One of them was the non-existing option to pick site categories and provide information to potential advertisers. Google now has introduced the Google Ad Planner which changes this slightly. The service seems to be in a testing phase with webmasters being invited by email. Every website that has been added to Google Webmaster Tools can be added to Google Ad Planner which then offers a basic interface to add information about the website.

This includes a small 250 character description, the selection of an advertising url directly on the website, up to five categories that describe the website’s contents (Computer & Electronics category alone has dozens of subcategories to choose from, the accepted advertising forms and the option to share Google Analytics data with Google Ad Planner (only unique visitors and pageviews which are estimated by Ad Planner).

It is obviously to early to tell if these information will make any difference at all as they only seem to affect so called placement ads on a website. Placement ads are ads that are placed by Adwords customers directly on the website. This stands in contrast to contextual ads that are placed globally on websites. Contextual ads usually make up the bulk of ad placements on a website whereas placement ads pay better.

Interested webmasters can take a look at how their website is displayed by visiting the Google Publisher Center.

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Many people own lots of domains which they keep around to sell at a higher price, or they simply haven’t gotten around to developing it, and as such, the “weight” of these webpages are lost, even if someone gets to the page they’ll just see an empty canvas, or some sort of “pricing inquiry notice”.

In this case Google Adsense for domains is a great resource for grabbing that extra buck, since it’s set and forget you won’t really need to do anything, and in the end if you only get a few dollars daily from it, it’s still better than nothing, and lets you use your domains to their full extent.

The interesting thing about Google’s system here is that it differs from the usual select an ad and show method because of the specialized nature of parked domains. In fact, you will have to create CNAME records and configure some stuff at your registrar, only then can you customize and choose keywords. Following all that, your domain will have a sleek Google-like look, with keyword relevant ads served, so ideally this should be a page worth something, even if all it has is ads (it will also have a search box).

I am interested to try this out in practice, I have a couple of domains standing still, although I am not totally convinced about the money making capabilities here, I think you can make more by actually developing a site. Obviously I don’t have as much time as I’d like, so this will be a fun project. If you have some experience advertising on parked domains please share with us!

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The Inside Adsense blog made an announcement today that changes this restriction. Adsense users can now switch from the default Google Adsense font selection to either Arial, Verdana or Times. This makes it easier to use the same font for the display of Adsense units that is being used on the rest of the website. It is most likely that using the same font to display the Adsense unit and the content on the website will yield higher revenue.

It is probably a good idea to test all three new font combinations on the website to find the one with the best results. Fonts can be changed for single ad units or globally in the Adsense account. A click on the My Account link in the top menu and a selection of Ad Display Preference will open the menu where the font setting can be edited globally. Individual ad units can be changed by clicking on Adsense Setup > Manage Ads > Edit Ad Settings.

Being able to change the default font face is definitely a step in the right direction. Premium publishers have still an advantage as they can change the font size and other settings as well which are still locked for non-premium users.

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There are for example no graphs, no hourly statistics or comparisons with past revenues. CSV Adstats aids webmasters tremendously. The tool can be configured to automatically download Adsense CSV files which are then analyzed by the tool.

Once that is done webmasters can access all sorts of statistics and graphs that give in depth information about Adsense performance including Adsense for Search and Referrals. Webmasters can analyze global stats or channel stats and receive information about revenue progression, revenue average, click through rate, cpm, clicks, views, compare charts with the last years and much more.

It would take a long time to describe all the different functions and options that CSV Adstats offers. What I really like is that it automatically updates your Adsense earnings throughout the day similar to the Adsense Notifier extension for Firefox. No browser is needed though to view the updates though.

I enjoyed the best of category as well which displayed the best revenue, cpc, ctr days since running Adsense. Webmasters who want to use CSV Adstats will have to add their adsense login details to the software to make it work which might be enough reason for some cautious site owners to not use the software.

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It is to early to really say if this will turn out to be a lasting effect of if advertisers in turn will spend more money which results in higher earnings per click. I’m a bit skeptic that advertisers will really increase their bids on keywords and have the feeling that this drop will remain as it is for a very long time.

Several webmasters already decided to move away from Adsense and use other ways of monetizing their website. This is unfortunately not an option for many.

I compiled a list of tips that might help in this situation:

• Don’t panic ! This is probably the most important tip. We need more time to analyze the impact on the webmaster community and discover strategies on how to cope with this situation.
• Blending might not be the best option anymore. Most webmasters did blend their ads to fit into the site design. They were able to do this because it did not really matter where the user clicked on the ad. Even the whitespace was clickable. This is different now with only the title and url clickable
• Be patient when you try different ad units and color schemes. Try those for at least 1-2 days before you draw a conclusion. We all know that Adsense earnings rise and fall on a daily basis and it is essential to test ad units for a certain time. My suggestion would be to test them on at least two weekdays.
• Take the time and look for Adsense alternatives. It is always a good idea to look around and have alternatives if Adsense earnings remain on these low levels. A good starting point is Darrens Problogger blog and webmaster forums like Webmaster World and Digitalpoint
• Making Ads stick out. I’m currently testing different color schemes and a early conclusion that I can draw is that the color red seems to be excellent for a higher click through rate. I would suggest to change colors and ad units and test those as well. Title and URL have different sizes in many ad units which means that the clickable area is different as well. Some ad units do not display the URL at all which means that the only clickable area is the title.

Feel free to add additional tips and alternatives to Adsense. I would also be interested in your observations.

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I’m using ad placements for a while with no obvious result whatsoever but it could be rather site specific. If I recall correctly those ads can then be booked directly at the website. It is not working at all for me but it does not cost anything and it could work for your website.

The second tip is a no brainer as well and I’m using this setting for a very long time. Image ads are mainly paid on a CPM basis while text ads on a CPC basis. Remember that the best paying unit is shown which could be either, so activate both.

Last but not least we have the medium rectangle which received their recommendation. I know that some webmasters are using this medium rectangle successfully on their websites while others have more success with the large rectangle. I’d say to test both and see which performs better on your website.

Besides this emails from Adsense representatives are floating around the web stating that there will be a major change in the design of the ad units. This has lead to some confusion among webmasters.

They say that descriptions and the background will no longer count as clicks that are paid in the future. Some webmasters understood it the way that they remain clickable but will not produce any revenue while others understood that they will not be clickable at all.

I think the latter will be the case because of this sentence:

Previously, users could click on the background and full text of an ad, but now users can click only on the title and URL of a text ad

Webmasters will nevertheless see a reduction in clicks and it remains to be seen if the drop in CTR will affect many webmasters. Googles hope is to make Adwords attractive to advertisers and that the reduction in accidental clicks will lead to better conversions and higher advertising budgets.

I don’t think it will make much of a difference for solid websites if the background and description will not be clickable anymore. What bothers me a little bit is that some Ad formats do not display a URL which would mean that the clickable area on those units would be reduced to the title.

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The red bar is showing my Adsense earnings (excluding Adsense for search and Adsense Referrals) from October 2005 to October 2007, the blue bar showing the traffic that my blog received in that time (the impressions counted by Google to be precise). For the sake of getting those values on the same chart I decided to divide my traffic by 10, just imagine it would be somewhere outside that graph..

The interesting part is of course what we can learn from that graph. Here are my conclusions after looking at that graph.

• I did not start optimizing Adsense (position and layout) until May 06, that explains the first huge upswing in earnings.
• The rise in December 05 was due to several of my articles making it on the Digg frontpage.
• The big drops in revenue can not be explained with decreasing traffic. I’m not sure what caused the drops, I did change to my new theme in August which might have something to do with the drop. Not sure about the cause in April though.
• The traffic increase can be mainly attributed to increasing the post frequency from three to four / five posts per day.

Did you experience similar increases and drops since monetizing your blog with Google Adsense ? I used to panic a lot when I recognized huge drops in earnings but looking at this graph once again shows me that it does not make sense to panic. If traffic remains steady the revenue drop can more likely be attributed to holidays and advertisers stopping campaigns.

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I’m however never satisfied until I know them all which is why I decided to make this post. I add five blogs to the list that I read on a daily basis and would like to receive hundreds of comments with tech blogs that you do read on a daily basis. This way we could create the ultimate collection of worthy tech blogs – would not that be fun..

Here we go, my top five technology blogs that I read: (in no particular order)

Connected Internet – one of my favorite blogs run by my friend Everton. He concentrates on Gadgets and Monetization but writes about other techy stuff as well.
Donation Coder – the blog is awesome with great topics mostly taken right from their well frequented forum. They do create applications as well.
Cybernet News – awesome blog with lots of great articles. Writes about the same stuff that I write about.
Download Squad – another great blog that concentrates on software, web services and general tips.
Digital Alchemy – a blog that is a little bit more on the dark side if you know what I mean. I love the dark side, hehe.

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The webmaster who got his account banned had the troubles to convince Google that the website that used his Adsense id was not one of his own which meant that his Adsense earnings would fall down to zero for that time.

Webmasters asked Google to implement this feature for a long time and finally Google decided to add it. The Adsense Setup tab of the Adsense account has a new tab called Allowed Sites. You have the option to add all of the sites that are your own and have the Google Adsense code implemented.

Ads will still show if they are implemented on a site that is not in the list but will not generate revenue. The problem that I see here is that it is not possible to get a list of sites that you probably missed when adding them.

I’m also not sure about cached pages and proxies which could turn out to be problematic if many of your visitors use proxies to connect to your sites.

Will you be using the new feature ?

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There are some and they can be applied to most websites and those websites will earn good money from those tips but they are probably not the ultimate way either. Most tips will tell you the following:

• Use the large or medium rectangle and / or the wide skyscraper for best results.
• Blend the ads
• Add them as close as possible to your content

If you apply the ads this way you will get good results. A click through rate between 2-5% for instance but you never know for sure if this is indeed the best ad unit for your website.

It is also important to note that the best paying ad unit might not be one that you want to put up on your blog because it might turn visitors away from your site. Back to the topic, how would you find out which Adsense ads work best for your blog ?

The obvious answer is of course to try them all out and come to a conclusion afterwards. The not so obvious way is what I’m going to explain now. I would suggest that you try this out if your blog reaches at least 1000 page impressions per day, the more the better of course. It does not make much sense to try out different ad units and positions if your blog gets 50 visitors per day because this does not lead to data that you can rely on.

Wordpress Plugin:

A great way to test out different ad units, location and appearance is to use the excellent Wordpress plugin Adsense Paster if you happen to use Wordpress.

Adsense paster rotates ad units that you create in text files randomly which means that you can test several units without having to alter the code by hand.

General Method:

The following method has been found at the digital alchemy blog and can be used to test several ad units.

Factors:

Some factors that you should consider are:

• Ad unit size. Test out different sizes such as large and medium rectangle, half banner, full banner, the squares and so on
• Ad appearance. Blend units, make them stick out, use borders, don't use borders, alter link color, ad text, url color..
• Ad location. Let it float on the top left spot of your articles, on the top right spot, alone on top and the article below, at the bottom..
• Ad a second ad unit and see if it impacts revenue

Channels:

You have to setup channels to be able to track earnings. Every ad unit should get an own channel. Make sure you track the performance for several days - workdays are best for most sites - and remove ads that do not perform that well from your site.

Section Targeting:

Make sure you use Section Targeting which emphasizes certain parts of your website. You need to edit the source code of your blog and add the following code from google to it. You can add that code in single.php, index.php and page.php before and after the function that displays your blog post. It would look like the following in single.php

You can also deemphasize parts of your blog by using google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) instead of google_ad_section_start which is useful to deemphasize the sidebar for instance.

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You might be losing no ads, several or hundreds as it is in my case. The only way to be able to access those statistics is to setup alternate ads and rely on the stats of the company that is providing the stats. The reason why you should setup alternate ads in Google Adsense is therefor twofold. First you probably would like to know how many PSAs are displayed and you would then like to monetize them instead of handing them out to Google for their public service announcements.

Setting up alternate ads is relatively easy. You first need to have some alternate ad code from a company such as Amazon, Chitika or Auction Ads and save the code into a normal text document. Rename the document to alternate.htm and upload it to the root of your website.

Now add the line google_alternate_ad_url = "http://www.yoururl.extension/alternate.htm"; to your Google Adsense code and the alternate ads should appear on every page where Google is unable to provide advertisement for.

After setting them up you can start analyzing the number of impressions that you receive from that backup network and tweak it until you are satisfied with the results.

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