Google Publisher Toolbar, now integrated with DFP Small Business

Many of you are already using the Google Publisher Toolbar to view your AdSense performance and control your ads. If you also use DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business, we’re pleased to let you know that your DFP account can now also be directly integrated with the Google Publisher Toolbar.

The Toolbar is a Chrome extension that gives you a clear overview of which ads are serving on your site and why, through an overlay for each ad showing which line item and creative was served. You can get more information by clicking on any overlay. When you sign in to the Toolbar, you’ll see complete information on each ad -- regardless of whether AdSense or DFP served the ad.

Please visit our Toolbar Help Center article for further information and support. 

Download the Toolbar and start using it with DFP Small Business today. We're continuing to improve support for DFP in the Toolbar, and are always happy to hear your feedback.

Posted by Ilia Malkovitch - DFP Product Manager

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Introducing custom ad sizes: More ad formats to fit your site

Today, we’re happy to announce the launch of 434,216 new ad unit sizes! Or in other words, we’ve just made it possible to create custom ad sizes to give you more flexibility and enable you to better design your content for your users. 

Custom sized ads behave just like their standard size counterparts, showing a text or display ad depending on which is likely to have the best performance for the impression. 

Text ads

For text ads, we’ll determine the optimal number of text ads to display for a given impression, and show the ads the same way they appear inside standard sizes. Our system predicts the value of each competing ad for every impression, based on historic performance and comparison across a variety of scenarios. For unique ad unit sizes, our system will need some time before it can optimize the number of ads shown. Please see our blog post Understanding the dynamics of the AdSense auction - Part II for more information. Here are three examples of custom-sized ad units displaying text ads:

Display ads

For display ads, our system will determine the appropriate size ad to fit into the space you select; the selected ad will not be larger than the space requested. In the example below, we’ve shown the same three custom sizes as above, but this time with display ads. Please note that the dotted border is only present to show the total size of the ad unit, but won’t actually appear on your pages.

To ensure that ads continue to deliver a positive user experience, we’ve put a few restrictions in place around maximum and minimum pixels for ad sizes. Any custom ad size that falls outside of the restrictions won’t appear on a page. As always, all of your ads must adhere to the AdSense ad placement policies. Remember that users value your content, and that they appreciate a balance of content and ads, knowing that the ads support the content creator. Forcing too many ads into the users viewable screen is not likely to tempt them back to your site.

Ready to get started with custom ad sizes? Create an ad unit in the usual way, select “Custom ad size” from the Ad size drop-down and set the desired width and height for your ad unit in the process. Copy and paste the ad code into the HTML source code of your page where you'd like the ad to appear.

You can also find more information in our Help Center. We’re excited about the possibilities of these new custom ad sizes, and appreciate your ongoing feedback as we continue to improve this offering. Please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions about this update on our Google+ page.

Posted by Omer Gimenez Llach - AdSense Software Engineer & Johan Land - AdSense Product Manager

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Optimizing AdSense revenue using Google Analytics

The most important asset of any publisher is your audience. And the key to growing your audience is to understand it. Google Analytics helps you understand your users better and drive the right strategy to grow a loyal and engaged audience.

Recently Google Analytics launched two important new capabilities for its AdSense integration: AdSense Exits reports and AdSense Revenue as an experiment objective. They both come as a great additions to websites that use AdSense for monetization. In this post I will go over the AdSense Analytics integration and how it can be used to optimize AdSense revenue.

Integrating AdSense and Google Analytics

Before going further into the wonders of the Analytics AdSense marriage, you should first be sure that your accounts are linked properly. Here is how to do it. First follow the steps in the screenshot below after logging into Google Analytics (Admin => AdSense Linking => Link Accounts):

AdSense and Analytics Integration 

You will be sent to your AdSense account in order to confirm the linking and then you will be sent back to Google Analytics to choose which profiles should include this data. If you have any problems or additional questions, take a look at the AdSense Help Center. After the integration is complete the following metrics will be available on your Google Analytics account:

• AdSense revenue: revenue generated by AdSense ads.
• Ads clicked: the number of times AdSense ads were clicked.
• AdSense CTR (clickthrough rate): the percentage of page impressions that resulted in a click on an ad.
• AdSense eCPM: AdSense revenue per 1,000 page impressions.
• AdSense ads viewed: number of ads viewed.
• AdSense Page Impressions: the number of pageviews during which an ad was displayed.

AdSense reports on Google Analytics

Currently, there are 3 out-of-the-box AdSense reports available on Analytics: Pages, Referrers and Exits.

1. AdSense Pages

This report provides information about which pages contributed most to AdSense revenue. It will show each of the pages on the website and how well they performed in terms of AdSense. For each page in the website that contains an AdSense unit we will be able to analyze the following metrics: AdSense revenue, AdSense ads clicked, AdSense CTR, AdSense eCPM, AdSense ads viewed and AdSense page impressions.

This report provides an interesting view of which page performed best, and it can be used to optimize website content. For example, if you find that posts about celebrities generate more revenue than posts about soccer, you might consider writing more about celebrities (if your main objective is to make money on AdSense).

2. AdSense Referrers

This report provides information about the performance of domains that referred visitors who generated AdSense revenue. This information is extremely valuable; however, I suggest using a different report, since it provides more in-depth information: “All Traffic”.

The AdSense Referrers report only displays information about websites that generated AdSense revenue, it does not provide information on other types of traffic sources and campaigns. For this reason, I believe the All Traffic report presents a more complete view. To find the report, go to this page and click on the AdSense tab just above the chart.

3. AdSense Exits

The AdSense Exit report shows the number of sessions that ended due to a user clicking on an AdSense ad. This is an interesting metric as it can show which pages have a "high conversion rate", i.e., the ratio of visits to a page and those that left the website clicking on an AdSense unit through it. If your monetization is made through AdSense this report will give just that: AdSense conversion rate per page.

Optimizing AdSense revenue using Google Analytics

Below is an example of how to use the integration from my Analytics for Publishers eBook. Most websites work with templates and each template may have different AdSense placements; this means that an important analysis would be to compare performance by template (or by category) rather than by page.

In order to analyze template performance, we will need to create one segment per template. If you want to learn more about creating Segments, check this Help Center article. For example, let’s suppose your website has the following page templates:

• Analytics pages with URLs structured as example.com/analytics/...
• Testing pages with URLs structured as example.com/testing/...
• Targeting pages with URLs structured as example.com/targeting/...

In this case you would create three segments using the dimension Page, each containing its unique pattern: /analytics/ for analytics pages, /testing/ for testing pages, and /targeting/ for targeting pages. Below is an example of how the segment would look for the analytics pages:

Analyzing template performance using segments 

After creating the segments for all three templates, you will be able to choose all of them in the top-left corner of the screen (just above the chart, see bubble #1 above) to see a comparison between them. Below is a screenshot showing how such a comparison would look like:

Table comparison metrics for different visitor segments 

In the table above we are able to compare pages by all metrics available. For example, we can see that while the Analytics section has higher revenue, this is related to the number of impressions, which is also significantly higher. When we analyze further, we see that the Testing and Targeting sections have a good potential, with the same CTR but significantly higher AdSense eCPM. Based on these metrics we can understand which templates and content types are the most effective.

As mentioned above, once you find out which pages are performing well and which pages are not, you can use Content Experiments to optimize them. Here is a Content Experiments guide.

Closing thoughts

Here are a few takeaways for you to start optimizing today!

1. Understand which content type and subject generates the highest revenue and create content based on this data.
2. Understand which page templates bring the best results by using advanced segments.
3. Analyze AdSense performance to learn which segments have a good CTR; this might bring insight into which audience to target.

This post was originally posted on the Google Analytics blog. Stay tuned for an upcoming series on the Inside AdSense blog on how to grow your business with Google Analytics insights.

Posted by Daniel Waisberg, Google Analytics team
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Updates to the currency feature in performance reports

We’ve been hearing from many of our publishers around the world that you’d like to have the option to view your performance reports in currencies other than your payment currency. We’re happy to let you know that this is now possible with a new currency feature in your AdSense account. 

This feature can be accessed directly in your account and will allow you to see your performance reports in a variety of currency options.

Please note that when viewing performance reports in a different currency from your payment currency, monetary values might not be completely accurate due to currency fluctuations.  In addition, changing your reporting currency will not affect the currency in which you get paid.

To find out more details about this feature, check out this Help Center article.  

We hope that with the launch of this feature, you'll be able to better understand your ad performance.

Posted by Miki Noda - AdSense Payments Specialist

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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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