[Inside AdSense] A look back at 2007

2007 is drawing to a close, but before you get out the party hats and start practicing the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne, we'd like to take a moment to recap some of the biggest developments in AdSense this year.

New feature launches were abundant in 2007, and many were based on your direct feedback and requests. To help improve the performance of your ads, we revamped the look of our ad formats and introduced ad placements to let you promote your site to potential advertisers. The new Manage Ads feature gave you the ability to make changes to your ad units directly in your account and quickly experiment with optimizations. In addition, we launched such features as video units, AdSense for mobile content, and referrals 2.0 to bring in new revenue streams for your site. Still others like the Allowed Sites list and the recently announced Ad Review Center were inspired by your requests for more control over your ads and your account.

With our growing community of publishers around the world, we also continued our international expansion of products and online resources. AdSense for content was launched in languages such as Hebrew, Greek, and Bulgarian, while AdSense for search became available in a number of Southeast Asian languages. We added payment options such as Western Union Quick Cash in a few countries and EFT in Mexico. To help publishers connect with one another around the world, we introduced AdSense Help Forums in 9 new languages, including Polish, Arabic, and Russian.

And of course, we can't forget to mention the exciting things that happened right here on our blog. We welcomed 6 new languages into the Inside AdSense family (Italian, Korean, Japanese, French, Turkish, and Simplified Chinese), bringing the total number of AdSense blogs to 11. All 11 blogs combined received 2.6 million pageviews from 1.7 million visits, and global Groups subscriptions to all blogs crossed the 43,000 mark.

Finally, we'd like to close with our second annual Reader's Choice Award, which goes to the post you visited most this year: 'Introducing video units'. Accepting the award on behalf of the post is author Ryan Hayward, who had this to say: "In a world where Hollywood writers are striking and my favorite show, 'The Office,' is off-air, I hope that announcing video units helped to fill the creative void and made each of our lives just a little more entertaining. Cue the orchestra."

Here's to a very happy and prosperous 2008. Cheers!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/31/2007 07:07:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Happy holidays from the AdSense team

We'd like to send our warmest holiday wishes to all of our publishers around the globe. While you may not be catching snowflakes where you are, we hope you find a winter wonderland (or summer wonderland for our readers in the Southern Hemisphere?) wherever you're located this holiday season.

Our U.S. offices will be closed until Thursday, December 27th, so it may take us some time to respond to your emails. In the meantime, you can consult our Help Center for immediate answers, or spread holiday cheer by discussing your questions with other publishers on the Help Forum.

Happy holidays!

Posted by Arlene Lee on behalf of the Google AdSense Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/21/2007 11:38:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Manage Ads gives you more ad functionality

As we mentioned last week, we're constantly working to improve the new ad management feature. There's another wave of minor tweaks to this feature, inspired by your feedback as always.

Hide and seek
We've heard from more than a few of you that you'd like to see a 'delete' function on the Manage Ads page. To avoid deleting any ad unit that's currently serving impressions on your pages, we've now added a 'hide' function so you can avoid displaying ad units you prefer not to see on your Manage Ads page. Just click the 'Hide' link associated with a specific ad unit in the Actions column, and the ad will no longer appear when you view your Manage Ads page. Don't worry, hiding any active ad unit won't prevent it from generating revenue for you, and you can view your hidden ad units at any time by checking the box that says 'Show hidden AdSense units'.


Channel IDs for all
In addition to AdSense for content, you can now view the custom channel ID numbers associated with other AdSense products (e.g. AdSense for search and referrals). Visit the Channels page under the AdSense Setup tab, and select the tab corresponding to the product you'd like to view.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/20/2007 11:00:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Saving your advanced reports for later

The busy holiday season is upon us, so you may not have the time to sit in front of your computer waiting for your AdSense reports to finish running. That's why we're happy to announce that any advanced reports you generate will soon automatically be saved in your Report Manager once they're completed.

This means that while you can still wait on the Advanced Reports page for your reports to complete if you choose, you no longer need to do so -- instead, you can navigate through the other pages of your account or even log out once you've submitted the request for a report. You can then view or download your requested reports at a later time in the 'Recently Generated Reports' section of your Report Manager, located under the 'Reports' tab of your account. We're gradually adding this feature to all publisher accounts, so feel free to check for it over the next few weeks.


Your Report Manager will save up to 20 of your most recently generated reports, which will be timestamped with the date and time they were created. We hope this new option allows you more flexibility in choosing when and how you access your reports.


Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/18/2007 05:50:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Add taxes to your task list

To all our US publishers: before you spend the holidays gorging on sugar-coated culinary delicacies and spending quality time pelting your loved ones with snowballs, please take a moment to update your AdSense account tax information so we can issue your tax form for 2007. Verifying that your tax info is up to date now helps ensure that earnings won't be withheld from you later. You'll receive a tax form 1099-MISC if you meet the following requirements:

• You submitted a Form W-9, are not a corporation, and were paid at least US $600 in 2007 OR
  
• You indicated that you are subject to backup withholding and had taxes withheld
  

For those publishers whose earnings are reported, please note that payments dated in 2007 will be reported in 2007. This means that unpaid earnings from 2007 that are rolled over to 2008 (for example, December 2007 earnings paid in January 2008) will not be included.

To resubmit or update your tax information, please follow these steps:

1. Log in to your AdSense account
   
2. Click the 'My Account' tab
   
3. Click the 'Tax information' link
   
4. Follow the instructions on the 'Tax information' page to update your current form, or to submit a new form.
   

Don't forget to add "update AdSense tax information" to your to-do list!

Posted by Korey Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/17/2007 12:47:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Introducing the Ad Review Center

In an effort to provide you with more transparency and control over the ads appearing on your pages, we've developed the Ad Review Center. This new feature, which we'll be rolling out to publishers over the next few months, will allow you to review ads placement-targeted to your site and ensure those ads are relevant to your site's users.

When you first opt into the Ad Review Center, you'll be able to see all placement-targeted ads currently targeted to your site, and a couple of days later you'll be able to review placement-targeted ads that have previously run on your site. If you think an ad is not relevant for your users, you can prevent it from appearing again by blocking it in the Ad Review Center. We recommend you carefully consider the revenue impact of blocking an ad, since blocked ads won't compete in the auction on your site, and advertisers whose ads you block may choose not to target your site again in the future.

In addition to letting publishers weigh in on the relevance of placement-targeted ads, the Ad Review Center will also help advertisers improve their placement-targeted ad campaigns. When you block an ad, you'll be prompted to select a reason. We'll share this constructive feedback with advertisers so they can use it to improve the quality and relevance of future ad campaigns.

As we've done with past features, we're gradually launching the Ad Review Center to all publishers over the next few months. When it has been enabled for your account, you'll see a green notification box at the top of your 'Competitive Ad Filter' page, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. By default, the Ad Review Center will let you review all placement-targeted ads after they have run on your site. However, if you have a strong need to manually review ads before they appear on your site, you may do so by clicking on the 'update settings' link in the Ad Review Center. You'll then have 24 hours to review ads before they are automatically allowed to run on your site. Please note that you can also return to the Ad Review Center and allow a previously blocked ad, or block a previously allowed ad.

We strongly recommend you keep your review preference set to 'auto-allow' and review ads after they have run. Ads don't participate in the auction while they are awaiting review, and ads that you have blocked cannot compete in the auction either. The actual revenue impact will vary in each publisher's situation, but when using the Ad Review Center, please consider the revenue effects of blocking ads or switching from the auto-allow setting.

To learn more about the Ad Review Center, please visit the Help Center. We hope you find this new feature useful and look forward to hearing your feedback.

Posted by Katie Mandel - AdSense Product Marketing

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/13/2007 02:36:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Farewell Onsite Advertiser Sign-up

We have high standards for the services we offer, which means we constantly reevaluate existing features to ensure they are effective as the AdSense product continues to expand.

Our recent findings indicate that the Onsite Advertiser Sign-up feature, which allowed advertisers to sign up for AdWords campaigns on your site, hasn't been performing as well as we had hoped. We've elected to gracefully retire this feature and focus our efforts on developing and supporting features that drive better monetization results for you. Call it time management, call it ROI, call it our unwavering commitment to our publishers. We want you to earn more revenue, and sometimes that means "sunsetting" certain features we created.

Please be aware that any links you've created that lead to a customizable Onsite Advertiser Sign-up page will soon re-direct to the main AdWords sign-up page. Of course, AdWords advertisers will still be able to target your individual sites by using placement targeting. Thanks for your support of this feature in the past. We hope its departure won't cause you any inconvenience.

Posted by Ben Ewing - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/12/2007 10:47:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] New Manage Ads improvements, compliments of you

We've been listening to your comments on our new ad management feature, and so we're excited to tell you about a few updates that stem directly from your requests:

• You can now view the ID number associated with a specific custom channel by visiting the 'Channels' link under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. Many of you told us that you needed these channel ID numbers for ad management programs you're using. We've added this information to your account since it no longer appears in your ad code.

• Any ad units generated within the last 7 days that haven't yet received any impressions will now be listed as 'New', rather than 'Active', in your status column. This should help avoid confusion about your newest ad units and those already appearing on your pages.
  
  
• You can now view the most recent date when each of your ad units was updated. Please note that these dates aren't retroactive, so any ad units you generated or edited before this display change will show a last-edited date of November 1st, 2007.
  
  
• We're starting to slowly roll out the manage ads feature for your referral units. Just as with AdSense for content units, you'll soon be prompted to enter names for your newly generated referral units. If you'd like to make changes to your referral units at a later time, you can visit the 'Manage Ads' page. In the 'Content' column of this page, your referral units will display 'Referrals:' followed by the products or category of products being referred.

It doesn't end here, though -- we've got a few more enhancements planned for the Manage Ads feature in the next few weeks, so keep checking back for more updates. In the meantime, please continue sending your suggestions our way.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/10/2007 09:54:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Phone verification fixed

Our engineers have now resolved the phone verification issue we reported on Tuesday. If your account is still on a phone verification hold, please feel free to retry the verification process. For instructions on removing any holds on your account, visit your Payment History page and look for a 'Required Actions' box at the top of the page.

As always, we appreciate your patience.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/07/2007 04:34:00 PM
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[Inside AdSense] Meet mobile publisher Mikle

In September, we introduced AdSense for mobile content to provide a simple solution for increasing revenue from your mobile sites. We recently interviewed Jaehong Lee from Japanese mobile site Mikle to find out more about his experience with using AdSense for mobile content.

Currently, Mikle's bulletin boards attract over a million unique visitors each month. With user-generated content ranging from entertainment to nutrition, Jaehong had been looking for a manageable way to monetize Mikle's mobile pages. He found his answer when he began using AdSense for mobile content this year.

Jaehong highlights the performance and convenience of AdSense for mobile content, stating that "the performance of AdSense has been way better than our expectations. Moreover, the features for managing ad performance are easier and more convenient than other ads services. It saves a lot of effort for us in managing and monitoring ads."

With features such as editorial review and the Competitive Ad Filter, AdSense for mobile content has saved Mikle substantial time. Jaehong explains, "We hire people to check all messages and comments posted on our site. The cost of this work was significant... AdSense for mobile content's great performance lets us be free of a lot of work from managing ad performance. We now have firm profitability and can concentrate our resources on the efforts of service development and operation improvements."

To learn more about AdSense for mobile content, please visit our new landing page.

Posted by Takayuki Funakoshi - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/06/2007 01:43:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] And the winner is...

Recently, we launched the AdSense Story Contest and asked publishers like you to send in video of your experiences with AdSense. We were thrilled by the enthusiasm and creativity you put into these videos. Although we can only award one winner, we'll be sharing some of our favorite submissions with you over the next few weeks.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for...

Congratulations to Don Vandervort from Hometips.com for his winning video submission! Before we show you his video, here's a little bit of background about Don and HomeTips.

Interestingly enough, HomeTips.com started out in a backyard clubhouse. Don converted the bottom floor of his sons' two-story treehouse into a small office, and launched HomeTips from that office in 1997 as an online portfolio to promote his books. In 2003, Don heard about the Google AdSense program and thought it might be helpful in generating revenue for HomeTips.

During the first week, Don remembers that AdSense revenue paid for coffee; in the second week, it paid for lunches. Now, AdSense revenue pays for all salaries, overhead, and business development. "Solid content is the secret to developing a following," says Don. "If you write expert content with your visitor's needs in mind, the rest will follow." We'll let Don tell you more about his site and his story:



You can also read more about Don's story on our Case Studies page.

Thanks again to everyone who participated, and stay tuned for other great AdSense stories in the coming weeks.

Posted by Sunil Subhedar - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/05/2007 02:05:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] A few payments announcements

We'd like to notify you about two issues related to November checks and phone verification.

November checks
If you were issued a check at the end of November, you may have noticed the following message printed on the paystub:

CREDIT NOTE -VAT OVERCHARGE BETW.
1 JAN 2004 & 22/11/07 IF YOU NEED
DETAILS OF THIS VAT PLEASE EMAIL
GOOGLE@BDOSX.IE WITH CUSTOMER REF

However, the paystub should have read:

THIS CHECK IS FOR YOUR EARNINGS AS
PART OF THE GOOGLE ADSENSE PROGRAM.
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, PLEASE
EMAIL ADSENSE-SUPPORT@GOOGLE.COM

Please be assured that the November payment you received is for your AdSense earnings and is not a VAT credit note. In addition, this printing error will not affect your ability to deposit your AdSense earnings as usual.

Phone verification
We're currently experiencing difficulty with our phone verification system, but our engineers are working as quickly as they can to resolve the issue. If you see a prompt in your account asking you to verify your phone number, we ask that you hold off on attempting to do so for the time being. We'll be sure to post a follow-up here on the blog when we have more information for you.

We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion caused by these two issues. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Posted by Dan Marcus - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/04/2007 06:49:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Save your top queries

If you use AdSense for search on your pages, we'd like to let you know about an upcoming change on December 10th that will affect your top queries reports. To prepare for a few upcoming reporting enhancements, top queries data older than a year old will no longer be available. In other words, you'll only be able to view top queries reports dating back one year from the day you're generating the report.

If you have important top queries data which are older than a year old, please run any appropriate reports and save them before December 10th. You may also wish to generate a report dating from the date you started with AdSense for search to today, as data not within the one year window will be continuously removed.


Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 12/03/2007 10:37:00 A
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