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

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*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

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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

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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

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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
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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

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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 

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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
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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
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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

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