10 for 10 publisher stories: Complementing Videdressing’s profitability


Welcome back to our ‘10 for 10’ series, where we’re sharing publisher success stories each week as we count down to AdSense’s 10th anniversary in June.

Today we’re heading to Paris to say bonjour to Videdressing, an e-commerce site founded in 2009 by American expat Meryl Job. After looking for a medium to sell some of her clothes and noticing that a number of fashion bloggers were opening wardrobe sales, Meryl started the site to enable others to buy and sell fashion items they no longer wear. Today, the site employs over 20 people and receives over 25 million visits each month.

Since joining the AdSense program last year, Videdressing has used its AdSense revenue to complement the earnings it generates from sales and transactions. The additional income adds to the profitability of the site and is used to offer better services to its customers. Company chairman Renaud Guillerm sees advertising as “being first and foremost an additional service that we can offer our customers. Our conversion rate is only two per cent, as 98 percent of visitors browse the site without buying anything. By using AdSense we can monetise these many visits.”

Videdressing uses AdWords to advertise the site, and also makes use of Analytics to understand the site’s visitors. To date, the company has seen strong growth in France, and is looking to expand to additional markets in the future.

Read more about Videdressing’s success, and feel free to share your own AdSense success story with us. We’ll be back next week to introduce you to another publisher!

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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Introducing 10 for 10 publisher stories: Crafting with Cut Out + Keep


This June 18th is a major milestone: the date marks the 10th anniversary of AdSense’s launch. Over the years, AdSense has evolved from a small contextually-targeted text ad network to a complete publisher solution, serving Display, Mobile, Video, and more for over 2 million publishers -- with powerful new features, reports, and controls to boot. As we’ve grown over the last decade with your support and feedback, we’ve heard inspiring stories about how you and your businesses have done the same.

June 18th falls exactly 10 weeks from today, so we’re kicking off a ‘10 for 10’ success story series here on the blog. Each Tuesday leading up to the anniversary, we’ll introduce you to a publisher who has grown their business with AdSense and other Google tools. Stay tuned for more information on AdSense’s 10th anniversary -- but in the meantime, let’s get started by meeting Cat Morley and Tom Waddington from Cut Out + Keep:



Cat originally launched Cut Out + Keep as a blog where she could share her craft ideas. With the help of her business partner and fiancé, Tom, she transformed the blog into a popular crafting community where over 140,000 registered users now share their own projects. As the site grew, the Edinburgh-based couple turned to AdSense to earn from their site without needing to spend time selling ads. “Both of us are bad at sales,” Tom admits. “We don’t want to sell ads -- we want to focus on building the site, which is our true passion. We regard AdSense as our third employee.”

Thanks to the revenue from AdSense, Tom was able to quit his day job to focus completely on the site. More recently, the couple attended a Learn with Google for Publishers workshop in Edinburgh to learn how to improve the performance of their site. Since making changes recommended to them by an optimization specialist at the workshop, including updating their ad formats and getting started with DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business, Cat and Tom have seen their revenue quadruple.

Hear more about Cat and Tom’s AdSense experience by reading the full story. Do you have a success story to share as well? We’d love to hear from you. Join us here on Inside AdSense next Tuesday to hear another AdSense story and meet another publisher.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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With a refreshing makeover, MakeupAlley.com boosts interactions, clicks and revenue

When users of MakeupAlley.com, one of the web’s largest beauty communities, review any of the 130,000 products that appear on the site, community engagement motivates them to add reviews. Is the product easy to use? Is it visually appealing? Does the product compare well to other products in its category?

After mastering the art of product reviews, MakeupAlley.com conducted a review of its own site and implemented changes.  In doing so, MakeupAlley.com achieved a 171% increase in on-site interactions, 21% more clicks to affiliate links, and a 50% uplift in AdSense revenue. A host of Google tools contributed to the overhaul, and to these compelling results.

Small changes, big impact
In all, the site hosts well over 2 million reviews. Aiming to improve user experience and increase engagement, MakeupAlley.com first made some simple changes to its product pages, home to the site’s latest reviews. Using Google’s tips and resources for publishers, MakeupAlley.com organized and streamlined content and design to make relevant information easier to find.

Product names and rating statistics were made more prominent to make it easier for users to gather product information at a glance. MakeupAlley.com also restructured the layout by separating review content from member profiles. To encourage deeper engagement, MakeupAlley.com grouped and clearly labeled related content. A final tweak saw an existing AdSense unit move to a more visible placement below the navigation, creating space on the page for an additional ad unit.

Tallying up through testing
To measure the effectiveness of the changes, the team set up Google Analytics Custom Variables to track and compare visitor activity, as well as Event Tracking to evaluate in-page interactions. MakeupAlley.com also created custom channels in AdSense to track the performance of ad units.

MakeupAlley.com ran a month-long A/B test, splitting traffic between the original and new landing pages. The new, user-friendly landing page demonstrated promising results. Featuring related content in a clear way helped grow on-site interactions, while organizing affiliate links in an easy-to-find “Where to buy” section encouraged clicks. And the new ad unit placements resulted in a notable upward surge in AdSense revenue.

A beautiful future
Considering that MakeupAlley.com’s revenue comes primarily from advertising and affiliates, the lessons learned are valuable to the brand. “We’re excited to continue improving the usability of our site using this methodology,” says one team member. Based on these successes, plans are already in the works to apply the same tactics to improving user experience and engagement throughout the site.
Want to replicate this kind of success for your own brand?

●      Read the full case study on MakeupAlley.com.
●      Get tips and best practices for content and design from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
●      Learn about measuring visitor activity, Custom Variables and Event Tracking with Google Analytics.
●      Find out how to use Google AdSense custom channels to group and track ad units.

Posted by Ian Cohan-Shapiro - Inside AdSense Team

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Diversifying revenue sources in an e-commerce site - dinos’ success story

dinos is a Japanese mail order company that relies on catalogs, TV and the Internet for its business. In their online shopping site, visitors can purchase items they've seen on TV or in catalogs. Their site was established in September 2000 and, as of July 2012, dinos now receives 2.5 million user visits and 58 million page views per month. Revenue from their site accounts for about half of dinos' total revenue.

We recently interviewed Hiroyuki Kikuchi from the dinos marketing team, to find out more about the company’s experiences with AdSense.

Inside AdSense (IA): Could you tell us why and how you started to use AdSense?
We started to use AdSense to diversify the sources of revenue from the site and also to monetize the traffic from users leaving the site. The major reason why we decided to use AdSense is because of its flexibility: we can shut off or turn on a campaign at any time. We started out with a pilot in April 2012. Then in May, we began using AdSense more, dramatically increasing the number of pages with ads. As a result, our revenue increased significantly.

IA: Did you use any other service before you implemented AdSense?
We used an affiliate service before using AdSense. We piloted this service because it provided control over which ads we served. We also analyzed the results from our pilot to be able to optimize our ad network implementation later on. Our main concern with trying AdSense was that we would not be able to choose the ads we served, but after implementation, we found that we could easily control the ads at the URL and ad category levels. The revenue coming from AdSense is much higher than the revenue we earned from the affiliate network.

IA: When implementing AdSense, was there any opposition from within the company?
There was internal concern that using AdSense would decrease product sales on dinos.com. We explained that sales revenue had not changed since AdSense was implemented. In addition, we offered to stop using AdSense if we received any complaints from our users. In the end, sales levels remain constant and we did not receive any complaints. This shows that we're providing useful information to our users and showing high quality ads

IA: Was it easier to implement AdSense than you’d expected?
It was very easy to introduce AdSense. It was very helpful that we could set up the ad categories that we wanted to block in the account interface. It was also good that we could block ads on a URL basis.

IA: What resources do you use to manage your account?
Since we don’t need many resources to manage AdSense, only one person is managing it.

We hope you enjoyed learning about another publisher's AdSense journey. Stay tuned for more stories.

Posted by Kensuke Ishida, Strategic Partner Manager

Local success stories: Qué Tiempo grows by 30% by going mobile

The increase in smartphone sales and mobile traffic makes it more important every day for web publishers to build a mobile strategy for their businesses. Nevertheless, only 1 out of 10 AdSense publishers has a mobile-friendly version of their site. To encourage other publishers to go mobile, Ángel Hernández and Manuel Lebrón, owners of Qué Tiempo, shared their experience with us.

Qué Tiempo is a Spanish site that displays the weather forecast globally. Ángel and Manuel became AdSense publishers in 2007 and over the years, thanks to investing in their content, optimizing their ads and growing their traffic, they’ve been able to build a team of more than 20 employees and invest in new ventures.

Back in 2008, they could already see through Google Analytics that the traffic coming from mobile devices was growing, so they decided to develop quetiempo.es/mobile in-house.

Their mobile traffic has successfully grown by 20% over the last two years. New users are arriving to the mobile-friendly version of their site from mobile devices, while the desktop version is experiencing a 10% year over year growth. This shows that mobile traffic is additional, not substitutional, and mobile usage is complementary to desktop.

Thanks to the increase in their mobile traffic, together with a successful implementation of their ads, Qué Tiempo saw their daily earnings grow by 30%. The CTR of their mobile leaderboard 320x50 now doubles the CTR on their desktop ads. In addition, the CPC of their mobile ads is 100% higher than the CPC of the desktop site.

Most of Qué Tiempo’s efforts are now focused on improving their mobile site with features like geotargeting, which makes it possible to deliver accurate location-specific weather forecasts.  

“We encourage other publishers to build a mobile-friendly site, not only because they’ll quickly see their revenue grow thanks to the available Google AdSense mobile formats, but also because the future of your online business depends on your mobile strategy, a market with infinite possibilities.”

Posted by Alicia Escriba - Inside AdSense team

This information is current as of December 18th, 2012.

Social Fridays: Temptalia discovers the beauty of Google+

Every Friday, we’re posting Google+ tips to help publishers make the most of all of the features and resources available. Be sure to check back each week for the latest in our educational Social Fridays series!

Temptalia is one of the most popular beauty and makeup review blogs on the web, responsible for delivering the latest product information, tutorials and in-depth reviews to numerous fans. Given the blog’s global following, it’s easy to imagine a huge staff working behind the scenes, but in fact founder Christine Mielke still runs the blog herself and creates the vast majority of the site’s content.

In addition to running the blog herself, Christine maintains a focus on social media for Temptalia. Christine established the +Temptalia page on Google+ not long after the platform launched, and continues to encourage fans to +1 and link to the brand’s page. On average, six new posts appear on Temptalia every day, and each of these is promoted through Google+. She says content that includes photography shines on the channel, and pretty products and colorful cosmetics tend to grab more attention than skincare.

Google Analytics is key to helping Christine understand how each social media channel contributes to the blog’s traffic. Designed to make analysis easy, Social Sources reports in Analytics automatically segment referral traffic from hundreds of social networks. By using these reports, Christine can see that Google+ is among the top 10 social referrers to Temptalia, along with other Google properties including YouTube and Blogger.

But to get further insights into the audience, Christine looks beyond the numbers and goes straight to the users themselves. “We try to listen in what our readers are asking for, what they are looking at, what they are most excited about,” she explains. This user-focused approach continues to drive Temptalia’s success. Christine’s advice to those getting started with Google+ pages is to use the channel as a valuable research tool in understanding a site’s readership.
While Temptalia may be a small operation, its impact is significant – already Temptalia has over 600,000 followers on Google+. To read more about how Christine, a lifelong beauty enthusiast, is using Google+ to maintain, build and serve her blog’s audience, read the full case study.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

PubTalk: Katie and Gene Hamilton share how AdSense lets them be creative

AdSense let Phillip Martin become a full time artist and Todd Sarouhan write about and travel to Costa Rica.

Meet Katie and Gene Hamilton, the creators of diyornot.com. AdSense lets them be creative on their website and run their newspaper column from home. Watch this video to hear their AdSense story and keep an eye out for more publisher stories.


Tell us your AdSense story to get featured in future posts. Complete the sentence "Because of Google AdSense..." and send it to pubstories@google.com along with a photograph of what Google AdSense has given you. Be sure to include your publisher ID and main website URL. Please note we won't be able to respond to all submissions. We’re looking forward to reading your responses!

This post is part of the PubTalk series of conversations with Publishers

Posted by Julia Eckstein - Inside AdSense Team

PubTalk: Todd Sarouhan shares his AdSense story

AdSense gives publishers freedom. It lets publishers like Phillip Martin follow their passions and allows others to enjoy free time, be creative, and earn a living.  Each AdSense publisher has a story.

During our Google+ Hangout, publishers shared the value they find in using Google AdSense.

In this video, meet Todd Sarouhan, the creator of GoVisitCostaRica.com. AdSense lets him write about and travel to Costa Rica, a place he knows and loves.

Check our blog and AdSense +page to meet more AdSense publishers.



Tell us your AdSense story to get featured in future posts. Complete the sentence "Because of Google AdSense..." and send it to pubstories@google.com along with a photograph of what Google AdSense has given you. Be sure to include your publisher ID and main website URL. Please note we won't be able to respond to all submissions. We’re looking forward to reading your responses!

This post is part of the PubTalk series of conversations with Publishers

Posted by Julia Eckstein - Inside AdSense Team

PubTalk: Phillip Martin talks about becoming a full-time artist with Google AdSense

Every now and then we come across stories on how AdSense helps publishers succeed in different ways. It has helped grow small businesses like DocStoc, and also allowed people like Phillip Martin to follow their passion. Listen to Phillip tell his story below.



With AdSense, Phillip became a full-time artist creating clip art for his site and painting murals for charity in high-need communities.

Tell us your AdSense story and you might be featured in a future post. Send a photo of what you’ve been able to do with AdSense along with a quote that begins with “Because of Google AdSense….” to pubstories@google.com. Please also include your publisher ID and your main website URL as well. We are looking forward to hearing from you.

This post is part of the PubTalk series of conversations with publishers.

Posted by: Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Manager

PubTalk: Publishers discuss testing colors for their ads

We’re back with the third video from our Google+ Hangout with AdSense publishers! Have you tried our publisher suggestions of adding a third content ad unit or changing ad sizes and placements?

Another feature publishers Katie and Gene Hamilton of diyornot.com, David and Jan Moncrief of txantiquemall.com, and Voitek Klimczyk of simplyadditions.com tried was changing the text and background colors of their ad units. Experimenting with colors and tracking different ad styles provides insight on clickthrough rates and revenue uplift which will help you decide how to make future changes to your site. 

Watch this video to see how these publishers test colors and follow AdSense on Google+ to see how publishers use AdSense’s different customizable features.



This post is part of the PubTalk series of conversations with publishers.

Posted by Julia Eckstein - Inside AdSense Team