Tag Archives: AdSense features

Introducing AdSense Native ads

Today we’re introducing the new AdSense Native ads -- a suite of ad formats designed to match the look and feel of your site, providing a great user experience for your visitors. AdSense Native ads come in three categories: In-feed, In-article, and Matched content*. They can all be used at once or individually and are designed for:

A great user experience: they fit naturally on your site and use high quality advertiser elements, such as high resolution images, longer titles and descriptions, to provide a more attractive experience for your visitors.
A great look and feel across different screen sizes: the ads are built to look great on mobile, desktop, and tablet.
Ease of use: easy-to-use editing tools help you make the ads look great on your site.

Native In-feed opens up new revenue opportunity in your feeds

Available to all publishers, In-feed ads slot neatly inside your feeds, e.g. a list of articles or products on your site. These ads are highly customizable to match the look and feel of your feed content and offer new places to show ads.

Native In-article offers a better advertising experience

Available to all publishers, In-article ads are optimized by Google to help you put great-looking ads between the paragraphs of your pages. In-article ads use high-quality advertising elements and offer a great reading experience to your visitors.

Matched Content* drives more users to your content

Available to publishers that meet the eligibility criteria, Matched content is a content recommendation tool that helps you promote your content to visitors and potentially increase revenue, page views, and time spent on site. Publishers that are eligible for the “Allow ads” feature can also show relevant ads within their Matched content units, creating an additional revenue opportunity in this placement.

Getting started with AdSense Native ads
AdSense Native ads can be placed together, or separately, to customize your website’s ad experience. Use In-feed ads inside your feed (e.g. a list of articles, or products), In-article ads between the paragraphs of your pages, and Matched content ads directly below your articles. When deciding your native strategy, keep the content best practices in mind.

To get started with AdSense Native ads:

Sign in to your AdSense account
In the left navigation panel, click My ads
Click +New ad unit
Select your ad category: In-article, In-feed or Matched content

We'd love to hear what you think about these ad formats in the comments section below this post.

Posted by: Violetta Kalathaki - AdSense Product Manager

*This format has already been available to eligible publishers, and is now part of AdSense Native ads.

Source: Inside AdSense

More control over the ads you serve on your site(s)

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.

Posted by: Konkona Kundu, Product Manager

Source: Inside AdSense

How to choose the right ad tools for your site

Welcome to the #SuccessStack, a new series of articles designed to help you:

Access Google’s large network of advertisers
Grow your publishing business
Earn more from the ads on your site

This first article can help you choose the right tools to sell and manage the ads on your site.

AdSense: Get started with easy access to Google’s network of advertisers
Who it’s for: Publishers looking for a smart and easy-to-use tool to optimize their ad space and revenue.

What it does: AdSense makes it easy for you to place, manage and earn revenue from ads on your site. With AdSense, Google is your advertising sales team, bringing you ads from millions of advertisers using AdWords and other Google advertising programs.

AdSense includes simple and easy controls to help you get started with earning money from ads, but it also does a lot of work behind the scenes to help you make more money. It’s a bit like an automatic car -- it removes some of the manual adjustment, allowing you to cruise along with less effort. You still need regular “tune ups” to get optimal performance, but you won’t need to shift gears all the time.

DoubleClick Ad Exchange: Control who gets programmatic access to the ads on your site with advanced features
Who it’s for: Publishers who require a more granular control over their inventory and who have the resources and expertise to manage ongoing optimizations. This product is suited to publishers with yield management expertise and those who have need for advanced features like Programmatic Direct.

What it does: DoubleClick Ad Exchange gives you real-time access to the largest pool of advertisers. This means that in addition to AdWords advertisers, you can also access major ad networks and agencies.

A major difference between DoubleClick Ad Exchange and AdSense is that AdSense does a lot of the technical settings and optimization work for you, such as automating the sale of all your ad space to the highest bidder. With DoubleClick Ad Exchange, you can control these adjustments yourself and control exactly how your inventory is sold. As an example, DoubleClick Ad Exchange allows you to choose which ad space is for public sale and which is reserved for private auctions. This increased amount of user input is necessary for you to get the best results from DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Another important distinction is that the AdSense demand is majority AdWords advertisers, whereas DoubleClick Ad Exchange pulls demand from multiple sources. You can see the full list of differences at our help center.

DoubleClick For Publishers: Scale your advertising business
Who it’s for: Publishers who are looking for a tool that has AdSense or Ad Exchange built in, along with lots of useful features to help them, schedule, deliver and measure their ad inventory regardless of how they sell it, to networks, programmatically or through their own direct sales teams.

What it does: DoubleClick for Publishers is a single platform that allows you to manage and deliver all of your web, mobile, and video advertising across all your sales channels. It doesn’t come with it’s own ads, but rather helps you scale your ads business by managing your ad sales across a variety of ad networks such as AdSense, ad exchanges like DoubleClick and direct advertising partners. You can get started with the small business version right away for free, or talk to us about integrating with the premium, paid version that is built for large organizations with sophisticated ad sales teams.

Both versions have a simple interface, lots of great tools, built-in revenue optimization, and Google powered ad delivery to provide a simple, worry-free way to potentially increase the value of your ad impressions.

Ready to get started?
You can arrange a consultation with one of our experts who can help you to choose the right solution for your business, and setup AdSense, DoubleClick Ad Exchange or DoubleClick for Publishers.

Posted by Jay Castro, from the AdSense team.

Source: Inside AdSense

Put your users first with the four S’: Speed, Scroll, Style, Simple

We’re all consumers of web content. Yet as content creators it can be easy to forget what we need as users. But don’t worry, you’ve got this, and we’ve got you covered with just four S’.

If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up today and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

1. Speed

We all know how frustrating it is when a page takes forever to load. We twiddle our thumbs and look from side to side. And after just three seconds, we bounce.

But somehow publishers aren’t responding to this primal need that we all know as users.

According to Google's research from the Mobile Speed Matters report, the average load time for mobile sites across the web is 19 seconds. This is a LONG time. Usain Bolt can run 200m in 19.9s - think of what your users can do with a tap and a swipe.

But how does this impact me? Well, the report also states that…

53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.
Publishers whose mobile sites load in 5 seconds earn up to 2x more mobile ad revenue than those whose sites load in 19 seconds.

By now we think you’re sold on speed. So what’s next?

Understand your site’s speed with these resources

Consider one of the following quick fixes

Get our mobile web speed toolkit and...

Measure your site’s performance
Assess the different components impacting speed
Prioritize the order your site loads
Test, remeasure and repeat to improve your site speed

2. Scroll

The magic scroll. It’s an infinite, endless, perfectly loaded stream of content. There’s no need to click, to wait for a page to load, to navigate to that tiny ‘next’ with your giant thumb. It’s all right here, content, just waiting for you to consume it.

There are, of course, a few caveats before developing an infinite scroll. Like almost everything online, this isn’t a one size fits all solution.

Infinite scroll is great for ...

UGC publishers with constantly evolving content - think Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest.
Sites with lengthy articles or tutorials. No one wants to click ‘more’ or ‘page 2’ anymore. It’s just too dang hard.
Publishers using a slideshow with pagination. Consider a lazy loaded infinite scroll instead. Users love it.
Publishers considering mobile first (aren’t we all?!).

Watch out for …

Crawler errors & SEO impact and check out this article for creating a search friendly infinite scroll.

3. Style

Style should never be an afterthought. You and your users want to interact with something that looks good and feels good.

There are two primary components to style: content style & ad style.

First: Content Style

Great websites are able to maintain a consistent style across pages and platforms. Consistency gives users a sense of familiarity when interacting with your content.

Choose a color scheme and stick to it
Choose a layout and stick to it
Choose a theme and stick to it

We can’t stress this enough - stick to it.

As the industry continues to migrate towards a mobile first perspective, consistency across device types and platforms becomes increasingly important. Responsive web design enables your site to adapt to various device sizes without changing the overall look and feel or compromising user experience.

If you're up for the challenge, check out more on responsive design.

Second: Ad Style

In the internet of yesteryear it was nearly impossible to monetize without stripping a site of what made it beautiful. The good news? It’s 2016 and now you have the ability to make a profit and maintain your site’s style.

When implementing ads think about what makes sense for you and your users.

Consider responsive ads that automatically adapt to the user’s screen size
See if native ads are right for your site. If so, you can modify to match the look and feel of your site
Add matched content units, allowing your users to interact with more relevant content

Here's a sample of a native ad design.

Most importantly use ads to complement the content of your site. Since content is king, it’s important to ensure that you give your users what they're looking for in a format that’s easy to find and navigate, this includes the ads on your site.

Place ads at natural breaks or where the user’s attention may have waned. Not only will this improve user experience but it also may encourage a higher CTR and increased audience engagement.

4. Simple

Keep it simple, folks.

This rule underlines most everything that is targeted towards consumers, but it is even more important for a mobile first audience.

When it comes to consuming digital content, we’re a generation of hungry hippos. We want headlines, snippets, concise and clear information. We want minimalist design with streamlined content and easy navigation.

Tips on keeping it simple

Make it touch friendly. What’s easier than that?
Bullet points make your content easily consumable
Be brief in sign-ups. If your site requires users to sign-up or sign-in, keep input requirements to a minimum or consider adding a Google sign-in option to speed up the process

So there you have it; the four S’ of user experience: speed, scroll, style, simple. If you’re new to AdSense, be sure to sign up today and start turning your #PassionIntoProfit.

Posted by: Sarah Hornsey, from the AdSense team

Source: Inside AdSense

How to make the most of Matched content

Matched content is a recommendation tool that allows you to promote relevant content from your site and sponsored content to your visitors. Matched content can help capture visitor attention and loyalty by showing relevant content which could increase pageviews on your site. Here’s a few tips to help you get started with Matched content.

Strategically place your ads to improve viewability.

According to a Think With Google study, “56.1% of all impressions are not seen.” So when determining the placement of your Matched content units, think about which spot(s) would improve viewability and engagement. To increase these metrics we recommend placing this unit directly below your article and either above or below your ad unit. This way readers can easily click on the next piece of content that is interesting to them. Placing it directly below the article often drives higher click-through rates (CTR) than other placements.

Since Matched content units help your users learn more about similar content, you should think about placing it at points in your website where your user will engage more with the content.

Track performance.
To determine if your placement is effective for your site, be sure to track the performance of your Matched content units. Understanding performance is key to maximizing your ad revenue and satisfying your readers. On your Performance reports tab, you’ll see an updated way to view two metric families -- the Overview metric family and the Matched content metric family:
Overview metric family

Selecting this metric family will allow you to understand how much you’re earning from your Matched content units and how these units compare to other ad units on your site. You can also review metrics such as impressions, clicks, and estimated earnings.

Matched content metric family

To get a more detailed performance of your ads and recommendations, use this metric family to view metrics like total impressions, ad impressions, ad clicks, ad revenue per thousand impressions (RPM), and recommendation clicks. Since this metric family is more specific, you should be able to use this data to optimize the ad unit itself.

To see all metric offerings and how they work, take a look at the AdSense Help Center.

By optimizing your Matched content units, you will allow your readers to learn more about topics they are interested in and potentially increase your site’s engagement rate and revenue. If you do not currently have Matched content but are looking to add the feature, determine if you’re eligible by viewing our Help Center article.

Posted by Bserat Ghebremicael
From the AdSense team

Source: Inside AdSense

[eBook] Learn how to increase audience engagement

Did you know that roughly 61% of users abandon a site if they don't find what they’re looking for right away?¹ As hard as you work to get visitors to your site, you have to work even harder to keep them there.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a clever hack to keeping your users engaged. However, if you understand the intent of your users and provide unique content that’s relevant to their interests, you’ll be on your way to increasing engagement on your site.

Download our guide to audience engagement to learn more about best practices and tips to drive better results for both your users and business. Get your free copy today.

We’d love to hear your feedback on how this guide, connect with us on Google+ and Twitter using #AdSenseGuide.

Posted by Jay Castro

from the AdSense team

@jayciro

^{1) Think with Google, What users want from mobile sites}

Source: Inside AdSense

More defenses roll out to thwart Clickjacking

At Google we defend our ad systems from fraud using technology in a variety of ways. Often our investment in these defenses goes beyond protecting against only known threats. Our engineering and operations teams are continually working to identify new and emerging threats. Once a new ad fraud threat is found, we move quickly to defend our systems against it using a combination of technology, operations, and policy.

Recently we identified “Clickjacking” (aka UI Redress) as an emerging threat to cost-per-click display ads, and we’ve rolled out new defenses to protect advertisers against this threat. Clickjacking is a type of web attack where the appearance of a website is changed so that a victim does not realize they are taking an important action, in this case clicking on one or more ads. For example, a user may intend to click on a video play button or menu item, but instead clicks an invisible ad unit.


	Figure 1: An example of a clickable ad hidden behind a video playback button.

Moving quickly to thwart Clickjacking attempts

Earlier this year when our operations team identified Clickjacking activity on our display network, they moved swiftly to terminate accounts, removing entities involved in or attempting to use this technique to trick users. Our engineering team worked in parallel to quickly release a filter to automatically exclude this type of invalid traffic across display ads.

This approach delivered a one-two punch to publishers who violated our policies: our operations team, which forms an early line of defense against invalid traffic, cleaned out publishers from our ad systems, while engineers built a new filter as a durable defense to protect against Clickjacking traffic.


	Figure 2: An example of mouse-tracking, which leads to a page with lots of ads being opened regardless of where a user clicks.

Even as there are ongoing attempts to perpetrate this type of attack, our ongoing and proactive hunt for emerging types of invalid traffic has enabled us to move early and quickly to address Clickjacking threats on several occasions.

A combination of defenses

Our Clickjacking defenses operate at considerable scale, analyzing display ad placements across mobile and desktop platforms, evaluating a variety of characteristics. When our system detects a Clickjacking attempt, we zero-in on the traffic attributed to that placement, and remove it from upcoming payment reports to ensure that advertisers are not charged for those clicks.

This latest effort also is a great example of how our work against invalid traffic is at the intersection of technology, operations, and policy. Each piece plays a key role in keeping our ad systems clean and defended against ad fraud.

Equally important, our efforts also promote a level playing field for good publishers on our ad systems. And while our Ad Traffic Quality team works hard to keep our ad systems clean, we also rely on publishers to do their part in contributing to a healthy ads ecosystem.

Best practices for publishers

Publishers play a crucial role in delivering a good ads experience. We’ve included some relevant best practices below to remind publishers of ways that they can improve the ads experience on their web properties.

Double and triple-check implementations to verify that your sites contain no programming errors, conform to AdSense policies, and display correctly across different browsers and platforms.
For mobile devices, plan your layout carefully to accommodate limited screen real estate.
Avoid placing ads close to other clickable content to prevent accidental clicks. For more guidance on how to implement banner ads see our best practices video.
Monitor analytics often to spot traffic anomalies. For example, setting up Analytics alerts can show if an unusual amount of traffic comes from a particular ad placement or site.
Lastly, if you find suspicious activity, please report it via the Invalid Clicks Contact Form.

We’re proud of our work to protect our ad systems against emerging threats like Clickjacking, and we’ll continue to be vigilant as we fight the good fight against ad fraud.

Posted by: Andres Ferrate, Chief Advocate, Ad Traffic Quality