Boost your website performance using tips from our experts

Google Analytics can be an incredibly valuable source of information for AdSense publishers,  and today we’re announcing a new way for you to use those insights to improve your site’s performance. Google Analytics has created a data sharing setting to give you the option to let our optimization specialists proactively analyze your Analytics account data to find new ways for you to grow your business online. We’ll help you understand how people find your site, how they navigate through it, and how they become loyal users - and we’ll help you take advantage of Analytics features like Content Experiments to help you determine the most optimal layout for your site.

If you’ve linked your AdSense account with Analytics, opt in to the Account specialists data sharing setting under the Account Settings tab. Then we’ll be able to build targeted recommendations to help you improve the user experience on your site and monetize with AdSense more effectively.

Additionally, if you want to help make our other products work better for content publishers like yourself, you can opt in to the existing With other Google products setting under the same Account Settings tab. Sharing your Analytics data with other Google products can help us create new publisher solutions to achieve your website goals. For example, AdWords could recommend more effective keywords based on an understanding of how users behave on your site or AdSense could suggest more effective ad placements.

You can find full instructions for updating your Analytics settings in the Analytics Help Center.

Update your Analytics settings

Your website data will not be used for any purposes other than those that you specify in your settings, which you may change at any time. If you haven’t linked your AdSense account with Analytics, you can learn more about using Analytics with AdSense in our Help Center.

Finally, to receive more targeted optimization tips, make sure you’re opted into Performance Suggestions in your AdSense email preferences. We look forward to helping you grow your site!

Posted by Anitra Appa - AdSense Optimization Specialist
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A new look for personalized ad unit optimization recommendations in your account

Just over a year ago, we introduced recommendations for individual AdSense for content ad units, directly in your account. In addition to the personalized tips you might receive via email, these recommendations provide specific suggestions for improving your account performance by changing ad unit type or format settings of individual ad units.

Based on your feedback, we’ve further improved the look and feel of these recommendations. Next to the specific optimization suggestion, you’ll now also see a graph that visualizes your expected revenue gain from the suggested optimization. The new graph allows you to assess instantly what you might gain from the suggested optimization and whether or not it’s worth updating your implementation. However, we can only perform the simulations and generate recommendations for your ad units if you have created your ad units directly via the ‘My ads’ tab in your AdSense account. If you're still using the older AdSense code, please upgrade your ad code following the instructions in our Help Center.

Our recommendations are based on ad auction simulations for a specific ad unit using different ad type and/or ad format settings. We’ll only show a recommendation if our simulation predicts that a change of settings consistently results in higher revenue for that ad unit. Please note that the new design including graph and total projected revenue uplift will only be visible for new recommendations. Recommendations generated before today’s date will remain in the old design.

We hope that the improved design of our recommendations in the account helps you continue to optimize your account performance. Let us know what you think about the new design by sharing your feedback on the AdSense +page.

Posted by Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager
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Your optimization checklist, Part 2

Last week we covered some oldie-but-goodie optimization tips. Today, we’ll focus on some advanced tips to help you bring your AdSense strategy to the next level. We encourage you to review the full list and check off items as you complete them.

1. Ensure your site has a positive user experience: User experience (UX) can make or break your site’s success. With many other sites offering similar services, it’s important to differentiate your site in the eyes of your users by providing a better experience. Because a user’s attention is limited, you'll only have a few seconds to provide a good experience and quickly guide the user to what they’re looking for. Read these three blog posts to learn our top five UX tips.
2. Make your first ad unit count: AdSense loads the highest paying ad on a page first, so to improve your revenue make sure that your best performing ad unit is the first in your HTML code. Make the changes by following these steps.
3. Fix crawler errors: Ensure that our AdSense crawler can accurately crawl your site so that your ads are as relevant and useful as possible. Visit the Account settings section of your account to see if you have crawler errors and read this blog post for details on the steps to take.
4. Go mobile: It’s clear that mobile is growing rapidly. Ensure you have a mobile strategy for your site, and use our tips and tools to help you along the way.
5. Create a Google+ page to connect with your users: Google+ offers a number of tools to help you reach audiences in new ways. On your +page, you can share your articles, photos, YouTube videos, and even host live broadcasts. Your +page will also include a +1 button that users can click to recommend you. Think about your Google+ page as a way to complement your site, allowing you to grow and measure user engagement before directing users back to your pages for more of your great content. Get started today by reading our Social Fridays blog post series. 
6. Use DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP) Small Business: As your online advertising business continues to grow, you may have started working with other ad networks or doing deals directly with advertisers. DFP Small Business is a free, Google-hosted solution to help streamline how ads are served on your site when you’re working with AdSense alongside other ad partners. With DFP Small Business, you have a vast array of features that give you more control over when, where, and how your ads serve.

That concludes our two-part optimization checklist series. Please visit our AdSense +page to let us know your experience with these optimization tips.

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

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Your optimization checklist, Part 1

With a fresh start to the year, now is a great time to review your AdSense strategy to ensure you’re making the most out of your ads. With that in mind, we’re kicking off a two-part optimization checklist series to help you increase your earning potential. In this first post, we’ll review some oldie-but-goodie tips; take a look, check off the items that you’ve already covered, and see if there’s anything you may have missed.

1. Increase ad coverage: Placing additional ad units on your site can have a big impact on your earnings. You can put up to three standard AdSense for content ad units (note only one 300x600), three link units and two AdSense for search boxes on each page of your site. Sometimes publishers find it difficult to decide whether an additional ad unit makes sense for their site. Watch this short video to help you make sure you're following best practices, as outlined on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, when placing new ad units on your site. As always, it’s important to consider the amount of ads in relation to the quality content on your site. 
2. Use recommended ad sizes: As a rule of thumb, wider ad sizes tend to outperform their taller counterparts, due to their reader-friendly format. If positioned well, wide ad sizes can increase your earnings significantly. The sizes we've found to be the most effective are the 728X90 Leaderboard, the 336x280 Large Rectangle, the 300x250 Medium Rectangle, and the 160x600 Wide Skyscraper. Keep in mind that while these ad sizes typically perform well, you should use the size that best complements your pages.
3. Show both text and image ads: Image ads compete in the same auction for your ad space that text ads do. So, choosing to display both text and image ads increases the competition for ads to appear on your site, and may help you earn more. Check this case study to see how displaying both text and image ads helped one publisher. You can also find instructions how to enable image ads in our Help Center.
4. Experiment with ad color combinations: Choosing the right ad styles can mean the difference between ads your users will notice -- and click -- and ads they'll skip right over. There are three techniques you can use to design ad styles that will be successful for your site: blend, compliment and contrast.  Experiment with ad color combinations to find the best fit for your site. See this Help Center article for additional information. 
5. Ensure optimal ad placement: The placement of your ads plays a big role in revenue earning potential and user experience. While we often recommend placing an ad above the fold, it’s also important that users can easily find the content they are looking for. Check out this resource for more tips on ad placement, and see our heat map for even more information. 
6. Add a search box (or two): As mentioned in #1, you can put up two AdSense for search boxes (along with three standard AdSense for content ad units and three link units) on each page of your site.  AdSense for search is a free product that lets you place a Custom Search Engine on your site to provide users with web search. You'll also earn revenue from relevant ads on the search results page.

We hope you find these tips useful. If you have additional tips to share, or would like to let us know about your experience with using an optimization tip, leave a comment on our AdSense +page. Stay tuned for our second part of the series, where we’ll cover some advanced optimization tips.

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

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HiPenpal.com makes more than 50% of AdSense revenue through mobile

HiPenpal.com is an international penpal website that facilitates the exchange of messages between people from different countries across all ages. Since its inception in 2006, HiPenpal.com, a Korea based company, has grown its membership base to 180,000 and has gained popularity in the United States and Japan.

Today, we’re going to highlight HiPenpal.com’s mobile journey, which has resulted in more than 50% of their total AdSense revenue coming from their mobile site.

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You’ve been a publisher with AdSense since 2006. How did you find out about AdSense and what has your experience been to date?

I got to know about AdSense when I was web-surfing through foreign websites. At that time, I managed various websites but because I did not have an ad sales team, I had a hard time with ad orders. However, with the help of AdSense, I no longer had to worry about this. I didn’t have to manage orders and still received good quality ads through AdSense which allowed me to focus on content management. The biggest advantage with AdSense, is that the ads are highly relevant to users, which has resulted in high user engagement and high earnings. All of my businesses depend on Google AdSense for revenue.  I’m very satisfied with the service and revenue that AdSense has been able to provide because it has replaced the need for an expensive sales force.

When did you first build your mobile site and how has this affected traffic and user satisfaction for HiPenpal.com?

In the 2008, I revamped HiPenpal.com and created a mobile site along with it. At that time, since most users had feature phones, the site was not actively used. However, since 2009, with the spread of smartphones, the usage of the mobile site has been steadily increasing. Currently, 40% of our total traffic is accessing our mobile site and the users are extremely satisfied with it.

What things did you consider when building the mobile site and what type of investment was needed to make this happen?

In the 2008, I didn’t know much about mobile web development, so building the initial site took about six months. I wanted to make sure that the site displayed perfectly across all mobile phones and browsers, so I focused heavily on the structure of the site. There are cases when your site displays perfectly on one type of mobile device, but is distorted on another. In order to prevent this, I used a mobile web emulator or browser plug-in to perform quality checks during the development of the mobile site. Before launch, I checked the mobile site on the actual mobile devices. I invested in several devices with different operating systems in order to perform bug fixes and improve quality.

Additionally, I tried to simplify the navigational tree structure, so that people could easily access the desired pages with a simple operation. Most importantly, I was able to attract more mobile traffic by adding mobile-specific content.

How did users respond to ads on your mobile site?

We implemented mobile ads in 2008 and then upgraded to the smartphone-specific ad unit in 2009, when it was first launched. The 300x250 medium rectangle is positioned towards the bottom of the page, so that it will not distract from content engagement. On the other hand, the 320x50 mobile banner is posted on the top of the page, so that it would attract more attention.

Because smartphone ad units are now integrated with general AdSense for content (AFC), AdSense implementation has become more convenient.

We have not received any feedback about the mobile ads on the site, which I’m guessing means that users are not being inconvenienced by this implementation. Our users are very vocal when they find that the ads are distracting to the use of the site.

How does mobile revenue compare to your overall monetization?

Mobile revenue is increasing proportionally to the growth of mobile users. Currently, 40% of of total traffic (over 50% including tablet impressions) is coming from smartphones and resulting in over 50% of total revenue.

The 300x250 medium rectangle is generating the majority of revenue today, due to its high user engagement. Initially, I hesitated in implementing this ad unit, due to its large size, but now highly recommend it to other publishers. Since December 2009, the monthly revenue has increased about 100 times.

What advice do you have for publishers who have concerns about implementing mobile ads?

I believe that publishers who have concerns about mobile ads are actually hesitating about managing a mobile web site. However, mobile is a technology that cannot be ignored, more and more users are accessing the Internet through mobile devices instead of the PC. In my opinion, ignoring mobile is the same as ignoring half of the users. Furthermore, ignoring mobile web ads is the same as throwing out half of your revenue. If you don’t want to miss out on half of your revenue opportunity, do not hesitate. I encourage you to start from today.


Posted by Junho Jung, Publisher Relations Specialist

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5 Principles of User Experience, Part 3

This is the final post of a three-part series highlighting five user experience principles to keep in mind when designing your site. Using these principles will help provide a great experience for users on your site. To see these principles applied to an AdSense publisher’s site, we'll host a live Google+ Hangout on October 9th at 10:30am PT with an AdSense publisher. We will be applying these very principles to help improve their site! Go to the Google AdSense G+ page on the 9th to see it live!

In our first and second posts in this series we discussed how to identify your user’s goals, the structure of your site, how to help guide users through your site and a few tips for a better experience on mobile. In this post we’ll provide our fifth and final user experience tip and lay out some strategies for converting a casual user into a loyal one.

5. Turn casual visitors into loyal users

So far we’ve discussed ways to make sure you understand what your users are looking for and how to present it to them. But you may be wondering how do you keep users coming back again and again? After all, repeat business is the lifeblood of businesses both online and offline. To get users to return, you need to do more than just answer their questions; you need to give them reasons to return to your site.

Tips:
Below are a few ways you can turn one-time visitors into repeat visitors:

• New content: First and foremost, make sure to constantly provide new, high-quality content. Next, make sure you are showcasing new content on your top landing pages.
• Related content: Show users similar content elsewhere on your site. Create a section that links users to popular content on the same subject. This will drive more engagement.
• Social: Make it easy for users to connect with you via their favorite social networks. All major social networks have widgets that you can put on your site to allow users to follow you. Once you have them make sure you push out your most popular content to drive return visits.
• Email: Make sure you have a way for users to subscribe to your email list for updates and/or a newsletter.
• User engagement: Make it easy for users to interact with your content, through forums, a rating system or recommendations.

Example:
If you have a deal site where users can search for deals, you can first prompt them to sign up to be notified via email when new offers that match their interests are added to the site. You can also showcase how many people recommend a deal so users see which deals are popular. 

We hope you enjoyed this three part series on user experience and we welcome your comments below!

Thinking about implementing some of these changes? We’d love to hear about it! Let us know what you changed in the comments section below.

Don’t forget to check out the User Experience Google+ Event Page on October 9th at 10:30am PST/1:30pm EST to join a Hangout On Air and see a real AdSense publisher put these principles in action!

Posted by David Richards - Google AdSense

Resources:Get a Google+ Page  - http://www.google.com/+/business/
Allow users to subscribe to your updates via Google+.

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5 Principles of User Experience, Part 2

This is the second of a three-part series highlighting five user experience principles to keep in mind when designing your site. Using these principles will help provide a great experience for users on your site. After the next post we’ll host a live Google+ Hangout on October 9th at 10:30am PT with an AdSense publisher. We will be applying these principles to help improve their site! Visit the AdSense Google+ page on the 9th to see it live!

In our last post about user experience, we provided two tips to help you identify some goals for your site and your users.

In this post we’ll share another two tips; you’ll learn how to steer users around your site and how different use cases (desktop or mobile) require different setups.

3. Ensure that users know what action to take on your site

Users should always know what action to take next on your site. When a user lands on your page it should be very clear what they should pay attention to first, second, and so on. There should also be a clear next action for them to take whether it's clicking “buy” to make a purchase or reading a related article.

Tips:
Consider these points when creating meaningful calls to action:

• Emphasis: Give emphasis to the call to action by its size, color, contrast and/or use of white space.
• Simple: Don’t clutter your page with too many different actions. Really think about what you want your users to do and prioritize those actions in your design.
• Incentive: Give an incentive to take action. This can be seen in discounts, gifts, raffle entry or access to more content
• Proximity: Make sure your call to action is in a logical placement on the page. For example, if the page features an article, you may want to put the call to action below the article.
• Consistency: Have your call to action show throughout the site and keep its appearance consistent. 

4. Tailor your experience to your users’ situation

Your site needs to provide a great experience to users whenever and wherever they need it. It’s important to put some thought into how your users use your site differently in different situations. Be sure to consider their time constraints and whether they are on a mobile device or a computer.

Tips:
Use these tips to help you think about the use cases your users might experience:

• Situation: What situation is the user in that caused them to seek out information on your site?
• Limit features: The mobile version of your site should only include the core features of your site that will help your users find the information they’re looking for. Save the other advanced features for your desktop site where your users have a little bit more time.
• Speed: Users only have a couple of seconds so make sure your site loads lightning fast. Google’s Page Speed tool can help you optimize your load time.
• Forgiveness: Users make mistakes, especially on mobile. Let them easily undo and return to where they were, without having to use the back button.

Example:
Suppose you’re a restaurant review site. How does a mobile user’s behavior differ from that of a desktop user? First off, mobile users are probably on the move; they could even be walking down the street as they browse your site. They won’t have time to navigate through several pages of restaurants like they do on the desktop site. They expect your site to use the phone’s GPS to locate them and show them popular restaurants nearby based on their search. Your site can even optimize the review experience for mobile by showing the most popular short reviews since users don’t have time to read long reviews.

Remember, it’s all about thinking about the situation that the user is in when they reach your site and tailoring the user experience to match.

Check in tomorrow and we’ll talk about generating return visits to your site and creating customer loyalty through a great UX.

Posted by David Richards - Google AdSense

Resources:
Google Analytics Events  - http://www.google.com/analytics/
Measure the impact of design changes and monitoring the continued usage of your site will keep you updated on how your users are interacting with your site, and how their usage can shift, change or evolve over time. Google Analytics Events will help you measure these changes by measuring clicks on pre-defined elements of the page.

Site Speed Tool - https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/
Google has provided some great tools to helping improve your site speed.

How to GoMo - http://www.howtogomo.com/
Google has created a quick tool to see how your website looks on a mobile phone. It also provides some great resources to help build your mobile site.

DUDA mobile - http://gomo.dudamobile.com/
Duda Mobile is a partner with Google GoMo and allows you to create your mobile site in minutes. 

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5 Principles of User Experience, Part 1

This is the first of a three-part series highlighting five user experience principles to keep in mind when designing your site. Applying these principles will help provide a great experience for users on your site. After the series we’ll host a live Google+ Hangout On Air on October 9th at 10:30am PT, when we'll put these principles in action by helping an AdSense publisher make UX improvements to their site. Visit the AdSense Google+ page on the 9th to see it live!

User experience can make or break your site’s success. With many other sites offering similar services, it’s important to differentiate your site in the eyes of your users by providing a better experience. Because a user’s attention is limited, you'll only have a few seconds to provide a good experience and quickly guide the user to what they’re looking for.

Today, we've provided our first two important design tips and techniques to help you identify goals for both your site and its users.

1. Focus on your users’ goals

Step back and first ask yourself, “How can I give my users what they want while getting what I want?” The first step in answering this is to figure out what your users’ goals are, what your goals are and how they work together. You’ll need to think about what your site’s core offerings and strengths are. We recommend keeping this to one or two strengths. Though your site may be good at many things, you should focus on what it’s great at.

Tips:
Some questions to ask yourself when starting out are:

• How are your users finding your site?
• What are they looking for?
• Do you give them what they want?
• What do you want from your users?
• How do you get a desired response from them?

Example:
You’re a tech news site and after considering each of the questions above, you determine that:

• Most of your users come from search engines and land on the article page
• Your user is looking for the content of the article they searched for
• You show them a full page article on the landing page
• Your goal is to keep the user engaged, so that they stay longer and see more content
• The answer to here is the real challenge. You need to prove to the user that there’s other valuable content on your site and encourage them to read more. This can be accomplished by including some related or popular articles at the bottom of each article.

2.  Employ a clear structure to guide users

No matter what page a user lands on, you only have a few seconds on that first screen with the space above the fold to get their attention and show them what you’re all about. Employing a simple hierarchy will give your page a clear structure that will guide users and highlight what you want them to see.

Another thing to keep in mind is the information architecture of your site. Users are able to recognize familiar pages from unfamiliar based on the consistent way you organize and display information on your site. If your website’s structure is not logical or what they expect, users will be lost and not sure where to go next. This adds to overall frustration and can lead to users leaving your site.
Tips:
Use these simple design tips to create a structure for your page:

• Contrast: Using color, saturation, or opacity to juxtapose elements on the page.
• Size: Size is one of the easiest design levers to guide your users. Don’t be afraid to use BIG and BOLD elements to draw users’ attention to the most important information on the page.
• Alignment: Elements that share a common axis appear related.
• Whitespace: Drawing attention to specific elements by leaving empty space around them. It also makes your design more appealing to the eye.
• Grid: Using a simple grid to layout elements on your page will create a sense of order and structure.

Example:
Newspaper sites usually do a great job creating structure through hierarchy. The breaking story or most important piece of news dominates the screen. This ensures it’s the first thing you see. Major headlines from other sections are also big and bold so a user that’s browsing can quickly and easily pick them out. The size and contrast of photos and headlines helps to guide users through the page.

Thanks for reading and check back tomorrow for our second installment of Publisher Insights!

Posted by: David Richards - Google AdSense

Resources:   
Google Analytics: Google’s free tool to help you measure your traffic and how users are currently using your site. Additionally, it can help you test how changes to your site affect performance.
Webmaster Guidelines: Creating a clear hierarchy and sitemap will help Google crawlers find and rank content on your site.

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PubTalk: Publishers choose Google AdSense because...

Why do publishers choose Google AdSense? In the past, we’ve heard from businesses like Concertboom and AlloExpat.com about how AdSense helped them grow their businesses and expand their audiences.
In a recent Google+ Hangout with publishers, we asked simplyadditions.com’s Voitek Klimczyk, txantiquemall.com’s David and Jan Moncrief, and diyornot.com’s Katie and Gene Hamilton why they started using AdSense and why they’re still with us. Their response? AdSense makes it easier for these publishers to do what they love.

Watch this video to hear more and keep an eye out for more publisher stories on our blog and AdSense +page.

Did you miss our previous PubTalk posts? See what these and other publishers have to say about ad sizes and placements, adding ad units, and testing colors in our optimization tip videos from the same Hangout.

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

Posted by Julia Eckstein - Inside AdSense Team

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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

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Follow our AdSense +page and catch our upcoming Hangouts On Air

We started our AdSense +page a few months ago to connect with you and regularly share information. Since the launch of the +page, you’ve provided great feedback and made it clear that you’re constantly yearning to learn more. Over the next couple of months, we’ll be hosting a series of Hangouts On Air to provide you with additional information and help you build connections within the publisher community. We’ll be covering a variety of topics, including how to:

• Fix crawler errors
• Establish a Google+ strategy
• Use DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business
• Understand your AdSense payments
• Navigate performance reports
• Implement optimization tips

Be sure to follow the AdSense +page to learn about the specific dates and times of the Hangouts On Air. We’ll also post the recorded videos to our YouTube channel, in case you’re not able to watch a live session.

We hope to Hangout with you soon!

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

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PubTalk: AdSense publishers discuss adding content ad units to their pages

Welcome to the second video in our publisher feedback series. Hopefully you’ve been able to test ad sizes and placements since our last post!

During the same Hangout, publishers Al Gross of infosports.com,  Katie and Gene Hamilton of diyornot.com, and Voitek Klimczyk of simplyadditions.com discussed how adding additional content ad units to their pages significantly helped increase their AdSense revenue. In the past, we’ve seen publishers increase their earnings by 400% by adding a maximum of three content units to their pages.

Watch this video to see why these publishers made the change and continue to check our blog for more optimization tips. To hear what other publishers have to say and to get involved in the conversation, follow AdSense on Google+.

Visit our Help Center to learn more about best practices for balancing ad units and page content, and to learn how to measure the effect of multiple ad units.

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

Posted by Julia Eckstein - Inside AdSense Team

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PubTalk: AdSense publishers talk about testing ad sizes and placements on their site

Many of you have opted in to receive our customized suggestions about your AdSense implementation. Wonder what publishers have to say after they’ve implemented one of these suggestions? Now you can hear from the publishers themselves in our new Google AdSense optimization series.

Five publishers recently participated in a Google+ Hangout with AdSense to share their stories and some of their top optimization tips. In this video, publishers Gene and Katie Hamilton of diyornot.com, David and Jan Moncrief of txantiquemall.com, and Voitek Klimczyk of simplyadditions.com discuss how changing ad unit sizes and placements has increased their AdSense revenue and clickthrough rates.

Visit our Help Center to learn more about recommended ad formats and placements to help you decide which changes you’d like to make next.

Check out this video and keep an eye out for the rest of the series!



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

Posted by Julia Eckstein - Inside AdSense Team

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Become a DFP expert using our new DFP Academy

As your online advertising business continues to grow, you may have started working with other ad networks or doing deals directly with advertisers. DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business is a free, Google-hosted solution to help streamline how ads are served on your site when you’re working with AdSense alongside other ad partners. With DFP Small Business, you have a vast array of features that give you more control over when, where, and how your ads serve.

Today we’re announcing the launch of DFP Academy, a step-by-step guide for getting started with DFP Small Business. DFP Academy explains how to organize the ad space available on your site, input the information about your advertisers into DFP Small Business, traffic ads from ad networks and direct advertisers, and leverage AdSense to maximize your overall revenue.

If you already have an active AdSense account, you can quickly sign up for your DFP Small Business account today. Your DFP Small Business account will be linked to your AdSense account, so be sure to use the same login information as you for do for AdSense.

As we continue to improve DFP Academy, we’d love to hear your feedback in the DFP Forum.

	Check out DFP Academy now

Posted by Rishan Mohamed, Yield Management Specialist

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Adding a new ad unit helps Concertboom boost revenue 400% while maintaining site quality

With a background in database and computer science, Internet marketing, and search engine optimization, Kooshiar Azimian is a self-described wearer of many hats. In early 2011, he channeled his diverse expertise to create Concertboom, a comprehensive concert database. Concertboom is monetized through ticket sales and Google AdSense, serving more than four million ad impressions monthly. “AdSense creates the least amount of ad waste — the advertiser gets the most value out of their ads, and the publisher gets the most money,” says Kooshiar, recalling his decision to use AdSense. As traffic increased to one million unique visitors per month, Kooshiar was looking for new ways to increase revenue from AdSense. 

A simple change brings booming revenue
Initially, Kooshiar showed just one 300x250 ad on some of his pages. A few months later, he received a personalized email from the Google AdSense team, who periodically share optimization tips to help publishers maximize revenue. The email suggested adding an ad unit or two, for a maximum of three units per page.

This surprised Kooshiar, who had previously thought one ad unit per page was the maximum allowed. “I was also a little skeptical about losing page quality, and I didn’t want to have to change my interface to serve another ad. But I said, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’ I added one unit and the result was shocking. My revenue more than quadrupled in the first week,” he recalls. 

Quality matters most
Given the benefits of this simple implementation, Kooshiar recommends other publishers give it a try, but not at the expense of site quality and user experience. “A quality site serves the right content, especially if your audience comes from search engines. Don’t trick your audience into content you don’t have. Provide content that is accurate, updated and served in a timely fashion with nice, clean graphics. Be sure to maintain page quality and a quick load time. Know your audience and consider which ad formats work best with your content. Also, make sure you’re not compromising your site aesthetic, so your website doesn’t just look like ad junk,” he advises.

Kooshiar also points out that since he maintained his focus on quality, he did not experience any change in his search ranking after adding a new ad unit.

A solid venture
After witnessing his revenue quadruple, Kooshiar is seeing Concertboom in a new light. “Before, this site was just extra cash for me, and now it’s a growing business. I can start hiring people to help me create more content,” he says. “This AdSense optimization has changed the whole dynamic of Concertboom.”

Posted by Caroline Halpin, AdSense Optimization Specialist

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Monetize online videos and games with AdSense

Updated 4/3/12 at 11:20am PT to include information about the YouTube Partner Program

It seems that everyone these days is spending more time watching their favorite shows online, or playing the newest online game. eMarketer predicts that in 2015, 76% of total U.S. internet users will be regularly watching videos online, and that 40% will be playing online games. These audiences are becoming increasingly attractive to advertisers, and spend on video ads and ads within games is growing each year.

If you’re one of the many video publishers or games producers who can benefit from this growth, you might be interested to know that Google has two solutions to monetize this type of content: AdSense for video and AdSense for games. With AdSense, you’re able to deliver relevant and non-intrusive ads on your video content and browser-based games. Over the last year, we’ve seen these products take off. We’re particularly excited about the TrueView video ad format that gives viewers choice and control over the ads they watch, while delivering better returns for our publishers.

If you’re interested in monetizing your video content or games, please visit our AdSense for video or AdSense for games Help Center sections. We’ve changed our application process so that you can start to implement straight away. Follow our guidelines and once we review your integration for policy compliance, you’re ready to go. And just to clarify, AdSense for Video is for publishers who create and host videos for their own site. If you're using YouTube to host your video, you can check out the YouTube Partner Program.

The network of video and games publishers gets bigger every day, and we hope you can join us!

Posted by Daniela Bruno, Product Specialist, Video and Games, AdSense Team

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Upcoming webinar on March 22nd: “GoMo for publishers”

Did you know: 8 in 10 consumers instantly abandon a mobile site if the experience isn’t up to par?¹  Mobile consumers have high expectations from content publishers today. With Google mobile searches growing 400% in the last two years, it’s increasingly important for publishers to satisfy the needs of a mobile user by building a mobile-friendly site.  That’s why we recently launched GoMo for publishers, which brings publishers a new set of tools to help build mobile-friendly websites.  

Join Google on Thursday, March 22nd at 10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET, to discuss why it’s imperative to build for mobile and delight your fastest growing audience.  We’ll show you all the tools you need to get you ready to go mobile. Sign up today and learn... 

1. Why go mobile? 
• Your users have gone mobile in a big way, hear why you must follow suit.
2. 10 tips for building mobile sites   
• Mobile is different. Learn 10 practical tips for building engaging, uniquely mobile experiences.
3. Best practices in action   
• Hear from web publisher FindTheBest about the success they have seen from going mobile.
4. How to get started  
• Google is here to help. Learn about tools we’ve created to get you started on the path to delighting your users and maximizing your mobile revenue.

Sign up for the webinar today.  We look forward to seeing you on March 22th!

Posted by Joseph Corral, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

Source (1) Limelight Networks, Inc. 2011

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AdSense crawler error redesign

As we explained in a previous post, there are many ways publishers can optimize their site for AdSense. One of the most overlooked is ensuring that our AdSense crawler can accurately crawl your site so that your ads are as relevant and useful as possible.

Today we're making this task easier for you with our latest redesign of the crawler access page which you’ll find on the Account Settings page of your AdSense account.

We redesigned the page with three objectives in mind:

1. Provide accurate and actionable information about your crawler errors.
2. Organize and display the information in a more readable way.
3. Provide clear and concise steps to help you fix the errors.

We’ve accomplished the goals above by:

• Keeping the information that pertains to you and removing everything else.
• Incorporating expandable sections so information isn’t overbearing and indigestible.
• Adding a new column which shows how many failed crawl requests occurred over a period of time.  This gives you an idea of the magnitude of the error.
• Adding a new ‘How to fix’ column specifically designed to help you solve the error.

This AdSense redesign is merely a first step toward empowering you with the most accurate and relevant information. This in turn allows for better decision making which can lead to more effective AdSense optimizations, and as a result, increased revenue.

Posted by Nurzhan Bakibayev - Software Engineer

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AlloExpat thrives with Google AdSense

‘PubTalk’ is a new program highlighting publishers’ perspectives on display products and industry trends. In this installment, we hear from Theresa Giovagnoli, co-founder of AlloExpat.com, on the site’s 10th anniversary, about why they’ve worked with AdSense for 6+ years and how they’ve benefited from implementing simple optimization solutions.

AlloExpat.com is a worldwide expatriate social portal. It addresses the growing global expatriate community by being a one-stop information center and by connecting expats with professional expatriate service providers.

Inside AdSense (IA): What role does AdSense play in your business?

Theresa Giovagnoli (TG): We’re a very large portal and have dedicated websites and discussion forums for each country in our global network. We need a solution that effectively targets ads to a wide international audience. AdSense is simply the best and most efficient solution to do this. Thanks to a consistent revenue steam from AdSense, our web development team has been able to dedicate its attention to growing our global audience and content.

IA: What is the one success you’ve had with AdSense that you’d like to share with other publishers?

TG: One successful tactic we employed was recategorizing targetable custom channels. We are a global site with multiple regions. Earlier, all our regions were combined under one custom channel, but once we defined targetable channels by region, we saw CPC increase by 20%.  I would highly encourage publishers to set targetable custom channels at the level that best defines their site because it allows advertisers to specifically target their website by segment or region which may lead to performance uplift.

IA: Why do you love AdSense?

TG: We have managed to implement AdSense in a non-intrusive way, generating a fair amount of revenue over the years. AdSense has played a key role in our development over the years and still does today. We’d never have come this far without it.

Posted by Jennifer Chan, AdSense Team

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Is your site ready for your mobile users?

Last December, we posted about the massive shift to mobile we’ve seen in your users over the past two years.  Still, 4 out of 5 online publishers don’t have a mobile-optimized website, and they risk losing their fastest-growing audience.  Today, we’re launching a new suite of tools at howtogomo.com to help publishers build mobile-friendly websites.

To help demonstrate the potential of creating a mobile-friendly site, we’d like to share the story of AdSense publisher Baby Gaga.  Two weeks after launching their mobile-friendly website they saw a 64% increase in mobile visits. This leading destination for educational materials and social support for pregnant women also saw an 82% increase in mobile page views and a 50% increase in revenue from mobile (full case study).

Today Baby Gaga’s mobile users don’t need to squint and they view more pages per visit.

Visit howtogomo.com today to:

1. See how you rate.  Use the GoMoMeter to analyze your site’s mobile user experience.
2. Start planning.  Download the GoMo Publisher Guide for mobile best practices.
3. Find a partner.  Learn about vendors who can help with implementation.

As mobile continues to take off, we believe it's important for publishers to develop a strong mobile strategy now and make the most of this new opportunity. Baby Gaga’s decision to go mobile allowed them to improve the user experience for their mobile visitors and also make more money.  We want to help you do the same.  In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing additional materials to assist you in this process, so stay tuned to Inside AdSense for further announcements!

Posted by Chris LaSala, Director, Strategic Partner Development, Mobile

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