.”

(To enable captions in a number of languages, click on the ‘Captions’ link in the bottom right corner of the YouTube player once the video starts playing.)

Since joining AdSense, total global advertising revenue has increased by 40 percent, and AdSense has played a major part in making the website profitable. Looking ahead, the company is planning to work more closely with YouTube and to improve its TV-on-demand services.

Read the full case study to learn more about Canal Sur’s experience with AdSense. We look forward to seeing you next week for the second half of our ‘10 for 10’ series!

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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Increasing the accuracy of AdSense reporting

We know many of our publishers use multiple Google products on a regular basis, and one of our top priorities is to ensure that each interaction across our products provides a seamless experience. To better align the way we report performance across all of our publisher products and ensure accuracy, we’re updating the way certain data is shown in AdSense accounts.

As you may know, your earnings at the end of each month currently reflect the amount you've earned less any deductions for invalid activity. This is a step we’ve always taken to ensure advertisers are not charged for such activity. Until now, however, clicks and impressions associated with this activity still appeared in AdSense performance reports. Starting May 1st, we'll remove those associated clicks and impressions to address this discrepancy and provide you with the most accurate reporting.

So what does this mean for your AdSense account? First and foremost, this change will not impact your earnings in any way. In most cases, removing the invalid activity from your reports means you can expect to see a slight decrease in clicks and impressions, causing a slight increase in CPC (cost-per-click) and RPM (revenue per thousand impressions). The clicks and impressions that we’ll no longer show in reports include activity like accidental clicks, so metrics like your CTR (clickthrough rate) will more accurately reflect your site's performance. You might also see a more noticeable difference in your AdSense reporting when compared with your own account statistics measured through other tools. Please note that this change won’t affect the way we screen for invalid activity.

As a reminder, we encourage you to keep up to date on ways that you can monitor your website for such activity – we have a lot of resources in our Help Center covering this topic. Finally, note that reports for dates prior to May 1st will be unaffected.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager
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