We always hear from publishers that you’re looking for actionable tips and best practices for growing your site. Our team of product, monetization and website optimization experts are constantly building new resources and insights to help publishers like you grow your business. We share personalized suggestions for your website via email in addition to news on the latest product features and invitations. Additionally, we send periodic invitations to live video sessions and events offering personalized tips for your region.
To ensure you’re getting this information from us, we need to have up-to-date contact details and communication preferences for you. Here are a few quick and simple steps you should take when you log in to your AdSense account, to make sure we can get in touch:
Step 1: Make sure that the email address you've listed in your account to receive communications from us is correct and is one that you’re regularly checking. You can check which email address we’re using to reach you by logging in to your AdSense account and going to your Personal settings under the Account section on the left menu bar.
Step 2: Opt in to receive emails from us. We categorize the emails we send based on the content they include. Here’s a quick breakdown:
Customized help and performance suggestions - Includes personalized revenue and optimization tips customized specific for your website.
Periodic newsletters with tips and best practices - Includes general AdSense tips, best practices and product updates.
Occasional surveys to help Google improve your AdSense experience- Gives you a regular opportunity to share your feedback on AdSense.
Special Offers - Includes invitations to events in your country and live YouTube events..
Information about other Google products and services which may be of interest to you - Occasional updates on other Google products like Google Analytics or DoubleClick for Publishers.
You can update your email preferences by checking the boxes in your Personal settings section.
Step 3: Choose your language preference. Did you know that AdSense emails are available in 38 different languages? We’ve recently added Hindi, Malay and Filipino. You can choose the language that suits you best by using the Display language drop-down menu directly under the email preferences checkboxes. Get the most from the AdSense team and ensure you can hear from us. Log in to your account now and check your contact details and communication preferences. It takes no more than two minutes.
Certified Publishing Partners are trained experts on AdSense, DoubleClick for Publishers, and DoubleClick Ad Exchange who can help publishers like you earn more while also saving you time. These Google partners can help you with a range of services from ads monetization to design and development support, allowing you to focus on creating quality content for your site.
The inaugural Certified Publishing Partner 2016 Summer Challenge launched in July 2016 to identify and recognize Certified Publishing Partners who show significant dedication and expertise in mobile, customer service, and innovation. Please join us in congratulating our three winning partners:
Customer Satisfaction Award Winner: AdThrive, USA
About the award: This award recognizes the partner who demonstrates outstanding overall quality of customer service for publishers.
Why AdThrive:AdThrive specializes in helping bloggers monetize their sites so that they can focus on blogging. According to our latest customer satisfaction survey, AdThrive scored 95/100. In addition to being able to deliver expected results for the publishers, AdThrive treats publishers in a way they are valued and has knowledgeable, friendly and approachable staff. This is a prime example of putting publisher’s needs first and delivering tangible results in an efficient and scalable way.
Congratulations to the AdThrive team!
Mobile Champion Award Winner: WOSO, China
About the award: This award recognizes the partner who demonstrates strong expertise in helping publishers capture mobile opportunities with strong user experiences and effective monetization.
Why WOSO: We believe that Certified Publishing Partners should take the lead in helping publishers of all sizes in various markets successfully adapt to a mobile first environment. Our 2016 winner WOSO has done exactly that. They are a leading pioneer in China's online advertising and SEM, WOSO, and in Q3 2016 during the Summer Challenge, they helped publishers achieve a significant year over year growth in driving mobile web monetization. Way to go WOSO!
Business Innovation Award Winner: Ezoic, USA
About the award: This award recognizes innovations that drive real business impact and challenge the status quo. We continually encourage our partners to develop differentiating value-add services and solutions.
Why Ezoic: We received more than 20 submissions for this award showing the breadth of innovation that our partners are bringing to publishers. Our 2016 winner, Ezoic, specializes in automated testing platform for content publishers. In 2016 they launched Ad Tester, a machine learning based solution designed to optimize user experience and ad earnings at the same time.
We look forward to many more innovations from Ezoic in the future.
Thank you to all of the Summer Challenge participants and congratulations to the winning partners!
Posted by Sean Meng,
Global Program Lead, Google’s Certified Publishing Partner Program
About Google Certified Publishing Partnerships:
A Certified Publishing Partner can help when you don’t want to do it alone. Our publishing partners handle everything from setting up to optimizing and maintaining ads, so you’re free to spend more time publishing content on your site. Using Google best practices, our publishing partners are adept at maximizing performance and earnings with AdSense, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and DoubleClick for Publishers. For more information, visit our website.
Rewarded video is changing the way publishers monetize their content. We’ve seen advertising evolve to become mutually beneficial to both the user and the publisher, while also providing a better, richer experience. This is a huge potential opportunity for app developers, but how can you use rewarded video to augment your user experience and monetize your app? Here’s a quick overview of what rewarded advertising is, and some of its important features.
What’s rewarded? Rewarded video is a non-intrusive, short-form video that creates a value exchange between a publisher and a user: user’s voluntarily give their time to watch an ad in exchange for a reward, or in-app currency.
Rewarded video isn’t a new thing. Gaming publishers have been taking advantage of user opt-in video for several years, but we’ve recently seen rewarded video gaining traction across several different verticals. Publishers are exploring the potential of leveraging premium features, exclusive content, or upgraded services to incorporate Rewarded video ads seamlessly into their apps.
Focus on the user and all else will follow. A positive user experience is key to the success of rewarded video. Each ad should complement the user experience by appearing at an appropriate time offering a valuable reward (like gaining an extra life in your favorite game instead of the level ending, or an hour of uninterrupted listening time when streaming music) in exchange for watching a video. With AdMob, the user controls their experience by choosing to watch a video and receive the reward, or to not watch the video and forfeit the reward. It’s also easy to set a frequency cap to ensure that a user doesn’t see the same ad too many times.
You can earn more by doing less with AdMob mediation. Our ad unit level configuration allows you to try different advertising networks, network order, and reward settings at different points in your app. Our ad network also automatically fetches CPM values from these networks, and optimizes accordingly: expect high fill rates and maximum revenue. The best part? Thanks to our server-side settings you can keep tinkering in the background until you’ve got your reward settings nailed, minus the hassle of changing your code or re-releasing your app.
The most important thing to remember about rewarded video? When done well, it adds value to all parties. Users explicitly choose to opt-in and engage with an ad that complements their game or app in exchange for a reward. Publishers benefit from a non-interruptive high CPM monetisation format, increased retention, and potentially more ARPU (rewarded users play more and spend more). And advertisers reach valuable, engaged users that are more likely to complete an ad view. Everyone’s a winner!
Integrating rewarded ads into your apps is easy. Follow these simple steps to get started...
Create a new AdMob Rewarded interstitial ad unit
Make sure your SDKs are updated (Android v9.0 or higher and iOS v7.9.1 or higher)
The final part of the #SuccessStack looks at the hot topic of native advertising. You’ll learn what it is, why it’s on every advertiser’s radar and whether it’s right for your site.
What is native advertising?
According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), native ads are paid ads that have the goal of being “so cohesive with the page content, assimilated into the design, and consistent with the platform behavior that the viewer simply feels that they belong.”
Native ads allow you to have an ad styled to fit within the page and it’s surrounding content, unlike traditional display banners. They are designed to match the look, feel, and function of your site.
You’re likely already putting a lot of effort into shaping your site to meet the high expectations of a clean and mobile-optimized user experience. It’s just as important to experiment with how you deliver ads to meet those user expectations and retain users’ interest in your site. Native ads can open up new earning opportunities on your site where traditional ad formats weren’t appropriate before. Ad formats, like banner ads, are effective but sometimes limited by size and placements. Native Ads can be customized to fit seamlessly within your content’s look and feel.
Do you need it?
According to new BI Intelligence estimates based on historical data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), PwC, and IHS; US native display ad revenue will make up 74% of total US display ad revenue in 2021, up from a 56% share in 2016.1
Supporting and offering this ad format will provide you with access to a huge portion of the market for advertiser budgets. Additionally, as mobile consumers increasingly drive the publishing industry, native advertising is a key strategy for connecting with that audience and delivering a profitable mobile experience.
Finding inspiration
If you’re looking for a reason to get started on native ads, then take a look at some of our success stories.
Unidad Editorial is a leading multimedia group in Spain with 20 million daily users. See how they achieved a 4X increase in mobile CTR and and 6X increase in desktop CTR using native ads.
The New York Times also saw a huge boost in viewability and ad engagement metrics using native ads. Read their story here.
Leading publishers Aller Media (Scandinavia) and Grupo Expansión (Mexico) both saw serious uplifts in their viewability metrics using native advertising units.
When implementing native ads, consider the following:
Prioritize your audience: Consider your users’ expectations of your site and how they’ll respond to the type of ads you choose. Native ads meet users’ expectations by seamlessly fitting within your site’s user experience.
Test first to optimize for user experience and ad revenue: It’s important to consider how to create the best user experience while maximizing your ad revenue. Strike a balance between content and ads by testing new native ad units and formats to measure their impact on revenue and user engagement.
Next steps
Ready to get started? With 54% of global marketing leaders already using native advertising, native ads are the solution to help grow your ad earnings.2
In today's post, we'll be discussing AdSense account suspensions due to invalid traffic.
We have found that there are two types of publishers who may have invalid traffic issues with their accounts. The first are publishers who may unintentionally send invalid traffic to their accounts, typically by testing on live ads. For those, we hope that increased transparency into our policies and processes can decrease these unintentional violations and help our publishers play by the rules. The second are publishers who intentionally bypass our rules, ending up with a variety of invalid traffic issues in order to artificially inflate their ad revenue. That’s why we work hard to maintain a policy compliant ecosystem for our publishers, advertisers, and users. In short, if you play by the rules, AdSense is here to help you grow your business.
We receive many questions about account suspensions, so let's go through the top questions about this process and what steps you can take to help keep your account in good standing.
What is invalid traffic anyway? Invalid traffic includes any clicks or impressions that may artificially inflate an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. Invalid traffic covers both intentionally fraudulent traffic as well as accidental clicks.
Please note that clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest, and any method that artificially generates clicks or impressions is strictly prohibited by our program policies. If we observe high levels of invalid traffic on your account, we may suspend or disable the account to protect our advertisers and users.
Watch our #AskAdSense video for more information on what invalid traffic is and tips to help prevent invalid traffic on your account.
What is an account suspension? If your account was suspended due to invalid traffic, ad serving has been turned off on all of your content for a fixed period (most frequently 30 days). This includes any website, YouTube channel, and/or mobile app. Please know that we will deduct revenue from your account and will credit advertisers with the withheld revenue where appropriate and possible. If there are no further compliance issues with your account, it will be automatically re-enabled after the fixed period.
Please note that your account is still active, and an account suspension is not the same as having your account disabled. If your account was disabled due to invalid traffic, your account is no longer serving ads, and you will be unable to monetize with any Google ad solutions. As with account suspensions, please know that we may deduct revenue from your account and may credit advertisers with the withheld revenue where appropriate and possible.
In addition to monitoring for policy violations, we analyze all clicks and impressions to determine whether they might artificially drive up an advertiser's costs or a publisher's earnings. If we determine that your account has invalid traffic, then we may suspend or disable your account. Please know that we may deduct revenue from your account and may credit advertisers with the withheld revenue where appropriate and possible.
Here are some common reasons for why your account may get suspended:
Clicking ads on your own site and/or YouTube channel: Publishers may not click their own ads or use any means to inflate impressions and/or clicks artificially, including manual methods. Testing your own ads by clicking on them isn't allowed. Additionally, YouTube publishers should skip ads when viewing their own videos to avoid artificially inflating advertiser costs.
For AdSense ad placements on sites, please use the Google Publisher Toolbar if you want to click the ads to check the landing pages or view more details about the ads. The Toolbar will allow you to check the destination of ads on your page without the risk of invalid clicks.
One or more users repeatedly clicking your ads: Don't encourage or ask your friends, family, co-workers, or general users to click on your ads. This includes asking for users to support your site or YouTube channel, offering rewards to users for clicking ads, and promising to raise money for third parties for such behavior.
We also recommend that you check your associated AdSense email for more information regarding your account suspension.
What steps should I take during the suspension period?
Account suspension gives you time to investigate the sources of invalid traffic, identify and block suspicious traffic, and put measures in place to ensure clean traffic. We recommend learning how to segment your traffic to help you best understand, monitor, and evaluate the traffic to your site. This may also help you identify sources of invalid traffic.
Visit our Help Center for more information about suspended accounts due to invalid traffic.
How can I appeal an account suspension?
Account suspensions are currently not appealable. You can use this time to investigate your traffic sources and make adjustments to help prevent invalid traffic in the future. Provided that there are no further compliance issues with your account, it will automatically be reinstated once your suspension period is served.
Please don't fill out the invalid traffic appeal form because that form is reserved for disabled accounts, and you will receive an email that says we can't process this appeal.
If you would like to provide additional feedback to help us improve our processes and communications, you may do so using our suspended publisher feedback form.
When will my account be re-enabled?
If there are no further compliance issues with your account, it will be automatically re-enabled after the fixed period (most frequently 30 days).
What happens if after my account was re-enabled, my account continues to generate invalid traffic?
If, after your account has been re-enabled, invalid traffic persists and continues to contribute low value traffic to our ads ecosystem, then we may need to disable your account.
Visit our Help Center for more information about suspended accounts due to invalid traffic. We look forward to your return to the AdSense network in good standing after the suspension ends.
Posted by: Danielle Chang, Ad Traffic Quality team
Today, we'd like to demystify one of the most common reasons why AdSense applications get disapproved: the site has insufficient content. What exactly do we mean by this, and how can you fix this issue on your site?
If a site is found to have insufficient content, this means that the site may not have enough text, and/or the site was deemed to be "under construction." To be approved for AdSense and show relevant ads on your site, your pages need to have enough text on them for our specialists to review and for our crawler to be able to determine what your pages are about. Sites that contain mostly images, videos or Flash animations may not be approved. Additionally, sites that consist only of a site template and very little content may not be approved.
Why is it important for your site to have plenty of content? The AdSense program policies are designed to foster a healthy ecosystem that helps protect users, advertisers, and publishers. Our policies prohibit Google ads to be placed on any non-content-based page or placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads. We use factors such as keyword analysis, word frequency, and font size in order to determine what a webpage is about and precisely match Google ads to each page. Therefore, it's important for sites to have lots of high quality and unique content in order to provide meaningful user experiences and allow Google to serve relevant ads to users.
If your AdSense application wasn't approved due to insufficient content (or for other reasons), you're welcome to make corrections to your application and/or improvements to your site and re-submit your AdSense application for further consideration. Before you re-submit your application, check out our AdSense policies: a beginner's guide and additional tips to help ensure that your site's pages are ready for AdSense.
If you're wondering how to make improvements to your site, remember that there are lots of published sites already, so think about what it is that makes your pages unique. You should aim to create original and relevant content that keeps users engaged and encourages them to visit your site again and again.
Check out our help article for more information about insufficient content and other common AdSense application disapproval reasons. If you're still having issues, check out our troubleshooter for disapproved applications. Hopefully after reading this blog post and our other help articles, you can take steps to get your AdSense application approved. If you have questions, join the #AskAdsense conversation Thursdays at 9:30am PT on Twitter to speak with our support team.
Posted by: Danielle Chang, Ad Traffic Quality team
Forget what you think you know about programmatic advertising, these tools are game changers. For the ninth part of the #SuccessStack series, we’re revisiting the topic of programmatic advertising and looking at some of the latest technology that is starting to shape it.
1) Matched content provides a more intelligent user experience Matched content units allow publishers to suggest further content that might interest the reader, based on what they have looked at already. This means that someone on a sports site reading an article about football can have further football content suggested to them. This can result in an increase in pageviews and time spent on the site.
AdSense users who are eligible to use matched content units for ads have an additional advantage as they are able to synchronize their ads by topic also. This means that someone on a sports site reading an article about football can be shown native-styled ads most likely to appeal to football fans. This in turn can potentially increase ad engagement and quality clicks on the ads.
2) New programmatic deal structures redefine the space Programmatic Direct is an innovative solution that bridges the gap between traditional ad sales and programmatic selling. It offers three flexible deal structures that bring the best of direct and programmatic together:
Private Auctions: Negotiated minimum price. Invitation only auctions. Non-guaranteed volumes.
The technology combines the power of real-time bidding (RTB) infrastructure with access to brand safe, reserved publisher inventory. This shortens the time it takes to book and execute high quality reservations type deals.
Using this tool, you can lock in revenue through reservations, forecast against programmatic deals, and enjoy the ease of automated billing and collections. All that without the need to email tags, worry about creative controls, resolve discrepancies, or fax orders back and forth. Check out this story from Televisa and Unilever to see how it could work for your business.
3) Advanced inventory management tools allow greater flexibility You no longer have to make a choice between selling your inventory programmatically or direct. Modern ad management tools like DoubleClick for Publishers make it very easy to do both at the same time, with less coding and manual work. They also give you a clear picture of your inventory availability in real-time, so you are less likely to make conflicted bookings or leave inventory unsold.
See how German media company G&J doubled their programmatic revenue and increased their mobile revenue 10x with a smart implementation of Doubleclick for Publishers and Doubleclick AdExchange.
We want to help you get the right tools in place so you’re set up for success and potential ad earnings growth. To check whether your setup that suits your plans for your site/s, have a conversation with one of our experts. They can offer a personalized consultation to help you make smart choices for your business. Book a time to speak with an expert.
We’ve heard the feedback that publishers like you have shared about wanting more ways to control the ads showing on your site(s). Today, we’re excited to share some recent updates to General Category Blocking that give you more controls to opt-in or filter out certain categories of ads -- putting you in charge.
General Category Blocking was introduced in some countries in 2010 to help you scalably prevent competitors’ ads and ads that may not fit your audience from appearing on your site, by letting you opt out of showing ads from certain categories and subcategories such as “Finance,” “Apparel,” and “Tourism.” Over the last few weeks we’ve increased the number of categories and subcategories from 250 to 470. This update lets you be more granular and block more specific categories without overblocking and having an unwanted negative impact on earnings. For example, instead of blocking the category “Apparel,” you can now pick any of the new subcategories “Sunglasses,” “Handbags,” or “Watches.” With this update we’ve also expanded our supported languages to include Chinese (simplified), Dutch, Polish, Russian, and Turkish and made this feature available in every country supported by AdSense.
With more options available it’s important to carefully consider the impact of blocking, or allowing, a category. Blocking a general category could lower your potential earnings as the affected advertisers’ bids are excluded from the auction. On the other hand, with more subcategories available you may have the opportunity to be more granular and pick the subcategory that most closely matches the type of ad you want to prevent -- minimizing the negative impact on your earnings.
We know how important it is to have control over the ads that appear on your site, and this update is adding to a set of controls available in AdSense already. We’d love to hear what you think about these update so please leave your feedback in the comments field below.
The eighth installment of the #SuccessStack takes a second look at PageSpeed, specifically tips you can implement that may improve your metrics.
Last week the #SuccessStack illustrated lots of reasons why mobile PageSpeed is critically important to the ongoing success of your publishing business. Now you can explore what you can do that could improve this metric and boost your overall page performance as a result.
Step 1: See how much more you could earn
Before you put time and effort into improving your mobile speed, you want to see what it’s worth to you. This useful tool will help you make a personal calculation of how much more you could earn with a faster mobile experience. However, this tool does not calculate user experience or user loyalty, both of which are impacted by either a fast, or slow, mobile experience.
Step 2: Look at how you measure up
Using tools to measure different aspects of your site will help you identify areas for improvement more easily than if you were to just estimate. Here are a few of our favorites:
PageSpeed Insights analyzes your site performance, scoring its speed and user experience and identifies issues to fix. The best practice is a score of 85 or above.1
Webpagetest provides a Speed Index that indicates the average time at which visible parts of the page are displayed. Aim for a Speed Index of 3,000 or less and load time of 3 seconds or less — ideally 1-3 seconds.2
Chrome DevTools is a versatile real-time tool for evaluating your website’s performance right in the browser. You can simulate network and CPU speeds, examine network loading details and see how your site’s code is impacting your page.
Mobile-Friendly Test is designed specifically for mobile sites. This tool analyzes exactly how mobile-friendly the site is, and focuses on elements beyond speed as well.
Step 3: Have a clear out - reduce the size of your pages.
Reduce the size of your pages.
Target 50 or fewer requests and 1,000 or fewer bytes to optimize load time.
Compress and select efficient images, and prioritize download of visible content.
Assess the ads and trackers running on your page.
Use a tool to measure the bandwidth and latency impact of pixels and other elements on your pages (e.g., Ghostery). Evaluate if trackers are needed and used, and if they provide enough benefit.
Review latency of your ad partners, especially those delivering video ads, and remove low performing monetization partners.
Step 4: Prioritize the order your page loads in
It sounds obvious, but prioritizing loading of the elements that are visible above the fold will enhance your user experience, even of your net page loading speed doesn’t change.
Prioritize loading elements that are visible above the fold first: Minimize the amount of pieces that show above the fold of visible content. Load styling, javascript logic and images that are only accessed after direct interaction later.
Enable HTTPS and HTTP/2: Support modern HTTPS to provide site integrity, encryption, authentication, and better user experience. More than 1-in-3 of top 100 sites run on modern HTTPS, and a quarter of them use HTTPS by default
Limit server requests where possible: Each mobile page makes an average of 214 server requests,3 some of which happen simultaneously and some that can only happen one after the other. Review each request on your site to understand the benefit it provides.
Step 5: Measure, test, repeat
As the shift to mobile continues to grow, so will users expectations of lighting speed experiences across the web. This means that improving your mobile speed isn’t a one off job, you need to have a process in place to regularly evaluate and improve it. Follow the steps outlined above at regular intervals and record the results of the adjustments you make to refer back to when deciding on new optimization techniques in the future.
Continually assess your ad-related calls to remove low performing monetization partners.
Pick third-party ad-tech partners with lower latency.
Remove or reduce any bulky content.
Consolidate data and analytics tags.
Investigate open-source tools such as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps (PWA).
Implementing the strategies outlined in this article could have a serious positive impact on your business. Check out these inspirational stories from Sinclair News and What to Expect to see how significant shifts in mobile speed were achieved with a few technical tweaks.
Next steps
From your interest in PageSpeed, you’re clearly committed to doing all you can to improve the performance of your site and grow your publishing business. With this in mind, you may benefit from a chat with one of our experts. They can offer a personalized consultation to help you make the right technology choices to support your business growth. Book a time.
Post content Posted by Jay Castro, from the AdSense Team
1. Google Developers
2. Google and kissmetrics
3. DoubleClick, “The Need for Mobile Speed”, , September 2016
Over the last few weeks you may have noticed the Ad balance subtab under My ads. This new AdSense feature will give you more control to create a great ads experience for your users.
Ad balance lets you reduce the number of ads you show to your users. Finding the right balance between the number of ads you show and the user experience on your site can lead to better overall engagement with your content. With Ad balance, you’re able to see how changes in the volume of ads you show affect your earnings, and find the balance that makes the most sense for you and your users.
By only showing your best-performing ads, you may see a minimal drop in your earnings. However, these changes may result in an overall earnings increase, since an improvement of the user experience often leads to users staying longer on your site and engaging with more of your content*.
Ad balance is the first example of a Lab that's being made available to all publishers. Those of you who had the Show fewer ads lab enabled have been automatically moved over to Ad balance**. Thank you for trying it out!
To learn more about this new feature, please visit the Help Center.
We’d love to hear what you think about Ad balance. Please leave your feedback within your AdSense account by clicking send feedback.
*We don’t guarantee any specific results. And, just as a reminder, you’re responsible for the content and layout of your site. **Find out how you turn this feature on and off and make changes to your settings in the AdSense Help Center.
