To all of our U.S. publishers, we wish you a happy 4th of July! This weekend, take a chance to celebrate your liberty in patriotic (and AdSense-friendly) fashion. Exercise your first amendment right to freedom of expression by creating more of the rich, wonderful content that makes the web such a special place. Or, work on achieving future financial freedom by implementing a few of our optimization tips.
You might also want to take a note from the Declaration of Independence and pursue your unalienable right to happiness! Our reporting options make it possible to unchain yourself from your computer, so get out there and enjoy the summer weather (the right to bare arms?), fireworks, long evenings, and BBQs...because suffering from G.A.S.S. would be cruel and unusual punishment indeed.
(Oh, and one last thing: the AdSense Support team will be out enjoying our freedom over the holiday as well, so it may take longer than usual for us to reply to your emails. We'll be back in the office on Wednesday, but in the meantime you might prefer to turn to our Help Center, or Help Discussion Groups for assistance instead).
Friday, 30 June 2006
On the ball
Like many of you, we have "World Cup fever" and wanted to feature a publisher who is successfully using AdSense on a football (that's 'soccer' to all our American readers) site. We asked Ralf Möbius of Fussballportal.de about his experiences with AdSense:
Can you tell us briefly about how your portal got started?
Fussballportal.de was launched in August 2004 as an addition and alternative to those football sites that were already successful and established on the net. Over the last 2 years, we've built a following in the competitive area of football sites.
Why did you decide to use AdSense?
Online marketers often aren't able to fully book-out existing ad space. Therefore, AdSense is a great alternative to increase a website's revenue. Since ads are relevant to the content of your pages, AdSense provides a meaningful addition for content-rich sites with loyal visitors. You also don't have to deal with acquiring and maintaining relationships with advertisers, which can be time-consuming.
What is your most important optimization tip for AdSense publishers?
Try to blend your ads by removing the border and using the same color as the background of your page. With this simple measure you can avoid ad blindness and also considerably boost your revenue.
Does the World Cup have any effects on your AdSense stats?
With the world here on our doorstep in Germany, we've seen very positive effects since we always provide up-to-date content, interactive games for our users, special features and services surrounding the World Cup.
Who is going to win the World Cup?
Brazil. The "ball artists", behind coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, will improve their performance from game-to-game like they already proved they can do at the Confederations Cup 2005 in Germany, and they'll be at their best by the semi-finals and finals.
Can you tell us briefly about how your portal got started?
Fussballportal.de was launched in August 2004 as an addition and alternative to those football sites that were already successful and established on the net. Over the last 2 years, we've built a following in the competitive area of football sites.
Why did you decide to use AdSense?
Online marketers often aren't able to fully book-out existing ad space. Therefore, AdSense is a great alternative to increase a website's revenue. Since ads are relevant to the content of your pages, AdSense provides a meaningful addition for content-rich sites with loyal visitors. You also don't have to deal with acquiring and maintaining relationships with advertisers, which can be time-consuming.
What is your most important optimization tip for AdSense publishers?
Try to blend your ads by removing the border and using the same color as the background of your page. With this simple measure you can avoid ad blindness and also considerably boost your revenue.
Does the World Cup have any effects on your AdSense stats?
With the world here on our doorstep in Germany, we've seen very positive effects since we always provide up-to-date content, interactive games for our users, special features and services surrounding the World Cup.
Who is going to win the World Cup?
Brazil. The "ball artists", behind coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, will improve their performance from game-to-game like they already proved they can do at the Confederations Cup 2005 in Germany, and they'll be at their best by the semi-finals and finals.
Thursday, 29 June 2006
Have a track attack with new referral channels
We've added the option to assign channels to your referral units. Now, when you're generating the code for any referral unit, you can specify a channel to track the performance of that specific referral unit.
You can use the more detailed channel reporting to track anything from whether text or button referral formats perform better, to whether Firefox referrals are more successful on your product pages or your news pages. Channels will help you experiment to find out what's most effective in referring users from your site.
With the addition of channels for the referrals feature, now might be a good time to brush up on your channel expertise by reviewing our channel guide.
You can use the more detailed channel reporting to track anything from whether text or button referral formats perform better, to whether Firefox referrals are more successful on your product pages or your news pages. Channels will help you experiment to find out what's most effective in referring users from your site.
With the addition of channels for the referrals feature, now might be a good time to brush up on your channel expertise by reviewing our channel guide.
Tuesday, 27 June 2006
Do you see video ads in your future?
Terri Wild from thecarconnection.com was one of the first publishers to beta test click-to-play video ads on her site.
When Wild participated in the beta test, video ads were only supported for the 300x250 Medium Rectangle ad format, so she had to switch to Medium Rectangles from the Squares she'd previously been displaying on her site. (Video ads are now supported by Large Rectangles and Squares as well).
When video ads began to appear on her site, Wild had a positive first impression.
"The quality of the video was good," explained Wild. "It was unobtrusive and complemented the site well. It was the only video content we offered so it was not lost amongst clutter. I knew since it was coming from Google it would be the highest quality visually and technically."
Not only did Wild see a revenue gain from the click-to-play video campaign itself, but switching to the larger Medium Rectangle format resulted in an additional jump in clickthrough rate and a 42% increase in eCPM.
"The AdSense team's research is excellent and they understand how to integrate ads without intruding on the user's experience," said Wild. "All of their recommendations regarding ad size and placement have resulted in significant increases. In fact, our revenues are six times higher than they were a year ago when we had limited Google text ads!"
Wild says she would be excited about showing more click-to-play video ads in the future.
Got an interesting video ads story? Email us. Your valuable feedback allows us to further improve our product for all our publishers. Want to beta test one of our upcoming products? Let us know and we'll keep you in mind.
When Wild participated in the beta test, video ads were only supported for the 300x250 Medium Rectangle ad format, so she had to switch to Medium Rectangles from the Squares she'd previously been displaying on her site. (Video ads are now supported by Large Rectangles and Squares as well).
When video ads began to appear on her site, Wild had a positive first impression.
"The quality of the video was good," explained Wild. "It was unobtrusive and complemented the site well. It was the only video content we offered so it was not lost amongst clutter. I knew since it was coming from Google it would be the highest quality visually and technically."
Not only did Wild see a revenue gain from the click-to-play video campaign itself, but switching to the larger Medium Rectangle format resulted in an additional jump in clickthrough rate and a 42% increase in eCPM.
"The AdSense team's research is excellent and they understand how to integrate ads without intruding on the user's experience," said Wild. "All of their recommendations regarding ad size and placement have resulted in significant increases. In fact, our revenues are six times higher than they were a year ago when we had limited Google text ads!"
Wild says she would be excited about showing more click-to-play video ads in the future.
Got an interesting video ads story? Email us. Your valuable feedback allows us to further improve our product for all our publishers. Want to beta test one of our upcoming products? Let us know and we'll keep you in mind.
Friday, 23 June 2006
System maintenance on Saturday, June 24, at 10:00am PDT
We'll be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday, June 24, at 10:00am PDT. During this time, you may not be able to access your account. However, as always your Google ads will continue to display, and stats and earnings will continue to accrue in your account.
Thanks for your patience!
Thanks for your patience!
Tuesday, 20 June 2006
Video mailbag: Theresa Chow answers your questions
Theresa discusses the following:
1. How many Google AdSense products can I use in each website?
2. How do I get rid of an ad that I don't want on my site? I have some disagreements with it.
3. In case we would like to add other websites, do we need to create another AdSense account?
UPDATED to provide summary of content
Inside AdSense goes video
We AdSense Googlers all have some sort of passion, like Mike's bike riding or Rob's prolific blog reading. Physical effort not being my forte, and suffering from the attention span deficit noteworthy of my generation, I think my fascination with film is easily explained. How can anyone beat sitting in a comfy chair watching images flicker by, full of sound and fury (usually signifying nothing)?
Thus, I am excited to present our first video mailbag post, conceived, directed, filmed, and edited by yours truly with help from some wonderful folks. We're still a bit short on special effects, and I don't think I'll be invited to any upcoming Oscars, but hopefully this will answer one or two questions while letting you see who we are.
Let us know how you like it. If you want your question to be featured on Inside AdSense in the future, email it to us along with a photo of yourself. I can't guarantee we'll be able to use it, but if we do, I can make a star out of anyone!
Thus, I am excited to present our first video mailbag post, conceived, directed, filmed, and edited by yours truly with help from some wonderful folks. We're still a bit short on special effects, and I don't think I'll be invited to any upcoming Oscars, but hopefully this will answer one or two questions while letting you see who we are.
Let us know how you like it. If you want your question to be featured on Inside AdSense in the future, email it to us along with a photo of yourself. I can't guarantee we'll be able to use it, but if we do, I can make a star out of anyone!
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