AdSense in Your City is coming to Charlotte

In 2010 we kicked off the AdSense in Your City program by visiting and optimizing more than 400 publishers in six different US cities. We loved getting to meet you face to face, and are very excited to head down South this March to provide even more of you with personalized optimization tips!

On Wednesday, March 9, a few of our optimizers will be in Charlotte, North Carolina to hold 20-minute optimization sessions at a local coffee shop between 9:30 am and 4:30 pm. We’re going to keep it casual, so we can provide one-on-one consultations to as many of you as possible.

We’d love to meet you, so please fill out this form if you’ll be in the Charlotte, NC area on March 9 and would like to schedule an appointment with our team. Once we get your RSVP, we'll follow up via email with additional details if there's still room. Scheduling will be done on a first-come, first-served basis, but we’ll do our best to include as many of you as space will allow.

Hope to see you in Charlotte!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit - Inside AdSense team

Help us learn how you create and share your online content

We want to learn more about our publishers, so we've put together a very short survey to help us better understand what types of content you create and how you share it with others.

Please take a few minutes to fill out this survey -- your feedback is important to us, and your input can help us improve AdSense! We really appreciate you taking the time to provide your thoughts. Thank you for participating!

Posted by David Hall - The Inside AdSense team

Understanding your eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions): Part 2 of 2

Two weeks ago, we shared a brief introduction to the basics of eCPM (aka, RPM), including how it’s calculated and what factors impact it. In the Part 1 video, AdSense optimization specialist Matthew Carpenter-Arevalo discusses key variables you can use to better understand eCPM performance, including CTR (clickthrough rate) and CPC (cost per click).

Today, we’ll go a couple steps further and discuss how user behavior impacts eCPM and show you tools that can help you better understand your users’ traffic patterns.

User behavior refers to how users interact with your site. Generally, there are two types of users:

• Return users who continually come back to your site and spend more time engaging with your content
• Unique users who are arriving at your site for the first time in search of specific information that your site may or may not have

It’s important to understand the make-up of your audience, because different types of users will interact in different ways with your website.

To track and analyze user behavior to help you make informed decisions about your site, we recommend integrating Google Analytics with your AdSense account, so you can see data at more specific levels and by regions. We also suggest setting up channels to understand how the ads across specific pages on your site are performing.

In Part 2 of this video series, Matthew explains how user behavior affects eCPM and provides helpful tools to further analyze your site’s traffic patterns. Take a look at the video below to learn more:

Thanks for following our two-part 'Understanding your eCPM' series. We hope you found the content useful, and that you now have a better understanding of the factors that influence your eCPM.

Posted by Meredith Blackwell - Inside AdSense team

New Interface Wednesdays: Chart and change metric feature

Have you ever changed ad formats and wanted to see which actually performed better? Now you can, with the new chart and change metric features. If you've created and saved an ad unit in your account, you'll now be able to do this easily in your ad sizes report.

• Start by visiting the Performance Reports tab and choosing the ad sizes report
• Check the boxes next to each format you want to see and then click the Chart button

This overlays the earnings of both ad formats you've selected so you can compare them on the same graph. You can still toggle the metrics shown on the graph using the radio buttons to the right of it so you can compare CTR, RPM and other metrics that are relevant to you.


Try it now! Navigate to the new interface and click on the Performance Reports tab, and then Ad sizes.

Posted by Guillaume Ryder - AdSense Engineer

Two new optimizations guides: One Click Optimizer and Optimization Lab

We'd like to introduce you to two new optimization guides: the One Click Optimizer and the Optimization Lab.

These guides have been designed to provide you quick and easy-to-implement optimization tips to help you maximize your site’s revenue and performance.

One Click Optimizer

Do you own a news site, a classifieds site, a game site, a forum, or a blog? This guide will give you best practices for ad location specifically for your type of website. Try it now to optimize the placement of your ad units, link units, and search boxes!

Optimization Lab

Would you like to get simple but effective tips to increase your clickthrough rate, boost your impressions or lift your cost per click? The Optimization Lab can help. Our optimization team has put together this guide to help you maximize your revenue as effectively as possible using our best practices.

We hope both of these new resources help you make the most of AdSense.

Posted by Thomas Tran - Inside AdSense team

Understanding your eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions): Part 1 of 2

“What is eCPM? What affects my eCPM? What can I do to earn a higher eCPM?”

Effective cost per thousand impressions (eCPM) is the amount of revenue you can expect to earn from AdSense for every 1000 impressions shown on your site. Since eCPM helps you measure how well your ads are performing, we often hear questions from publishers about the factors that impact this metric and how it relates to their earnings. If you're using the new interface, you'll see that your reports show RPM (revenue per thousand impressions); RPM is just another term for eCPM, and it's calculated the same way, so we use these two terms interchangeably.

To help provide some clarity, we’re kicking off a two-part video series with more insights into how eCPM is calculated in order to help you maximize earnings. With the help of AdSense optimization specialist, Matthew Carpenter Arevalo, we’ll show you the factors that affect eCPM, how to track user behavior and traffic patterns, and what you can do to improve your website performance.

In the video below, Matthew will introduce you to the basics of how eCPM is calculated and explain how to analyze the causes behind any changes in your eCPM.

If you’d like to learn more about eCPMs visit our Help Center.

Stay tuned for Part 2 to learn what you can do to better understand and optimize your website’s eCPM.

Posted by Meredith Blackwell - Inside AdSense team

New Interface Wednesdays: Compare and search performance across multiple date ranges

Have you ever run a test on one of your ad units, and wished you could more easily compare performance from before and after the test? If you've created and saved an ad unit in your account, you'll now find an easy way to do this in your ad units report.

• Start by visiting the Performance Reports tab and choosing the ad units report (you'll find it in the navigation bar under "Entire account by day").
• Search for the name of an ad unit you've updated and select it.
• Open the date range box and set a window of dates before your test -- for example, two weeks.
• Check the box marked "compare to other dates" and include a similar window of dates after you made the change to your ad unit.

In the graph, you'll then see the performance of your ad unit for both date ranges. You can still toggle the metrics shown on the graph using the radio buttons so you can compare CTR, RPM and other metrics that are relevant to you.


Try it now! Navigate to the new interface and click on the Performance Reports tab, and then ad unit report.

Posted by Vincent Zanotti - AdSense Engineer

Display both text and image ads for an easy change with big impact

FunCheapSF.com is an online resource for finding free or affordable events in the San Francisco Bay Area. Founder Johnny Hayes recently shared his site’s story with us and gave some tips on an easy and high impact way that he’s optimized his revenue -- by enabling both text and image/rich media ads.

Inside AdSense: How did FunCheapSF.com come about?
Johnny Hayes: I moved to San Francisco without a job and couldn’t find much work, so I had a lot of time on my hands. I spent my time hunting down cheap and free things to do in the city and, starting in 2003, began emailing my friends with a weekly list of activities. More friends found out and wanted to be added to my email list, so I decided it was time to make a real website.

IA: How did you get started with AdSense?
JH: I began using AdSense in March 2007. It was my first source of online advertising revenue. As content developed on my site and traffic grew, my AdSense revenue grew as well.

IA: Why did you decide to opt in to both text and image/rich media ads?
JH: Several months ago, I received an email from AdSense letting me know that I hadn't opted in to displaying text ads and was only displaying image ads.

I had originally chosen to only show image ads because I figured they were more aesthetically appealing to my readers. But Google’s reasoning – which made sense to me – was that even though there’s tons of advertisers using image ads, there’s a bunch more out there who are specifically bidding on text ads. If I’m only showing image ads then I’m leaving the text advertisers out of the auction. And since these text ads would only be shown on my site if they outbid image ads, why not offer this space to them?

So I decided to give the text ads a shot. It seemed like an easy thing to do that might have a positive impact on my revenue with virtually no downside.

IA: What were the results? Would you recommend this strategy to other publishers?
JH: After enabling both text and image ads on my site, I saw a 51% revenue increase and nearly a 60% increase in average eCPM. It was an easy change with a big impact. And using AdSense means I don't have to worry about the laborious task of finding and managing advertisers myself and can instead focus my time on what I like to do – writing good content, putting together a great site and growing my business. I just plugged in the AdSense code and rarely have to think about it again.

I would say to other publishers that it’s worth giving the option for both text and image ads a try. It's pretty easy to set up – I just followed the instructions in the email I had received from AdSense and it took just a few minutes. Also, set up channels to track your ads so you can see specifically which of your ad locations and ad types are monetizing well, and continue with that.

If you want to give text and image ads a try like Johnny, click here to upgrade your units now!

• Once you're signed in to your AdSense account, click the "My Ads" tab in the new AdSense interface
  
• Select all ad units
• From the "Actions" dropdown, edit ad type to "Text & Image / rich media ads"
• Set up custom channels to monitor the impact on your AdSense performance

Check out the images below to see where to enable both text and image ads in your account using the new AdSense interface:


Posted by Meredith Blackwell - Inside AdSense team

Announcing the new Inside AdSense Arabia blog

We’re very excited to announce the launch of our newest blog, the AdSense Arabia blog. Like our other Inside AdSense blogs, it will provide optimization tips, product announcements, and other program information to help our Arab publishers maximize their earnings and make the most out of their Google AdSense accounts.

With the rapidly developing online advertising market in the Middle East & North Africa region, and the growing interest in Google AdSense, we’re thrilled to be taking the next step by introducing this new information platform.

Joining English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Turkish, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese, Chinese - Traditional, Chinese - Simplified, and Korean, AdSense Arabia blog is our fifteenth Inside AdSense blog worldwide. Check out the navigation sidebar under the header “Related Google Blogs” for links to all of them! We hope to launch additional Inside AdSense blogs in the future so we can continue to reach even more of our global publishers.

Wherever in the world you are, we hope to see you on Inside AdSense!

Posted by Younis Maqousi - AdSense Arabia team

New Interface Wednesdays: Quickly view your total earnings

This week we’d like to highlight a few ways that you can view your total earnings. In the past, AdSense reported separately on AdSense for content, AdSense for search, and other AdSense product earnings. You’ve asked for the ability to quickly check your total earnings, and we’re happy to let you know that this is now possible.

If you’d like to focus on the overall sum of your earnings, you can look at the Entire account by day, week, or month reports under More reports. These reports will show you your combined earnings across all products. In future posts, we’ll show you how you can further customize these reports so they make the most sense for your business.

If you’d prefer to see your total account earnings broken out by product in the new interface, you can still do so. By selecting the Products report, you can view earnings from each product you are using as its own line item, as well as the summed, total earnings.


Try it now! Navigate to the new interface and click on the Performance reports tab, and then Products, or More reports, and then Entire account by month.

Posted by Guillaume Ryder - AdSense Engineer

Join us for an AdSense Optimisation Session in London, UK

On Wednesday, February 16th, two of our optimizers will be in London, where they'll hold 20-minute optimization sessions at a local coffee shop in the afternoon. We’re aiming to keep this session casual, so we can provide one-on-one consultations to as many of you as possible.

We’d love to meet you, so please fill out this form if you’ll be in the London area on February 16th and would like to schedule an appointment with our team. Once we get your RSVP, we'll follow up by email with additional details if there's time available. Scheduling will be done on a first-come, first-served basis, but we’ll do our best to include as many of you as space will allow.

See you in London!

Posted by Nathaniel Kolenberg - Inside AdSense team

Upcoming changes in backup ad options

We frequently review our product and feature offerings to ensure they’re as effective as possible. Based on these reviews and on feedback from our non-profit partners, we’ll gradually begin retiring public service ads (PSAs) from AdSense sites so that we can focus our efforts on developing new opportunities for these partners.

As a refresher, PSAs are unpaid ads that can appear on publisher sites when we aren’t able to serve a paid ad. This can occur for a number of reasons, such as when relevant ads aren’t available for a page, or when a publisher has exceeded the amount of time to verify their address by receiving a Personal Identification Number.

As always, we’re committed to supporting our non-profit partners, which is why we’re continuing to offer free AdWords advertising for these partners via Google Grants; the Google Grants program is just one part of our larger Google for non-profits initiative. Also, ads in the Google Grants program are unaffected by this change. They'll continue to appear on AdSense sites and you'll earn from valid clicks and impressions, just like with normal ads. To learn more about the latest in Google Grants, including recent tips, events, and clinics, visit the official Google Grants blog.

What does this mean for you as a publisher? If you’ve previously selected ‘Show public service ads’ in the ‘Backup ads’ section of the new AdSense interface (or the ‘Alternate ads or colors’ section in the old AdSense interface), you’ll begin to see that when we’re unable to serve paid ads to your pages, a blank space will appear instead of a PSA. On the other hand, if you’ve opted to show non-Google ads from another URL or to show a solid color, you won’t be affected by this change; your choices will continue to be applied in cases when we aren’t able to show paid ads.

You’ll also notice that the option to select PSAs as backup ads no longer appears in your account. We’re working to provide new backup ad options, and will keep you updated with any developments right here on Inside AdSense.

If you’d like to update the settings for your backup ads at any time, sign in to your account and follow the instructions for the interface you’re using:

• New AdSense interface: Visit the My Ads page and select the ad unit you’d like to update. Then, change the settings for ‘Backup ads.’
• Old AdSense interface: Visit the Manage Ads page under the My Account tab, and click ‘Edit Ad Settings’ for the unit you’d like to change.

If you'd like to discuss this change with other publishers or provide feedback to our team, join the conversation in our Forum. We’ll be updating our Help Center entries and troubleshooters to reflect this change as well. Thanks for your patience as we complete this transition.

Posted by Yasser Abu-Ghdaib - AdSense Product Specialist

Western Union now in the Palestinian Territories

As part of our ongoing goal to provide more payment options around the world, we're very excited to announce the arrival of Western Union Quick Cash® payments for the Palestinian Territories (Gaza & the West Bank).

For those of you who aren't familiar with this form of payment, Western Union Quick Cash payments are free and will reach you faster than checks. Payments will continue to follow our normal payment schedule and will be available for pickup in your local currency at your local Western Union agent the day after they're issued.

A couple of things to note: We can send Western Union payments only to publishers that have an individual account at this time. Also, the payee name on your account must exactly match the government-issued ID card that you'll use when picking up your payments. For more information on how to sign up for and pick up Western Union payments, please visit our Help Center.

We're continually looking into the feasibility of introducing new forms of payment and new delivery options in different countries. Stay tuned to the blog as we work to improve the payments experience for publishers around the word!

Posted by Deborah Chang - AdSense Payments team

New Interface Wednesdays: Monthly graphs of your account performance

This is the second post in our ‘New Interface Wednesdays’ series. Every Wednesday for the next few months we will highlight something new you can do in the new AdSense interface. From time to time we’ll also share stories directly from publishers who have been using the new interface as well as announce additional features we’ve recently added.

In the next few posts in this series, we’ll focus on different types of reports you can quickly view in the new interface to monitor and gain insight into your ad performance. Today we’re highlighting the ability to quickly view performance by month. We’ve chosen this particular feature because it’s been a top request from publishers, but you can easily do the same by day or week.

Previously, the easiest way to view all account data by month was to export all reports to CSV, then post-process the data in a spreadsheet. Now you can get the same data with just two clicks without leaving your account. On the Performance reports tab, first click on 'More reports,' and then 'Entire account by month.' From here you can see a graph of your earnings. Immediately below the graph, you’ll see data for your account by month. As we mentioned last week, you can easily select the metrics to appear on the graph.



Give it a try today! Navigate to the new interface and click on the Performance reports tab, 'More reports,' and then 'Entire account by month.'

Posted by Vincent Zanotti - AdSense Engineer