This Saturday, our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. You'll be unable to log in to your AdSense account during this time, but we'll continue serving ads to your pages and tracking your clicks, impressions, and earnings as usual. In addition, your ad targeting won't be affected.
We've converted the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world:
London - 6pm Saturday
Alexandria - 8pm Saturday
Hyderabad - 10:30pm Saturday
Jakarta - 12am Sunday
Perth - 1am Sunday
To learn more about what goes on during these maintenance periods, check out this Inside AdSense post.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Avoiding accidental clicks Pt. 1: Keeping the right distance
In the past, we've talked about ad placements that are prone to generate invalid clicks. In a past post, for example, Mike noted that publishers should be careful about placing ads too close to navigational controls or other clickable page elements.
It's in the best interest of the user, advertiser, and publisher to avoid implementations that lead to invalid click activity. As you can imagine, users aren't very happy if they accidentally click an ad instead of a link on your page and are directed away from your site. Advertisers also don’t want to be charged for a click that a user made accidentally (though of course we do not charge advertisers for invalid clicks that we detect). And why should publishers care? Well, if we see that most of the clicks coming from your pages are invalid, we may need to disable your account to protect our advertisers.
One type of site we wanted to talk about are Flash-based game sites. Playing games on these sites, you'll notice that ads are often placed very close to the Flash player where the game is played. Publishers may reason that they're providing maximum value to advertisers by placing their ads very close to the area where their users are focused. However, many of these Flash games are played with a mouse, and the action in the games can lead users to do a lot of rapid cursor movements and clicking. We've seen many cases where ads were placed too closely to where the action was taking place, generating many accidental clicks.
Since each game and site are unique, we can't advise publishers on an exact distance between ads and games, but we do recommend a minimum distance of 150 pixels between the Flash player and ads.
We've worked with publishers on these issues in the past and noticed that increasing the distance between Flash player and ads has had, on average, a positive long-term effect on CPCs. The reason for this is smart pricing. As you may know, the revenue you receive is based on the amount an AdWords advertiser pays for each click on their Google ad. The amount the advertiser pays varies per ad and from website to website, based on the likelihood that a click will result in a conversion for the advertiser. If we determine that clicks on a site are less likely to lead to business results for an advertiser (e.g., an online sale or registration), we reduce the price that an advertiser will pay for those clicks.
So, in short: Moving the ads further away from Flash games decreases the likelihood of accidental clicks and increases the number of clicks leading to business results for advertisers. A good deal for all involved.
It's in the best interest of the user, advertiser, and publisher to avoid implementations that lead to invalid click activity. As you can imagine, users aren't very happy if they accidentally click an ad instead of a link on your page and are directed away from your site. Advertisers also don’t want to be charged for a click that a user made accidentally (though of course we do not charge advertisers for invalid clicks that we detect). And why should publishers care? Well, if we see that most of the clicks coming from your pages are invalid, we may need to disable your account to protect our advertisers.
One type of site we wanted to talk about are Flash-based game sites. Playing games on these sites, you'll notice that ads are often placed very close to the Flash player where the game is played. Publishers may reason that they're providing maximum value to advertisers by placing their ads very close to the area where their users are focused. However, many of these Flash games are played with a mouse, and the action in the games can lead users to do a lot of rapid cursor movements and clicking. We've seen many cases where ads were placed too closely to where the action was taking place, generating many accidental clicks.
Since each game and site are unique, we can't advise publishers on an exact distance between ads and games, but we do recommend a minimum distance of 150 pixels between the Flash player and ads.
We've worked with publishers on these issues in the past and noticed that increasing the distance between Flash player and ads has had, on average, a positive long-term effect on CPCs. The reason for this is smart pricing. As you may know, the revenue you receive is based on the amount an AdWords advertiser pays for each click on their Google ad. The amount the advertiser pays varies per ad and from website to website, based on the likelihood that a click will result in a conversion for the advertiser. If we determine that clicks on a site are less likely to lead to business results for an advertiser (e.g., an online sale or registration), we reduce the price that an advertiser will pay for those clicks.
So, in short: Moving the ads further away from Flash games decreases the likelihood of accidental clicks and increases the number of clicks leading to business results for advertisers. A good deal for all involved.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
‘Tis the season for placement targeting: Market your site with DoubleClick Ad Planner
Last week, we introduced you to placement targeting as a great way to capitalize on the increase in advertiser spend during the holiday season. This week, we’re kicking off our three-part optimization series to help you maximize your earnings by taking advantage of DoubleClick Ad Planner. Ad Planner can help you market your site, make it easier for advertisers to search for you, and improve the data that these advertisers can see.As you may recall from last week’s post, the first step to enabling placement-targeted ads to appear on your pages is to set up your custom channels as ad placements. Ad placements are specific groups of ad units where an advertiser can choose to place their ads using placement targeting. This enables advertisers to better identify websites that reach their target audiences based on the descriptions publishers provide about their sites, describing the content of their pages or the type of users who visit them. Turning custom channels into ad placements is simple. To learn more, check out our YouTube video and visit our Help Center.
Once you’ve set up your ad placements, we encourage you to try out DoubleClick Ad Planner, a free media planning tool that helps advertisers find the sites their audiences are likely to visit and helps publishers make their sites easier to target.
In Ad Planner, you can claim the sites you own and customize their descriptions. For each site, you can also add up to five categories that describe your site's content, and the types, sizes, and formats of ads that your site supports. Doing this allows advertisers to easily find ad placement descriptions that match the interests of their target audiences. More targeted ads leads to a better user experience on your site and a greater opportunity to increase your earnings. For more information on how to get started, watch this brief introduction to DoubleClick Ad Planner and sign up today.
Check back next week for more ‘tis the season for placement targeting tips!
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