[Inside AdSense] You've got a Friend Connect gadget

Social networking features are all the rage these days. (AdSense has even joined the trend with Twitter!) Now your site can be part of the social web by using the features offered through Google Friend Connect to awaken and strengthen your community of visitors.

With Friend Connect, your visitors can join your site using credentials they've already created with Google, Yahoo, AOL, and others, and link in the people they know on services like Google Talk, Plaxo, Twitter, and more. There's also a gallery of gadgets where you can choose from features like commenting, ratings and reviews, and the social bar to add to your site. Just like AdSense, you can simply copy and paste a few snippets of code to add these features to your site. Or, if you want to do some deeper integrations, you can use the Friend Connect APIs.

Watch this video to learn more about Friend Connect:



We're constantly adding more social gadgets, such as the event gadget, the Polls gadget, and the Get Answers gadget. To learn more about Friend Connect and other Google products helping to make the web -- and your site -- more social, check out the Social Web Blog.

Posted by Mendel Chuang - Google Friend Connect Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 5/29/2009 11:19:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Image ads join link units

If you use link units, you may have noticed a small addition to the page users see after clicking a link unit topic. We recently added an image ad to the bottom of each of these pages, after our testing showed revenue improvements for many publishers.


These image ads are contextually targeted, based on the link unit topic users clicked to reach the ads. If no image ads are available for the given topic, we'll only show the original text ads -- in other words, we won't show a PSA or insert a blank space in place of the image ad in this case. Advertisers can bid on these image ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, so you'll generate earnings for valid clicks and impressions. You can review the performance of image ads on your link unit pages by generating a link unit report on your Advanced Reports page.

If you aren't using link units on your pages, we encourage you to give them a try. They don't take up much space and can help add to your AdSense revenue -- learn more in our Help Center, or visit your AdSense Setup tab and select 'AdSense for content' to get started.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 5/26/2009 09:41:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Euro reporting and you: your questions answered

Since introducing reports in Euros for publishers located in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, we've received a number of questions about this launch. For publishers in these regions, we've addressed some of your concerns below.

How will my earnings be converted to Euros?
Once you switch to the new reports, earnings generated from advertisers paying in currencies other than the Euro will be converted. This will happen on a daily basis using the prevailing market rate from the previous day. If you generate earnings from an advertiser paying in Euros, they won't be converted.

When I'm issued a payment, will my earnings be converted again?
If you've switched to Euro reports and are receiving payments in Euros, there will be no additional conversions when your payments are issued. However, if you're receiving payments in U.S. Dollars, your payment will be converted from Euros to U.S. Dollars at the end of the month.

When I switch to Euro reports, will that automatically change the currency of my payments?
No, your selected payment currency and method won't change after you switch to Euro reports -- unless, of course, you want them to change. (You can update them by visiting the 'Payments Details' section under your My Account tab.)

Will there be a delay in receiving my unpaid earnings once I make this change?
No, making this change will not affect the timing of your payments. After you switch to Euro reports, your unpaid earnings in U.S. Dollars will be converted to Euros before the next upcoming payment selection deadline (typically the 15th of each month). For instance, if you make this switch on June 3rd, your unpaid earnings will be converted by June 15th; if you make this switch on June 20th, your unpaid earnings will be converted by July 15th.

How will this change influence VAT and any taxes I have to pay?
While you may receive your payments in your local currency, all payments are being made by Google Ireland, a company incorporated under the laws of Ireland, in accordance with the terms of your agreement with Google. Unless your business is in Ireland, you shouldn't have an obligation to charge Google VAT or treat any of our payments to you as VAT that needs to be paid to any VAT authorities. If your billing address is located in Ireland, you may have an obligation to charge Google Irish VAT. For more specific answers, we suggest you head for your local tax adviser.

I'm not located in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, or Spain. When will you include other countries?
We're working to offer Euro reports to publishers located in additional countries. When we do, we'll be sure to post any updates here on Inside AdSense.

Do I need to update my account if I'm eligible?
Although this change is currently optional, in the future we will require that publishers located in eligible countries make this switch. Eligible publishers who haven't yet updated their accounts will currently see an interstitial page with additional information after signing in. We understand that some eligible publishers would like to continue receiving payments in U.S. Dollars; while you can still choose to be paid in U.S. Dollars, it will be mandatory to view your reports in Euros.

If you're eligible to make the switch to Euro reporting, we encourage you to review the updated Terms and Conditions and update your account soon. To get started, sign in to your account and look for the prompt, "See your daily earnings reported in Euro amounts!" on your Reports Overview page. You can also find more information in our Help Center.

Posted by Arlene Lee - The Inside AdSense Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 5/21/2009 01:42:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] More webinars on the way

Continuing with the series of webinars we've been hosting recently, we'd like to let you know about several additional webinars taking place over the next few weeks.

If you'd like webinars that take place in the evenings in North America or the early mornings in Asia, one of these might work for you:

Understanding the payment cycle
Learn about when and how you can expect to be paid.
Date: Thursday, May 21, 2009
Time: 6:30pm PDT (GMT -07:00)
Register at: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=577510522

Channels and advanced reporting
Walk through the process of creating channels for more detailed tracking of specific pages and ad units.
Date: Thursday, June 4, 2009
Time: 6:30pm PDT (GMT -07:00)
Register at: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=573170710

If you prefer webinars at a Europe-friendly time, you may wish to attend one of these:

Using Custom Search Engine with AdSense
Find out how your users and your revenue can benefit from Custom Search engine with AdSense for search.
Date: Monday, May 26, 2009
Time: 3pm GMT (PDT +07:00)
Register at: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=570572716

Fundamentals of optimization
Learn about account and ad layout changes that can boost your revenue. (Recommended for new publishers or those who haven't optimized AdSense previously.)
Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Time: 6:30pm GMT (PDT +07:00)
Register at: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=573202418

As always, you can find dates, times, and details for our webinars in our Help Center.

Posted by Julie Beckmann - Inside AdSense Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 5/20/2009 10:06:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Temporary ad serving issue resolved

For about an hour this morning, beginning at 7:48am PDT, we experienced a global network routing issue. As a result, fewer or no ads were served to some publishers during this time. Our engineers have since resolved the issue, and we're working to ensure that this doesn't recur. We're very sorry for the inconvenience.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 5/14/2009 10:29:00 PM
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[Inside AdSense] Site maintenance on Saturday, May 16

Our engineers will be performing regularly scheduled maintenance this Saturday, May 16th. You'll be unable to access your AdSense and Ad Manager accounts between 10am and 2pm PDT, but your ad targeting and serving won't be affected. In addition, we'll continue to record your clicks, impressions, and earnings as usual.

Here's the maintenance start time, converted for a few cities around the world:

London - 6pm Saturday
Dubai - 9pm Saturday
Mumbai - 10:30pm Saturday
Taipei - 1am Sunday
Auckland - 5am Sunday

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 5/14/2009 09:52:00 AM
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[Inside AdSense] What the Display Ad Builder means for publishers

We've been working to make it easier for advertisers to show display ads on the content network -- which benefits you, because it results in more budgets devoted to advertising on AdSense sites like yours. (As a reminder, "display ads" include all types of image-based ads, such as banners, rich media, and video ads.) In addition to recent launches such as DoubleClick Studio, third-party ad serving, and expandable rich media ads, we also launched the AdWords Display Ad Builder last October. This tool allows AdWords advertisers to create display ads using customizable templates and to target them to AdSense sites in a matter of minutes.

Since its launch, the Display Ad Builder has been extended to advertisers in over 100 countries and 40 languages. With over 90 customizable templates and thousands of active users of all sizes, the Display Ad Builder has quickly become what we believe is the largest platform for self-serve display ad creation on the web. Its usage varies from the largest digital agency, like Razorfish, to smaller advertisers like the Wilshire Grand Los Angeles. We'd like to take a few minutes to tell you more about the impact of this tool and how it can benefit you as a publisher:

• More advertisers creating display ads: In just six months, the Display Ad Builder has significantly increased the number of AdWords advertisers using image-based ads. Many of these advertisers were already advertising with text ads on Google.com and AdSense sites, but have now found the visual elements, interactivity, and animations of display ads to be effective at increasing clicks, conversions, and overall ROI.
  
  
• Higher quality, more relevant display ads for your site: With simplified display ad creation now available to advertisers of all sizes and industries, the display ads that show on your site are likely to be even more relevant to your content and audience. For sites with niche content or with an advertiser base that would be less likely to have the budgets to invest in display ad creation, this is especially true. The templates that we offer also vary well beyond simple static banners, including interactive rich media templates that allow users to scroll between or roll over multiple product images, in addition to multiple templates with animated text and images.
  
  
• Higher potential earnings: As the reach of ads created with Display Ad Builder grows, we've seen encouraging results -- ads created with the Display Ad Builder have average click-through rates that outperform industry averages. We believe that this is due to the combination of advanced contextual targeting on AdSense, combined with templates that encourage best practices in effective display ad creation. We've also heard from many advertisers that they're finding improved cost per conversion efficiencies with the tool, meaning that more of their marketing budgets can be effectively deployed online, on your sites.
  

So what can you do to take advantage of the many newly created display ads? First, make sure that your ad units are opted into image ads. And, since many publishers are advertisers too, you may be interested in getting started with the Display Ad Builder yourself. To learn more, you can also view our series of how-to videos or read our feed of Display Ad Builder announcements.

Posted by Ryan Hayward - Display Ad Builder Product Marketing

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 5/12/2009 11:09:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Register for our next AdSense Optimization Webinar

We invite you to join us at our next Optimization Webinar tomorrow, where we'll show you how to experiment with different formats and colors to improve the performance of your ads. We've heard that you'd like us to hold our webinars at different times of the day, and we hope that this helps accommodate those of you who weren't able to attend our last optimization webinar. Remember, we're only able to accommodate a maximum of 500 publishers, so please sign up soon.

Here's the information you'll need:

Date: Thursday May 7, 2009
Time: 6:30 pm PDT (GMT -07:00)
Registration: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=366085742

As a reminder, you'll be asked to enter your publisher ID number when registering. For more information on this, and all upcoming webinars, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Ashutosh Satpute - AdSense Publisher Support

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 5/06/2009 03:18:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Showcase your site with Google Ad Planner's Publisher Center

To help you increase the visibility of your sites to potential advertisers, we've just launched the Publisher Center in Google Ad Planner. This will allow you to provide details about your sites to help attract advertisers. Though the Publisher Center is only available in English at this time, any publisher can use the tool.

As a quick reminder, Ad Planner is a media planning tool that helps agencies and advertisers find sites that cater to their target audiences. In the new Publisher Center within Ad Planner, you can claim sites you own and customize the descriptions for each. For each site, you can also add up to five categories that describe your site's content, and the types, sizes, and formats of ads that your site supports.


In addition, you can share your Google Analytics data with Ad Planner to provide advertisers with additional details about your site, such as the number of unique visitors and page views. By replacing Ad Planner traffic estimates with data measured directly by Google Analytics, you'll be able to provide advertisers with more accurate site traffic information.

Based on this information, agencies and advertisers using Ad Planner will be able to identify appropriate sites to include in their placement-targeted campaigns. As more advertisers become aware of your sites and bid to show ads on them, the competition among your ads will increase and so should your earnings potential.

We encourage you to visit the new Google Ad Planner Publisher Center to begin claiming sites you own. For more information about the Google Ad Planner Publisher Center, visit our Help Center, or watch our video below:



Posted by Wayne Lin - Product Manager, Google Ad Planner

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 5/05/2009 02:28:00 P
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