Taking your channels to a new limit

As you know, channels in your AdSense account are powerful reporting tools. Custom channels help you track ad performance and enable advertisers to target their ads for maximum impact, while URL channels allow you to deep-dive into the performance of AdSense for content on your subdomains.

To date, you’ve been limited to a total of 200 custom and URL channels, and many of you have asked for more. That’s why today, we’re very excited to announce that we’ve raised this limit to 500 custom channels per product, and 500 URL channels for AdSense for content. You’ll see your available custom channels count clearly displayed in the custom channels table, and also highlighted in the “create new custom channel” pop-up.

This change will enable you to expand your testing, and you’ll be able to do more granular analysis of how different formats, ad styles, and ad types perform. In addition, you can use your increased allocation of custom channels to create new ad placements for advertisers to target directly. This can help increase the amount you earn from placement targeting, as advertisers will be able to review the information you’ve provided about your ad units to match their campaigns to your site and audience. As the holidays approach and advertisers look to create additional placement targeted campaigns, now is the perfect time to set up more custom channels and ad placements.

Log in to your AdSense account today and visit your My ads tab to get started.

Posted by Alex Benton -- AdSense Engineering

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Understanding eCPM and RPM

Recently, we’ve heard some questions about the difference between eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions) and RPM (revenue per thousand impressions), as the older AdSense interface references eCPM and the newer version shows RPM. We’d like to clarify and let you know that the terms are referring to the same thing: both eCPM and RPM represent your estimated earnings for every 1000 impressions. To calculate this figure, divide your estimated earnings by the number of page views, impressions or queries that you received, then multiply by 1000. For example, if you earned an estimated $0.20 from 50 page views, then your page eCPM or RPM would equal ($0.20 / 50) * 1000 or $4.00.

Formula:
eCPM or RPM = (Estimated earnings / Number of page views) * 1000

To avoid confusion in the future, we’ll work to use only one term (RPM). RPM is a commonly used metric in advertising programs, and you may find it helpful for comparing revenue across different channels. You can learn a lot more about using RPM in our two part blog series (part 1 and part 2).

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

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New insight into how users are accessing your site

Today, we’re excited to offer you a brand new report that shows you the platforms that your visitors are using to access your site. You’ll be able to see a breakdown of your earnings based on where your traffic is coming from, which you can use to then optimize your site and give users a better experience. For instance, if you find that you’re receiving a high percentage of traffic from mobile devices, we’d encourage you to create a mobile version of your website and monetize it with AdSense for mobile content.

With this feature, you’ll be able to see your performance data broken out into these categories:

- Desktop - all traffic coming from desktop users
- High-end mobile devices - includes smartphone devices
- Other mobile devices - includes low end and mid-range phones

Try out this new report by navigating to the new interface and clicking on the Performance reports tab. Choose Platforms in the left navigation.


And as a quick reminder, we’re gradually moving away from the older version as we continue to focus on reporting improvements like these. Do you have feedback about this new report, or are there other reports you’d like to see? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments field below. If you haven’t yet tried the new interface, learn more about getting started today.

Posted by Vincent Zanotti - AdSense Engineering

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New Interface Wednesdays: Analyzing earnings by page views vs. ad requests

If you’ve spent time wandering around the Performance reports tab in the new interface, you've likely stumbled upon the Columns button. This button lets you customize your report to view earnings by page views, ad requests, matched requests and individual ad impressions. Selecting one of these options will change the columns and data shown in the table and graph. All other metrics, like CTR & RPM, will be based on the selection you choose.

We’ve received some questions about understanding these reports, especially when viewing by ‘page views’ and ‘ad requests’. To get an overall sense of your ad performance, view your earnings by ‘page views’. When looking at specific ad units or channels, however, we recommend using the ‘ad requests’ view. This will provide you the most accurate numbers for specific reports like ad units, ad sizes, custom channels, ad types, targeting types, and bid types.

Why is this? When analyzing the performance of individual ad units, the ‘page views’ view may show you inaccurate CTRs and RPMs if you have multiple ad units on one page. Each time a user views a page with multiple ad units, your reports will log only one page view and associate it with the first ad unit on the page. This means that when you’re viewing more granular reports by ‘page views’, the CTR and RPM of the second and third ad units on the page will be calculated based on “zero” page views, resulting in invalid data. By using the ‘ad request’ view when looking at specific ad units, you’ll ensure that you’re reviewing valid CTR and RPM values.

Try it now! Navigate to the new interface and click on the Performance reports tab, then select the ‘Columns’ button from any report to change the metrics you’re viewing.

Today marks the last post of our New Interface Wednesday series. We hope you're now more familiar with features available in the new interface, and how you can use them to better understand your ad performance and manage your account. You can review any of the previous posts in this series by visiting the New AdSense Interface label at any time, and learn more about specific features in our Help Center. As we continue to develop new features in the new interface, we'll be sure to post updates here on our blog, so please check back frequently!

Posted by Guillaume Ryder - AdSense Engineering

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New Interface Wednesdays: Multi-dimension reporting

We've been listening to your feedback for more reporting and better insights into your data and are pleased to share a powerful new feature called multi-dimension reporting. You can now add dimensions to your performance reports to sort and view data across multiple dimensions including ad units, ad sizes, and countries.

This new feature allows you to add up to three dimensions to your reports, including viewing a channel by date or an ad unit by targeting type. To add a dimension when you create or edit a report, click ‘Add dimension’ and select a dimension. The dimension selected is added to the table, so you will now see two dimensions. To add another dimension click ‘Add dimension’ and select again. You can also change and remove a dimension by clicking the drop-down for the dimension you want to change or remove.

Try multi-dimension reporting now to interactively explore your data and gain more performance insights. And stay tuned for more dimension combinations coming soon as we continue to improve reporting regularly.

This reporting capability is just one of many improvements we’re making to the new AdSense interface as we gradually move away from the older version. Please feel free to provide your feedback in the comments field below so we can continue to tailor the new interface to your needs! If you haven’t yet tried the new interface, learn more about getting started today.

Posted by Vincent Zanotti - AdSense Engineering

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New Interface Wednesdays: Chart custom channels

We understand that many of you analyze how ad units or channels perform compared to each other to help you decide whether you should make changes to improve performance. Now, in the new interface, we provide you a new way to analyze individual items against one another.

The chart feature will allow you to see custom channels or ad units as their own line on the graph, so you can easily identify spikes or dips. To see how your channels perform compared to each other, visit the Performance Reports tab, and click Custom channels. Depending on the number of channels you’re using, you might be asked to filter the list and then click Update report. Once your selected channels are listed below the graph, you'll see the Combine and Chart buttons.

Select a few channels and hit ‘Chart.’ Now you can see each specific channel in it’s own color on the graph. You can use the buttons next to the graph to change the metric for which you’re comparing the channels. Using this feature, you might notice that discrepancies between channel performance are more obvious on the graph than they are just viewing the numbers in the table.


Try it now! Navigate to the Performance reports tab, and select any report for which you want to chart items.

Help us figure out what you need and want in your reports by sending your feedback through the ‘Report issue’ link in the upper corner of your account or joining the conversations in our forum.

Posted by Guillaume Ryder - AdSense Engineer

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Got 2 minutes? Watch our Performance reports videos

We know the Performance reports tab of the new AdSense interface can seem a little overwhelming. With all that data at your fingertips, it’s hard to know where to start! To help you learn more about the reports you can run and how to customize the graphs, we’ve created two new videos that walk you through navigating our reporting features:

Check out some of our previous posts on the new AdSense interface to learn more about the different reports you can run to gain even more insight into your performance. If you missed last week’s videos on creating an ad unit and custom channels, be sure to check them out. We’ll see you next week for our last two videos on the Allow & block ads tab!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit - Inside AdSense team

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New Interface Wednesdays: New report available by country

Have you ever wanted to understand your AdSense performance based on where your users are? Now you can do just that with the countries report.

To report by country, simply navigate to the Performance reports tab. In the navigation sidebar, click on the "Countries" report. This report will show your site's earnings by visitor country.


Please note that the countries report won't contain historical earnings data prior to when this feature is made available in your account. You can view earlier click and impression data by countries, but historical earnings data won't be visible.

Try it now! Navigate to the Performance reports tab, and select the countries report.

Help us figure out what you need and want in your reports by sending your feedback through the ‘Report issue’ link in the upper corner of your account or joining the conversation in our forum.

Posted by Vincent Zanotti - AdSense Engineer

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The do's and dont's to increase cost per click

In previous blog posts we’ve explained what RPM is and how it's influenced by what users do when they come to your site. We want to take this conversation a step further today, and discuss some strategies that can potentially increase the cost per click (CPC) of your ad units.

Though we can’t quantify a good or bad CPC, there are several things you can do (and a few that you shouldn’t do) if you’re trying to increase the CPC of the ads on your site. Take a look at some of the best practices outlined below:

DOs:

• Enable all of your ad units to show both text and image/rich media ads. By increasing the number of advertisers competing for your ad units, the ad auction will make sure that the highest paying ad will be shown. Learn more from one of our publishers who made this change, and edit all your units in bulk with the new AdSense interface.
• Keep your filter list small so you don’t lower your revenue potential by blocking the highest-paying ads. Watch this video to better understand the ad auction and how to enable the most competition for your ad space.
• Increase the number of ads competing for your site by setting up your custom channels for placement targeting. Read this post for more details and instructions on how to set these up.
• The top-paying ads will be shown in the ad unit that appears first in your HTML code. To take advantage of this, you will need to understand which of your ad units has the highest clickthrough rate (CTR) by using custom channels. Then, you can easily change the code of your website to make sure that your top performing unit is the one with the highest-bidding ads.

DON’Ts:

• Some publishers believe that by writing about high paying keywords they will be able to improve the earnings on their site. This is not a practice that we encourage. In fact, we always recommend to write about subjects that you know well and that you are passionate about so you can continue to create the compelling, original content that attracts visitors to your site.
• Don't use scraped content. It’s a violation of our policies.
• Don’t create multiple accounts. Publishers are not permitted to maintain multiple AdSense accounts under the same payee name, and having the ad code of different accounts on the same website will not affect your CPC in any way.
• Finally, don’t try to manipulate the standard behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads in any way that is not explicitly permitted by Google. In case you have any doubt, read the AdSense program policies.

We hope this helps you optimize your AdSense implementation and maximize your CPC. Leave us a comment with the results!

Posted by Marco Viappiani - Inside AdSense team

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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

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