Introducing ad styles: an enhanced feature replacing color palettes

Introducing ad styles: an enhanced feature replacing color palettes

Thursday, October 13, 2011 | 8:35:00 AM

Labels: New AdSense Interface

If you’ve been following our announcements in the last few weeks, you know we’ve been committed to bringing you features that you’ve been missing from the old AdSense interface. We’re now launching another long-requested feature: ad styles. Ad styles extend and enhance all of the functionality of our old color palettes. With ad styles, you can create customized combinations of colors, fonts, and corner styles and then easily apply these to the ad units and search engines across your site.

The best part about ad styles is that when you edit an ad style in the new interface, any ad units or search engines that are using this style will automatically be updated with your changes. So if you want to test a new color for the ad units on your site to see how it performs, you can create a new ad style and apply it to some of your ad units. If it performs well you can then apply it to all of the ad units in your account or revert back to your old colors just as easily. We think this feature will save you time by eliminating the need to re-assign the colors to each ad unit individually.

To create a new ad style, visit the ‘My ads’ tab. Click ‘Ad styles’ in the navigation bar and then the ‘+New’ button. You can then assign existing ad styles to your ad units during the ad unit creation process.

Posted by Jessica Hummel - AdSense Engineering

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A fresh face for link units

Monday, October 10, 2011 | 9:35:00 AM

Labels: AdSense features

If you're using link units, you know that they're a great way to earn additional revenue from the smaller spaces on your site. We've made a few updates to this ad type in the past, but today, we're giving link units a well-deserved facelift. We decided that it was time to reevaluate the layout of the link unit and the landing page in order to give this ad type both a modern look and a great performance boost. Here’s an overview of what’s changing.

The link unit
We’ve heard feedback from publishers that it isn’t clear why they should choose to show four versus five terms in their link units. Most people pick one of these options by guessing the expected performance. We’ve actually found that link units with four terms almost always perform better than five. As a result, we’re reducing the number of topics in all link units to four for horizontal orientations and three for vertical orientations. If you’re currently using link units, this change will happen automatically. We’re also slightly increasing spacing between and font size of each term.













The ad page
Following the general makeover of Google pages, we’re giving link unit landing pages a fresh look as well. The color scheme, orientation, fonts, and number of ads are being updated to the following:


We’ll continue to work on improving link units and hope to share more exciting news soon! In the meantime, we recommend viewing this video to learn how to utilize link units.

Posted by William Chang - AdSense Engineering


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Two more reporting enhancements to help you deep dive into your AdSense earnings

Thursday, October 06, 2011 | 8:50:00 AM

Labels: New AdSense Interface

In the last weeks, we’ve continued to iterate and improve the features in the Performance reports tab to give you as many tools as possible to understand your earnings. We are especially focusing on improvements that allow you to understand the cause of revenue fluctuations and where your earnings are coming from. With these goals in mind, we’re excited to announce two new developments for all publishers:

Event history

You can now see small flags on your reporting graphs, which note actions you’ve taken that might have influenced your earnings. For instance, if you blocked a category of ads from your pages last Tuesday and then created a new leaderboard the next day, you’ll see these two actions marked in your reports as well as details of the actions shown under the graph. Try the feature out by visiting the Performance reports tab, and clicking the ‘Events’ button just below the date range selector.


Tablets earnings included in the Platform report

Back in July we launched the Platforms report so you could analyze your earnings based on the type of device your visitors used to access your site. Now, you’ll be able to view your earnings from users on tablet devices. These earnings were previously included under high-end mobile earnings but given the market trends towards mobile and tablet devices, we wanted to provide you with additional granularity in this report. If you notice a significant amount of your earnings coming from mobile and/or tablet devices, we recommend optimizing your site and ads for mobile users.


Leave us a comment and let us know what you think about these new features!

Posted by Louis Collard - AdSense Engineering

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Test your knowledge with the AdSense Academy

Wednesday, October 05, 2011 | 10:00:00 AM

Labels: Newbie , Optimization

Whether you’re new to AdSense or have been using it for years, the AdSense Academy can help you successfully run your AdSense account by following six step-by-step learning modules. The Academy provides best practices on everything from implementing your ad units to building your traffic to controlling your ads.

The AdSense Academy includes checklists, videos and quizzes that you can take at the end of each module to test your knowledge.


Join the Academy Now!


Please feel free to provide any feedback by commenting on this post or on the AdSense Forum.


Posted by Thomas Tran - Inside AdSense Team

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Prepare for the upcoming holiday season with placement targeting

Monday, October 03, 2011 | 9:10:00 AM

Labels: AdSense features , Optimization

With the holidays right around the corner, premium brand-name AdWords advertisers are preparing for the season by increasing their marketing budgets and scheduling targeted campaigns. You can prepare too by taking advantage of placement targeting to allow advertisers to directly target your site.

While all sites are eligible for placement targeting, there are things you can do to help increase the amount of placement targeted ads on your site. First, turn your custom channels into ad placements. Be sure to fill out a well-written title and description to help potential advertisers understand the audiences they’ll reach by bidding on your site. Some details to include in the description are your site name, vertical, ad position, ad size and site demographic.

Next, ensure you are using our most successful ad units and are placing them in optimal positions. Finally, claim your site in Ad Planner. Following these steps will help advertisers find your site to target and choose where to place their ads on a specific section or area. Placement targeted ads typically receive much higher RPMs, which results in higher earnings for you.

Creating targeted channels is easy and a great way to earn extra revenue, but it takes time for them to show up for advertisers, so act soon! Just follow the instructions in our Help Center. Once you've made the changes, not only will your ads be ready for this holiday season, but they'll also be targetable by advertisers for every premium campaign in the future.

Posted by Jamie Firkus, Inside AdSense team

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Continuing the AdSense in Your City journey

Thursday, September 29, 2011 | 10:15:00 AM

Labels: AdSense In Your City



The AdSense in Your City optimization team was back on the road again and recently hosted over 40 publishers in Walnut Creek, CA. Publishers in attendance learned about top optimization tips, our DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business product and the Google +1 button. Each publisher also received a 1:1 optimization session with one of our specialists.

One publisher shared his thoughts on the experience he had:
“I traveled [for] hours to attend this event and found it well worth it. The presentation was great and the one on one session was invaluable. Also, networking with other content publishers at the event added even more value to the experience. A must attend for anyone looking to optimize their websites and increase AdSense revenue.”

If you’d like to attend an event, we’re heading to Kansas City, MO next week and there are still a few spots open. We’ll also be going to Chicago, IL and Las Vegas, NV in the coming weeks. If you’re interested in learning more about AdSense optimization and meeting our team, please fill out our interest form.


We asked publishers to share what AdSense has given them.

Thanks to all of our publishers who came to Walnut Creek. We had a great time working with you and hearing your AdSense stories.

Posted by Courtney Yamada, AdSense Optimization Team

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Gold Star Partner Showcase

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 | 11:25:00 AM

Labels: Case studies , Other

Over the past month, we highlighted homebuyinginstitute.com and govisitcostarica.com as the first two AdSense publishers in the Gold Star Partnership Showcase. To recap, the showcase is an opportunity for us to publicly recognize some of our AdSense partners.

We asked publishers to submit their sites for consideration if they clearly demonstrate the following:

* Exhibit original, engaging and useful content for users
* Adhere to AdSense policies
* Test and try new ways to optimize AdSense ad placements

Today we'd like to highlight Max Levitte, founder of cheapism.com:

Name: Max Levitte
Site: Cheapism.com
Vertical: Shopping
AdSense Partner for: 5+ years


Tell us about your site:
Called by The New York Times ‘a Consumer Reports for the cheap’, Cheapism.com is a budget-products review site, serving consumers who can only afford/wish to buy inexpensive products, but still want the best value for their money. Cheapism is the only review site that focuses exclusively on low-price products, a part of the market that is rarely reviewed by the experts.

What we do at Cheapism is research the low price products and services in various categories and then create a thorough buying guide on how to buy budget products in that category. Our editorial process involves defining the low-price range for each category, identifying must have features, summarizing key performance attributes, and then analyzing relevant reviews and recommending the best budget buys and what to avoid. We follow strict journalistic editorial guidelines when creating our content and take great pride in our articles.

What makes cheapism.com a great AdSense publisher?
We implement AdSense in a non intrusive way yet generate high eCPMs. We also manage to generate a significant amount of our AdSense revenue from a link unit.

Why do you love AdSense?
Because it targets exactly what our visitors are looking for.
Because it saves us from having to deal with advertisers.
Because it generates most of our revenue.
Finally, thank you again to everyone who submitted their sites for consideration!

Posted by Julia Riley, AdSense Partnerships

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Meeting and collaborating with our Help Forum Top Contributors

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 | 8:50:00 AM

Labels: AdSense Team , Other

A couple weeks ago, 32 AdSense Help Forum Top Contributors (TCs) from around the world came to our Mountain View headquarters for a two-day summit, along with almost 300 other product TCs. If you participate in our Help Forum, you've probably noticed the very visible presence of our TCs, who lead product discussions and help answer questions. During the summit, we spent a bit of time discussing opportunities for further collaboration, the development of the TC program and new ideas for Google Forum Communities.


Here are some fun facts about the AdSense TCs:

* There are 82 AdSense TCs worldwide.
* TCs posted over 100K times in the last 12 months.
* 8 of the TCs have posted more than 10K times in the Forum since they joined. We’d like to give a special mention to PeggyK of our English Help Forum, as she’s contributed an amazing 47,972 posts to date!

Thanks to all of the TCs who were able to join us -- we truly enjoyed meeting everyone face-to-face. We appreciate all of the contributions our TCs make to the AdSense community, and look forward to continued collaboration with them going forward.

Posted by Kateryna Malinovska, AdSense Team

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Enhancing the new AdSense interface and retiring the older version

Monday, September 26, 2011 | 9:05:00 AM

Labels: New AdSense Interface

Over the past months, we’ve been working to improve the new AdSense interface and develop features that provide you with additional insights, control, and efficiency. Beyond the visual redesign, some of the new features only available in the new interface include multi-dimension reporting, reporting by country and platform, and search functionality in the Ad review center.

We’ve also heard your feedback on features from the older interface that you wanted to see in the newer version. In response, we’ve recently rolled out top-requested features like the ability to create scheduled reports and view channels on the Home tab.

While we’ve been investing in new features within the new interface, we’ve also been discussing our plans to move away from the older version. With that in mind, we’ll be retiring the old interface in mid-November. We’re continuing to focus on building new functionality into the new interface, and are excited about the additional improvements we plan to deliver.

If you haven’t already, we recommend switching to the new interface as soon as possible to familiarize yourself with the updated layout and new features. To do so, sign in and click the 'Try the new AdSense interface' link in the upper corner of your account. We understand that this adjustment may take some time, so you'll still be able to toggle back and forth between the two interfaces during the coming weeks. To address a common question we’ve heard, switching to the new interface won’t affect your ad targeting or earnings in any way.


In the meantime, we encourage you to watch our video tutorials, which will guide you through completing common tasks in the new interface. You can also find detailed information in our Help Center for the new interface.

Thanks for all the feedback you’ve provided about the new interface -- please do keep the suggestions coming. We appreciate your patience during this transition, and look forward to continuing to improve the new AdSense interface to meet your needs.

Posted by Allan Livingston - AdSense Product Manager

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Edit and schedule saved reports in the new interface

Friday, September 23, 2011 | 9:00:00 AM

Labels: New AdSense Interface

We’re happy to let you know about a recent improvement to the new AdSense interface, developed based on your requests for additional efficiency when managing your account -- you can now edit and schedule saved reports. This feature allows you to set up custom reports that will be automatically emailed to you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

When viewing a report in your account, you can select the ‘Save report’ button above the graph and select your preferences. If you need to edit the report or change the scheduling settings, just click ‘Manage’ next to the Saved reports section in the navigation bar.


If you’ve been using saved reports in the old interface, please know that we’re working on a tool to help you easily import these saved reports into the new interface. We’ll be sure to let you know when it becomes available -- you’re welcome to re-create them in the meantime, but you may wish to wait for this tool.

We hope with the launch of these features, you’ll be able to better customize the way you analyze and receive information about your ad performance. Let us know what you think!

Posted by Simon Bowden and Louis Collard - AdSense Engineering

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