Join our policy refreshers

To help you better understand our program policies, we’re holding a number of policy refreshers online over the coming weeks. In these sessions, we’ll take a closer look at some of the policies we’re asked most about and share some tips on how to stay compliant.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll review how you can keep your content compliant with an emphasis on:
  • User generated content
  • Copyrighted content 
Check out our full listing of recently recorded sessions as well as the schedule for upcoming sessions - and don’t forget to register.

Posted by Pamela Malone - AdSense Policy Specialist
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Google+ helps over 1.6 million Guardian followers read (and share and debate and post) all about it

While the Guardian started back in 1821 as a black-and-white-and-read-all-about-it newspaper, today it’s evolved into a global entity that’s pioneering a multi-platform, digital-first approach. In this context, the Guardian champions a unique, open model of journalism, built upon the notion that the open exchange of information, ideas and opinion can bring about change.

Given this philosophy, it comes as no surprise that social media plays a central and growing role in the brand’s work. Google+ offered the opportunity for the Guardian to reach and connect with both users of Guardian.co.uk and new potential readers. Now with over 1.6 million followers, the Guardian’s Google+ page is aimed at creating a conversation around the Guardian’s content, reaching new audiences, and finding out more about readers and their interests.












The team posts different types of content (video, photos, text, front pages) and items from different sections as a way of seeing what their Google+ audience responds to. Science and technology stories are particularly popular among their readers, as well as world news topics and hot political stories. According to the Guardian, the Google+ feature Ripples has proved extremely useful in tracking the life cycle of posts and helping to identify key influencers.

In addition, the Hangouts functionality in Google+ has emerged as a key benefit. In making use of this high quality multi-user video chat feature, the digital engagement team has run several Hangouts on a mixture of topics, from fracking to the future of the open internet. “For us one of the most interesting aspects of Hangouts is the ability to connect people from across the world in a live chat,” says the Guardian’s Laura Oliver. “We're also exploring them as a way to allow our readers to pose questions and get even closer to the subjects of a story or discussion.”

As for the future, Laura is exploring how to use Hangouts in the most inclusive way possible so that debates can encompass questions from all across its audience.  To learn more about the Guardian’s success with Google+, read the full case study.

For more publisher success stories and tips on making the most of Google+ pages for your business, check out our Social Fridays blog series.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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10 for 10 publisher stories: Northlight Images develops a successful photography business

In each of the 10 weeks leading up to AdSense’s 10th anniversary on June 18th, we’ll be sharing a new publisher success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to submit your own success story to our team. 

Meet Keith Cooper, a commercial photographer based in Leicester, England. He runs Northlight Images, a site that was originally intended to promote his business, but which has grown to include hundreds of photography-related articles and reviews. The site has now become one of the world’s top 40 photography sites, receiving over five million unique visitors a year.



Keith signed up for AdSense in 2005 after exploring a number of options. The income from the program has enabled him to focus on the areas of photography he’s interested in. “AdSense is solid and dependable,” he says, “and it earns me 80 to 90 percent of my advertising revenue.”

To maximize the site’s effectiveness, Keith also uses a variety of other Google products. “Google+ is the one that really does it,” he says. “It brings in people who are interested in the topic and looking for specific information, so they spend more time on the site and ultimately increase my revenue.”

If you’d like to read more of Keith’s story after watching the video above, check out the full case study. There’s only one more post left in our ‘10 for 10’ series -- be sure to join us back here next week for our final story!

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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10 for 10 publisher stories: El Androide Libre moves its business forward

In each of the 10 weeks leading up to AdSense’s 10th anniversary on June 18th, we’ll be sharing a new publisher success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to submit your own success story to our team. 

Madrid-based elandroidelibre.com (“the free Android”) is a Spanish-language blog that features news, reviews, games and other apps for Android smartphone users. Launched in 2009, it now employs six people and receives 6.5 million visits each month.

Administrator and editor Paolo Álvarez got started with AdSense right from the start, which has accounted for around 40 percent of the site’s income. “Much of elandroidelibre’s growth is due to AdSense,” Paolo says. “We regard it as an essential tool that’s helping us to set up more blogs, take on more staff, and earn more revenue.” So far, he’s been highly satisfied with the ads appearing on his site, and notes that the 300 x 250 Medium Rectangle and the 728 x 90 Leaderboard formats work particularly well.

Paolo also uses other Google products to manage the site. He relies on Analytics to gain a better understanding of the site’s visitors, and also DoubleClick for Publishers, Google’s free ad serving solution, to manage his online advertising more effectively and segment traffic from different countries.

Hear more from Paolo in the full case study. We’ll see you next week for our next ‘10 for 10’ publisher success story as we continue counting down to AdSense’s 10th anniversary.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
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Policy refresher: family-safe content

For our next installment of our policy refresher series, we’re talking about a topic we’re frequently asked about...adult content and keeping AdSense family-safe.

We’ve made a commitment to our users, advertisers and publishers to keep the AdSense network family-safe.  A general rule of thumb when it comes to the adult content policy is: if you wouldn’t want to share this content at a family dinner or view it in your boss’s office, you shouldn’t place AdSense code on it.

Let’s take a closer look at our adult content policy:



Still have questions? Don’t forget that we’ll be hosting a number of Hangouts on Air as part of our policy refreshers series.

Check the schedule below to sign up for our Hangout on Air about adult content.

View our Hangouts schedule

Posted by Pamela Malone - AdSense Policy Team
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Join our Policy Refreshers

In order to help you better understand our policies, we’ll be holding a series of policy refreshers online in the coming weeks. We’ll discuss the policies we’re asked about most, explain how we enforce them and share tips on how to stay compliant.

In this series, we’ll review:
  • Our general policies
  • How to keep your content family- safe
  • How to ensure your ad placements are policy compliant 
Check the schedule below to sign up for our Hangouts on Air, and look out for more blog posts on AdSense policies in the coming weeks.

View our Hangouts schedule

Posted by Pamela Malone - AdSense Policy Specialist
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AdSense now speaks Vietnamese

The Google AdSense team is pleased to announce the official launch of Vietnamese language support for AdSense for content.

Why Vietnamese language is important to Google
Vietnam is one of the fastest growing online markets in the world, with huge potential ahead. The online landscape has evolved rapidly in the last few years, becoming as vibrant and colorful as the streets of Hanoi.

We hope that introducing Vietnamese language support will help fuel even more great quality content creation, while helping advertisers reach out to a booming online user base through display ads.

How to get started
  1. Please start by familiarizing yourself with the AdSense program policies. Need a refresher? Update your understanding of the policies by taking this AdSense policy quiz.
      
  2. Sign up for an Adsense account by enrolling your Vietnamese language website.
      
  3. Once your AdSense account has been approved, congratulations, simply add the AdSense code to your site to start displaying relevant, contextually targeted ads.
Chào mừng đến với chương trình adsense!

Posted by Emanuele Brandi - Product Sales Lead
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A tenfold revenue increase in just three months - nanapi.jp's success story


nanapi.jp is a Japanese site which provides helpful tips for everyday life.  From tips on romance to how to use web services, it has all sorts of advice for everyone.

Recently, nanapi started using AdSense and has seen a steady revenue increase. We spoke to Mr. Furukawa, the CEO, and Mr. Saito, the Director of Ads, and asked them about their experiences with AdSense.

■ Inside AdSense (IA): Please tell us the history of nanapi and how you built your site.  
We established nanapi in September, 2009.  We realized that there was a need for an information site where people could find tips for everyday life, so we decided to provide this content in the form of articles on various topics.

Initially, we only had a desktop site but now we’ve created a mobile site for smartphones too. As of August 2012, we receive 42 million page views and 9 million unique users per month.  The number of unique users is bigger on the desktop site, but the smartphone site receives more page views.

■ IA: How and why did you start using AdSense?
When we first established the site, we decided not to implement ads as we wanted to focus on creating quality content first. After our number of monthly visitors reached 10 million, we implemented a medium rectangle (300x250) in the upper right corner of the site.  As a result, we earned higher revenue than we’d anticipated.

We were surprised by the quality of the ads and how well they matched the content of our site. We’d been concerned that ads might damage the design or usability of our site, but we didn’t feel that way about the site post-implementation.  That’s why we decided to use AdSense more.

■ IA: What results did you see after implementing AdSense?
We started to use AdSense more after the pilot in April 2012.  More specifically, we switched from another ad network to AdSense, and increased the number of ads per page. Our revenue increased more than ten times in just three months!

nanapi covers a lot of topics, and it can be difficult to show relevant ads, but with AdSense's contextual targeting, relevant ads are shown automatically.  People visit nanapi before they take action, and that's why it's natural for our visitors to click relevant ads and leave the site. We implemented 336x280 ads below our articles to capture this kind of user behavior.

■ IA: Did you have any issues after implementing Google AdSense?
We didn’t have any difficulty in implementing or setting up AdSense. Compared to the ad network we used before, AdSense’s account interface is easy to use. It was also very easy to implement AdSense on our smartphone site. We pasted the ad code from the account interface, just as we’d done for the desktop site. It’s very good that AdSense allows us to check performance by platform too.

As for resources, we only need one person to manage AdSense. The account interface is very easy to use. For example, when we experiment with changing an ad format, we can check its performance immediately.

We were concerned that ads would deteriorate the usability of our website.  However, ad quality was very good and we didn’t have to worry.  Since the ads match our content, they enhance the information on the site and we haven’t received a single complaint from our users

■ IA: Please tell us about your plans for the future.
We plan to keep adding more and more articles to our site. Our goal is to make users think that “if you visit nanapi, you’ll find answers for all kinds of topics.” From an ads perspective, we’re considering using DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) to manage our ad units more easily.

Posted by Ayaka Sakakibara - Strategic Partner Manager
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New In-Ads Notice Label and Icon for the Google Display Network in Europe

(Cross posted to the Inside AdWords Blog

Last year in the U.S., we launched the AdChoices Icon on the Google Display Network. AdChoices is an industry standard "i" icon that expands to “AdChoices” when users move their cursor over the icon. Giving users clear notice about the ads they see is a high priority for Google and for many in the online advertising industry at large. Users who click this label are taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they see.

We’re now rolling out the AdChoices feature across Europe, supporting industry-wide efforts to provide more information to consumers.  We'll soon start to change our “Ads By Google” in-ads notice icon to a new icon that expands to an "AdChoices" label. These notifications were developed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB Europe)-led Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising to proactively give users notice and choice about the ads they see. With the adoption of a common icon users will see on ads across the web, we hope to show our support for the industry-wide initiative and to increase users' understanding about their choices.

Over the next few weeks, we'll start showing the new icon and label on most ad formats across the majority of European-language sites. Over time, we’ll expand the notice to ensure that all European-language publisher sites in the Google Display Network come within the Self-Regulatory Framework. This will be the single largest rollout of the "AdChoices" label to date, and we're encouraged that others in the industry are also adopting the label.

Users who click on the "AdChoices" label will be taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they are shown. This page will also link to the Ads Preferences Manager, where users can control the types of interest-based ads they see on the Google Display Network. Our tests of this new icon and label showed that they should not have any effect on ad performance. We think this rollout will help users better understand the ads they're seeing, and we look forward to seeing widespread adoption of this label throughout the industry.

Posted by Jason Bigler - Product Management Director

AdSense now available for websites in Slovenian and Estonian

If you have a website in Slovenian or Estonian, you'll now be able to earn money through the AdSense program. To get started, review the basics of AdSense and our policies, then sign up for a free account. Already an active AdSense publisher? Simply place the AdSense ad code on your sites in Slovenian or Estonian to start showing targeted ads.

If your application for AdSense with a Slovenian or Estonian website was previously disapproved for being in an unsupported language, you’re welcome to resubmit it by logging in with the original login details you provided.

For now, you’ll be able to access the interface and help resources in English, as we heard from your feedback that you’d prefer to begin using the program in the meantime. Rest assured that we’re working to provide help content in these languages in the near future.

We look forward to welcoming our Slovenian and Estonian publishers to the AdSense program!

Posted by Ulrike Jung -- Product Sales Lead