What is Google AdSense

To fully understand what is AdSense you need to understand Google Adwords protram first. Adwords is Google’s flagship advertising product. It offers Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising and site targeted advertising for different kinds of ads. Advertisers who joined Google Adwords program generate ads based on targeted keywords and specify maximum amount that they are going to pay if someone clicks on their ads. Google then displays those ads in their search results for those targeted keywords, and also on publishers websites that joined their AdSense program.
Adsense works by matching text and image ads based on website content and website visitors, so visitors might get interested in product and services offered by ads. Website owners can earn money through pay-per-click(PPC), or through providing Google Search on their website and displaying ads on search result pages. Once publisher website visitor clicks on the ad, advertiser is charged the amount that he agreed to pay though Google Adwords program, and Google shares that revenue with the publisher. AdSense is a free program and any website owner can join it as long as their site is eligible to participate in AdSense. Please follow this link to see eligibility guidelines.

AdSense Products

  • AdSense for Content - lets any website owner to earn money by displaying Google Ads on their content pages. The ads help you to enhance site visitors experience because of their relevancy to content and on the other hand it earns money for the publishers. As publisher you don’t have to worry about matching content to ads, AdSense does it automatically. There is never shortage of advertisers, since Google Adwords program is very popular, plus you get wide specter of them from big corporations to small local companies and in all possible categories you can think of. As a member of AdSense you can
    • block undesirable ads
    • customize ads to match your site look and feel
    • track your ads performance with variety of predefined and customizable reports
  • AdSense for Search – lets website owners to put Custom Search Engine on their sites so their visitors can perform web searches either on collection of specified sites or on entire web. As a site owner you can choose fully customize search results: look and feel, custom logo, location of the ads, and selection of who will host search results: your site or Google. However you won’t earn money from just displaying search results on your site, only when users click on ads displayed on search result pages.
  • AdSense for Mobile Content is very similar for AdSense for Content but only publishers can generate earnings from their mobile versions of websites. Google matches ads with the sites mobile content and publishers earn money when visitors clicks on displayed ads. In addition AdSense will detect the type of mobile device user is using and deliver ads designed for that specific device.
  • AdSense for Feeds – works the same way as the rest AdSense program by allowing website publishers to earn money by placing targeted ads in this case in their feeds. Feed is a special data format that is used for providing users with feed publishers updated content. Users usually subscribe to feed by a feed aggregator, which allows them to access all subscribed feeds in one place
  • AdSense for Domains – allows website owners who has domains that are currently not in use to put relevant information on those domains. If user comes to unused domains by following an expired link or by typing its address to the address bar, instead of showing 404 error or ‘under construction’ message AdSense for domains will display relevant links, search results or ads. Google uses semantic technology targeted to the domain name to display relevant information. Domain owners will earn money when user clicks on displayed ads.
  • AdSense for Mobile Applications – allows mobile application publishers to earn revenue by displaying Google adds on their mobile applications. Ads are directly integrated into iPhone and Android applications.

AdSense Earnings

Most common way to earn money with AdSense is to display ads on your site. With AdSense for content you get paid by either Cost per click (CPC) or Cost per thousand impressions (CPM). For CPC ads you earn when visitor clicks on ad and for CPM when ad is displayed when visitor viewing your site.How much can one earn by participating in Google AdSense? There is no precise answer to this question but here is the list of factors that directly and indirectly affect your earnings:

  • Type of ads displayed on your pages. all ads compete in AdWords auctions and Google automatically shows those ads that generate the most revenue for publishers.
  • Pricing of ads, which fluctuates all the time depending on advertiser’s budget, your site content, keywords advertiser is targeting, sites they choose to target. Please see video about how Ad Auction works.
  • How many adsense products publisher uses, adsense for content, search, feeds.
  • Ads users choose to view, since ads are not priced the same it will affect your earnings. By using AdSense reports and custom channels you can see which ads units have better click through rate (CTR),  so you can put them on specific pages and on specific places on your pages.
  • Your site traffic, the higher traffic levels the more you can earn with AdSense.
  • Your ad targeting, make sure that the pages you placed Google ads, are indexed by Google, otherwise Google will have a hard time to match ads content on pages that are not crawled by Google bot.

Learn more about how Ad Auction works in this video

 

AdSense Policies

After you’ve signed up for AsSense account and agreed to their Terms and Conditions do your self a favor, take time to learn about AdSense policies. There are a lot of rules you must follow to keep your AdSense account. If you violate any of the policies you are running a high chance of being banned from AdSense and all your hard work of setting up website, developing content, etc. will be lost. Google updates their polices from time to time and it is your responsibility as a publisher to keep up with latest updates. Also Adsense team is always on look out for policy violators. Here is the brief simplified guide that is not too hard to understand.

  • Invalid Clicks. Do not click on ads on your own site, or use any tools or software to click on ads. No matter how good tools seems to be Google is very good of figuring it out. Just don’t do it.
  • Encouraging Clicks. Do not encourage users to click on your site ads, that includes compensation for clicking, deceptive formatting of ads, directing users attention to ads, etc. Once again Google is very clever, they will figure it out sooner or later.
  • Prohibited Content. Do not put ads on any sites that include or linked to following content: porn, alcohol, drugs, weapons, gambling, hacking, violence, racism, product replicas, or any other illegal material.
  • Webmaster Guidelines. Please follow Google Webmaster Guidelines, meaning do not try to use any deceptive tactics to improve your site Pagerank, create useful, information rich, original content site to boost your Search Engine rankings.
  • Traffic Sources. Do not participate in any traffic exchange or any pay per click programs and networks, send spam or unwanted emails, display ads as a result of the actions of software applications (toolbars for example). Make sure your pages comply with Google Landing Page Quality Guidelines
  • Ad behavior. Do not change AdSense code, or manipulate it to open ads results in new browser window, or placing ads in iFrame.
  • Ad placement. Do not place ads in popup boxes, emails or software, non-content based pages.
  • Publishers Age. You must be 18 years of age or older.
  • Site behavior. Make sure your site is easy to navigate and that its does not redirect users to unwanted sites, starts automatic downloads, includes viruses or malware.
  • Earnings Disclosure. Do not publicize your AdSense earnings for any reason.

Optimization

One of the great things about AdSense that sets it apart from other banner ads programs is the ability to customize look and feel of the displayed ads and also variety of ad sizes and formats. You also as a site owner control number of ads displayed on the page, placement of ads on page and what pages to put them. Please see some of the best AdSense optimization tips to maximize your earnings potential.

  • Ad Placement. The more visible your ads the better, so the higher they are on the page the better click-through-rate. Also left side is better than right.
  • Ad Size. The bigger the size of the ad units, the better. It allows to have more ads in a unit and it easier to read for the users.
  • Ad Appearance. Google recommends 3 techniques for ad design and you should experiment with all 3 of them:
    • Blend – border and background of ads are the same as background of the site
    • Compliment - ads colors are chosen from the existing colors that already used on the site, but background and borders are not matched exactly
    • Contrast - colors that standout against background color of the site

To learn more about ad appearance follow this link – Blend, Contrast, Compliment

  • Number of Ads. The more ads the better, but not always true. There is usually a border point of how many ads users will take, but don’t be afraid to put more than 2 ads on the page.

Channels

The objective is to optimize your ad units so you can earn as much revenue is possible by both generating more clicks and making your site more attractive to advertisers. A channel is simply the label you create in order to monitor where your revenue comes from. There are 2 types of channels:

  • URL Channels track revenue on a specific URL or a domain. The purpose of URL channels is to figure out which page, site or portion of a site generates the most revenue for you. All you need to do is to setup channels in your AdSense account and start collecting data, no code modification is necessary.
  • Custom Channels function the same way URL channels do but instead of covering URL data they cover ad unit data. What this channels collect is based entirely on organizational system that site owner develop. For example you can create a unit channel for each ad unit on your site. Google suggest system that takes into consideration 3 pieces of information that ad units contains: ad size, ad placement and page content. You can attach up to 5 custom channels on each ad units and analyze what works best. Overall you are allowed to have up to 200 custom channels