[Inside AdSense] Generate revenue from mobile applications

If you develop iPhone or Android applications, we're happy to let you know about the beta launch of AdSense for mobile applications. Participants in the beta will be able to display text and image ads in their mobile applications to earn revenue. We've seen positive results in our trials, and we're excited to roll this out to new developers to continue supporting the growth of mobile applications.

You can visit our new microsite to learn more about AdSense for mobile applications, see our beta requirements, or sign up. If you're selected to participate in the beta, we'll be in touch with you shortly with next steps for getting started.

You can also learn more about the program by watching the video below, in which Howard Steinberg, Director of Business Development at Urbanspoon, describes how he tested AdSense for mobile applications:



Posted by Alex Kenin - AdSense for Mobile Applications Marketing

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 6/29/2009 10:18:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Speeding up: Retaining your visitors with great user experience

Last week, we kicked off a five-week educational series about speeding up your business in a slowdown. This week, you'll hear tips from Ricardo Prada, a user experience researcher at Google, about designing for the user. As we continue to share tips about attracting more visitors, increasing your revenue potential, and attracting more advertiser budget, we invite you to share your own suggestions for growing your business by leaving comments on each post. You can also follow the series at www.google.com/ads/speedingup.

Hi, I'm Ricardo Prada. As a user experience researcher here at Google, one of the things my colleagues and I are responsible for is making sure that Google websites are efficient and fun to use so that visitors keep coming back to them. I'd like to share three tips we think about daily as we do our jobs. Ultimately, they all fit into our guiding principle: if you focus on the user, everything else will follow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUaEYjCs2mA



Tip #1: Design for the tasks that visitors complete on your site.

Think about tasks on your website first and layouts second. It's tempting to want a flashy design that exercises your CSS skills, but remember that vistors come to your site with specific goals in mind, like reading your essays, or checking out your collection of sports photos. Write down the top three tasks your users might want to accomplish on your site, and design to make those tasks quick and efficient.

Tip #2: Use ads as potential exit paths, not interruptions.

Ads should complement your site, not distract from it. The most natural place for a user to evaluate an advertisement is after they've completed their goals on your site. Instead of interrupting your user's main tasks, try to offer ads as potential exit path for users who were probably ready to leave anyway by placing them at the end of completed tasks.

Tip #3: SEO - only if it makes sense.

Only do search engine optimizations that benefit your users. For example, page titles that are relevant to the page content make it easier for your visitors to understand what your articles are about. On the other hand, there are lots of sneaky strategies out there for improving search engine rank. Most of those don't work anymore, and they might actually harm your site's reputation.

Additional Resources:

• Our Help Center has more suggestions about where to place ads.
  
• The Google Webmaster Tools team shares their design and content tips.
  

Posted by Talia Brodecki - AdSense Product Marketing


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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 6/25/2009 10:05:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Default font size increased

As a follow-up to last week's launch of font size controls, we'd like to let you know that we've just increased the default font size for AdSense ad units. This change will affect your ad units if you haven't yet customized your font sizes, or if your ad units are set to 'AdSense default font size' -- you'll notice that the text in your ad units is now the equivalent of 'medium' instead of 'small'. We decided to make this change based on publisher feedback and our testing, which showed that this increased font size improved performance.

If you'd like to change the font size in your ad units, you can do so on an account-wide basis or by individual ad unit -- just follow the instructions listed in our Help Center. Again, we recommend testing these new font size options with your existing customizations to determine which combinations perform best on your pages.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 6/22/2009 05:54:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Speeding up: the basics and Analytics

Today, we're kicking off a five-week educational series about speeding up your business in a slowdown. We'll be revisiting the basics of online publishing to help you grow your business, and we'll share tips about using AdSense and other Google products that you can apply to your business now. In the coming Thursdays, you can look forward to tips for making your site more user-friendly, bringing in more visitors, increasing your revenue potential, and attracting more advertiser budget. Along the way, we invite you to share your own suggestions for growing your business by leaving comments at the end of each post. You can also follow the campaign at www.google.com/ads/speedingup.

In today's post, you'll hear from Avinash Kaushik, Google's own Analytics Evangelist, about the importance of understanding your traffic, analyzing how your site performs, and using data to make decisions. Here are a few small to mid-sized ideas that -- in Avinash's own words -- can add up to remarkable results for your website. They're all things you can do today with free web analytics tools, like Google Analytics.



Idea #1: Discover what content and traffic sources keep people coming to your site again and again.

How many times does a visitor have to visit your site to be considered valuable? Use the Visitor Loyalty report in the Visitors section of Google Analytics to pinpoint the visitors who come to your site that many times or more. Put that data into an advanced segment and apply that segment to your core reports to understand things like where these valuable visitors come from and what content they consume. You can then use this information to optimize how you acquire new visitors and the content on your site for loyal visitors.


Idea #2: Figure out which pages to improve on your site.

Many people ask the question: "How do I know which pages on my site to improve?" Take a look at the Top Landing Pages report in the Content section of Google Analytics. This report tells you the first page people see when they enter your site. Sort this report by bounce rate. Bounce rate measures how many people come to your site, only see one page and leave right away (or as Avinash calls it: "I came, I puked, I left"). Once you identify which of your top landing pages are not able to get a single click from your visitors you know which pages need to be improved.


Idea #3: Find out where AdSense performs best on your site.

If you've linked your AdSense and Analytics accounts, the Top AdSense Content report in the AdSense section of Google Analytics will tell you where on your website AdSense ads get the most clicks. This is a win-win for your business and your customers, as it helps you identify what type of content to produce more of based on what content people are most interested in as well as where people most often click on your AdSense ads.


If you haven't already, link your AdSense and Analytics accounts in order to take full advantage of what Analytics can offer. If you don't yet have an Analytics account, you can sign up today.

Additional Resources:

• Read more from Avinash at his blog, Occam's Razor, which has more tips like the above and additional ways to use Visitor Loyalty metrics, or on the Official Google Blog.
  
• To learn more about using Analytics on your website, visit Conversion University.
  
• See great ways to use AdSense and Analytics together by watching this video.
  

Posted by Talia Brodecki - AdSense Product Marketing

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 6/18/2009 12:06:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Font size matters

Since February, you've been able to change the font faces of your ad units. We're now happy to announce the launch of a related feature you've been asking for -- the ability to change the font size of the text in your ad units. You can now select from small, medium, and large font sizes for ad units on pages in Latin-character languages. Just like with the current font face options, size options appear in every account but will only be applied to ad units on pages primarily in Latin-based characters for now.

The font size you choose will be applied to the body of the ad, with the title scaled appropriately. In order to fit the ad text correctly, the actual font size will vary for each format size, font face, and user-specific settings such as browsers and operating systems. In addition, some formats sizes currently have very limited room, so the font size application will be most apparent in cases where the number of ads appearing in your ad units varies automatically in order to maximize your performance.

Your ads are currently set at the default size for AdSense, which is the equivalent of 'small'. You can select a new font size on an account-wide basis in the Ad Display Preference section of your My Account tab, or on an individual ad unit basis for new and existing ad units.


If you're creating new ad units, you can choose between the AdSense default font size, your new account-wide font size (if you've selected one using the instructions above), or a separate size. To update existing ad units you've created using the Manage Ads feature, visit the 'Manage Ads' page under your AdSense Setup tab. Any font size changes you make on an individual ad unit basis will be maintained even if you change your account-wide default in the future.

Also, a bit of advance notice: soon, we'll also be changing the default font size across AdSense in ad units from 'small' to 'medium'. We've heard from some of you that the current font size can be too small, and our testing also showed that slightly larger font sizes improved performance. Any ad units set to the default font size will automatically be updated to display the larger setting. If you'd prefer to stick with today's font size, you can set your desired font size as 'small' across your account.

We encourage you to combine these new font size options with the other customization options in your account to test the optimal layout for your pages. We're excited about this launch, and we'll be sure to follow up with another post to let you know once the default font size has been changed.

Posted by Amy Wu - AdSense Product Manager

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 6/17/2009 01:28:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Local currency reports for nine more countries

Following our launch of Euro reporting for publishers in five European countries, we're happy to announce that local currency reports are now also available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Portugal, South Africa, Switzerland, and the UK.

If you're located in one of these countries, you can now update your account to display earnings in your local currency. After you've updated your account, any earnings generated from advertisers paying in currencies other than your local currency will be converted daily. If you receive payments in your local currency, this means that there also won't be any additional conversions at the end of the month. However, you can still choose to receive payments in U.S. Dollars or change your payment method at any time.

Before enabling local currency reports in your account, we recommend downloading and saving copies of your past reports in U.S. Dollars for your records. You can then update your account by signing in to AdSense and clicking the link in the green prompt on your Reports Overview page. You'll be asked to review and agree to a new set of Terms and Conditions. Unfortunately, we're not able to interpret the meaning of changes in our legal documents for publishers -- if you have questions or need legal advice on interpreting the new Terms, please don't hesitate to contact your attorney.

We'll be requiring this change in the future, so we recommend updating your account to report earnings in your local currency soon. You can find answers to common FAQs associated with these new local currency reports in a recent Inside AdSense blog post -- all references to 'Euros' in the post now also apply to your local currency. In addition, detailed information about these new reports can be found in our Help Center.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 6/15/2009 12:26:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] More countries go Western Union

Good news! We've expanded Western Union Quick Cash as a payment method to 7 new countries: Barbados, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nepal, Uruguay, and Vietnam. If you live in any of these locations, you can now sign up to receive your AdSense payments from your local Western Union agent. With Western Union, you'll receive your earnings sooner, since you won't have to wait for checks to arrive in the mail or clear at the bank. Plus, AdSense won't charge you a fee to use this payment method.

Please keep in mind these important points:

• Payments will continue to follow our normal payment schedule and will be available for pickup at your local Western Union agent the day after they're issued.
  
• You'll need to present a government-issued ID that matches your AdSense payee name when picking up your payment. If you need to update or correct the payee name listed in your account, please follow the instructions in our Help Center.
  
• Right now, only individual payee names can receive payments by Western Union, not businesses.
  
• Payments must be picked up within 60 days of issue or they'll expire and be credited back to your account.
  
• Payments will be made in US dollars, but depending on your local Western Union agent, they may be picked up in your local currency.
  

These instructions will help you to sign up, and our Help Center has more info about picking up your payments and other countries where Western Union payments are currently available. We're working towards making this payment option available to publishers in additional countries, and we'll be sure to announce any updates here on the blog.

Posted by Deborah Chang - AdSense Payments Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 6/08/2009 11:20:00 A
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[Inside AdSense] Top ten myths about Google Analytics

A few weeks back, we announced that all publishers can now integrate their AdSense accounts with Google Analytics. If you're not very familiar with Analytics yet, you might be interested in reading a recent post on the Analytics blog that addresses ten common myths about the product. For example, did you know that you can use Analytics to segment visitor data in real time, or that you can use the new Analytics API to tie your website data to your financials? Check out the post to learn more about these features and other ways you can use Analytics to better understand your site stats.

If you haven't yet linked your AdSense account with Analytics, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to AdSense.
   
2. Click the link that says "Integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics" on your Reports Overview page.
   
3. Follow the onscreen instructions, and watch our video for additional guidance.
   

Even if you use AdSense in a language that's not supported by Analytics, you can still link your accounts and view your Analytics reports in a different language.

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin - Analytics Product Marketing

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 6/05/2009 12:49:00 P
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[Inside AdSense] Two upcoming maintenance periods

We'd like to let you know about two upcoming maintenance periods for the system which processes AdSense statistics. As a result, you may see slight delays in your reports during these times:

Wednesday, June 3: 3pm - 6pm PDT (GMT -07:00)
Saturday, June 6: 10am - 2:30pm PDT (GMT -07:00)

Please be assured that you'll be credited for all valid clicks, impressions, and earnings generated, and these temporary delays will not impact the amount you earn. In addition, you'll still be able to sign in to your AdSense and Ad Manager accounts during these hours, and your ad serving and targeting won't be affected.

We understand that many of you check your stats multiple times a day, and so we hope this notice helps alleviate any concern on your part. Thanks for your patience, and if you'd like to learn more about how frequently your reports are usually updated, we recommend reading this past Inside AdSense post.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 6/02/2009 04:01:00 P
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