2007 Adsense Tidbits

• Google encourages and supports different forms of
  content that improves your user's experience-such as YouTube videos. They do want to remind you to keep in mind Google's policies when considering videos and image content for your site. If you are utilizing Google Adsense with your content, you also must keep in mind who will want to run ads on your page. In other words, will the advertiser consider the content offensive, disturbing or uncomfortable. 
  New Ad Management Improvements - 1) You can now view the ID number associated with a specific custom channel by visiting the 'Channels' link under the 'AdSense Setup' tab; 2) 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; 3) You'll be able to view the most recent date that your ad units were updated; 4) Slowly rolling out manage ads features for your referral units.
• Adsense placement targeting- Adsense has made several changes to their site targeting features. Site targeting allows advertisers to select specific publisher sites to run their ads on. The first change is that they have renamed "site targeting" to "placement targeting" to reflect the targeting options they are offering; Second change- advertisers can bid on placement-targeted ads on a cost-per-click basis. Before, advertisers could only bid on targeted ad on a cost-per-impression basis.
• Blocking Ads - With the increase of the number of urls that you can block from your site from 25 to 500- you now have some control of keeping out undesirable sites or for which your readers may find offensive.
• Adsense Ad Management Feature Added- Adsense is rolling a new Ad Management Feature that will save you time-once the initial setup is completed. This feature will save the setting of your Ads within your AdSense Account. With means each time you want to change the colors, channels, or even the corner styles for your ad units, you can make the changes directly in your account rather than generating and pasting new code. They currently are in the process of rolling this feature out to all publishers. 11/6/2007
• Adsense and Referral Ads-- Adsense recently made a change to help make sure that the conversions generated by referral ads are valid. For some publishers who display referrals for non-Google products, the earnings you receive for the ad may now be less than the maximum referral value displayed for that ad. This is because their system will initially place a restriction on referral earnings as we monitor click and conversion data to determine that the conversions generated are valid. However, advertisers will only be charged the maximum referral value once a publisher has completed the validation period. Our goal with this change is to ensure the long-term effectiveness of the referrals program for both publishers and advertisers.
• Adsense And YouTube- Adsense and YouTube have joined together to offer webmasters another opportunity to make money. You'll have to join up for YouTube if you're not already a member and then choose the style of player you want to use, put in the code and you're ready to go. (10/11/2007)
• Google introduces Gadget ads - Google has launched Google Gadget Ads, which are customized "mini-sites" that run as ads on Adsense publisher websites. The ads are interactive. To opt into this option you much be opted in to image ads. The most popular sizes for gadget ads are the rectangle, leaderboard and skyscraper formats.
• Ads between posts on Blogs- Google Adsense is now letting you insert Google ads between your blog posts. This is how you do it. 1) Log into your Blogger account; 2) Visit your blog's Template tab and click on the Page Elements link; 3) Click Edit in the Blog Posts section 4) Check the box next to Show Ads Between Posts. 5) Then you can select how often you'd like your ads to appear. Such as, once after every post, or every other posts. 6) customize the ads and click on Save Changes
• Forums and Adsense- Many forums have a message above the fold on their pages welcoming users to the site and encouraging them to register. Placing a large (336x280) or medium (300x250) rectangle next to this message catches users' attention right when they walk through the door (so to speak).  Blend your color with the design of the site-removing borders helps the blending of your ads (added 7/27/2007) (Google's Inside Adsense)
• Adsense has launched a new featured called "Site Authentication". It is for those sites that have password protected pages. An example: Content pages that is accessed only by paying members. To have more targeted ads you can go within Google Adsense and hit the Site Authentication link under the Adsense setup-you will then need to give them with a username and password and other details, then you will need to verify through Google sitemaps that you own the site. Once you've set up your authentication rule and verified ownership, it may take 1-2 weeks for the Google crawler to visit your site. (added 7/20/2007) (Google's Inside Adsense)
• Google's SiteSearch feature for Adsense allows your customers to search your site. When you generate the AdSense for search code with SiteSearch enabled, the search box will currently default to selecting the websearch radio button. However, since many publishers have asked if they could possibly have their search boxes default to SiteSearch instead. This is possible.- 1) Click on AdSense for Search 2) on code generation page, simply click on the radio button for SiteSearch within the sample. Once you're finished customizing your search box, copy and paste the code to your website. (added 7/13/07) (Google's Inside Adsense)
• New Adsense ad formats have been introduced this week of 6/25/2007. They have added a new feature which allows publishers to customize their ad formats in the following ways: 1) size, color, shape. The shape customization feature has now been expanded to include: 1) square; 2) slightly rounded; 3) very rounded corners
  
  To use the new ad shapes hit the Adsense Setup tab on your account. They recommend choosing the corner style that best matches the look and feel of your site. You will need to keep in mind that if background color, ad background color, and ad border color are the same, the new corners will not be visible.
  
  Keep your eyes out for yet even more choices to customizing ads in the future. (added 6/30/2007) (Google's Inside Adsense)
  
• You can now place up to three link units on a page. 6/6/2007 (Google's Inside Adsense)
  
• They are now requiring AdSense publishers to comply with the spirit of their Page Quality Guidelines (Adwords Program). If you use any kind of online advertising, know that these guidelines encourage publishers to, among other things, create sites with simple navigation and substantial, useful content. 6/6/2007 (Google's Inside Adsense)
  
• Google has had it's one year anniversary for Video ads. They have added the following to their click-to-play video ads family: the 728x90 Leaderboard, the 120x600 Skyscraper, and the 160x600 Wide Skyscraper. Previously, video ads were only enabled for the 300x250 Medium Rectangle, the 336x280 Large Rectangle, the 200x200 Small Square, and the 250x250.

  Once a user clicks the play button, the video ad will begin to play within the ad unit. How you generate income: 1) advertiser has chosen to display the click-to-play video ad as a cost-per-thousand impression (CPM) ad, you will be paid for every valid impression of the static image, regardless of plays or clicks to the advertiser's site; 2) If the click-to-play video ad is a cost-per-click (CPC) ad, you'll generate earnings from valid clicks to the advertiser's site rather than clicks on the play button. To have this option available, you need to be opted into image ads in order to receive video ads, but they aren't able to guarantee that video ads will always be available for your content. If you want to partake in video ads, you have to opt into the image ads. Go to Account Settings/Ad Type Preference (edit) and select text/image. 5/31/2007 (Google's Inside Adsense)

• Google Advice given to placement of Google Ads. Take Note: Google advices that many a webmaster is placing their Google Ads too close to their web page - frequently, clickable links. As stated by Google "ad placement may not inherently violate our program policies, it could increase the risk of invalid clicks being generated on threads, which would be in violation of our policies". And if you are in violation of their policies it could get your site punished for doing so. (Google's Inside Adsense)

• No small icons should be placed next to Google Ads- to suggestive to your visitors to click on the links. Can cause your site to be penalized. (Google's Inside Adsense)

• Place Google ads in such a matter that it does not pull your copy down.

• Use the Adsense preview tool to  check on the destination of ads on your page without the risk of generating invalid clicks. Yes they do keep a close eye on those clicking their own ads --  through engineering systems and  human analysis However, they do realize that, on occasional, you may accidentally click on an ad - and in most cases they say, they are aware of the occasional accidental click, and will discount them and filter the accidental click out.  (Google's Inside Adsense 5/24/2007)