Stay on top of AdSense program policies with new notifications in your account

Our AdSense program policies are defined to ensure we all preserve a healthy ecosystem for users, advertisers and other publishers, and compliance with these policies is an absolute must for every publisher. We’ve heard your requests for more accessible information on policy issues and we’re happy to tell you that we are launching an additional policy notifications feature directly in your AdSense account. This will help you to quickly understand and address any potential policy issues.


Going forward, if our system detects a policy violation, you’ll receive both an email and an account notification with a link to view more details. Under the Policy violations section on the home tab, you can quickly access important information including details on each violation, the issue ID and an example of the violation on your site. The page will also include details on the action you need to take to resolve the violation.

We’ll be gradually rolling out this new feature over the coming weeks to all publisher accounts.  We hope that it helps you quickly identify and resolve any potential issues so you can focus on growing your business with AdSense. Please remember that as before, you'll need to ensure all of your sites comply with our policies. In addition to checking your account for any notifications, be sure to regularly review your sites for compliance with our policies.

Thanks for your continued feedback and suggestions on how we can continue improving AdSense for you. Please continue to share them on our AdSense +page and if you’d like more details on this new feature, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager
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Understand and improve your site’s performance with the new publisher scorecard

We regularly hear that you look to us for benchmarking information on how your site is performing relative to the sites of other AdSense publishers. If you tuned in to yesterday’s Hangout on Air, you heard Susan Wojcicki talk about a future where AdSense does more of the heavy lifting for your ads, so you can focus on creating great content. Today, we’re happy to introduce the publisher scorecard, a new benchmarking feature in your AdSense account.

The scorecard can be found on the Home tab of your account and provides you with a summary of how well your ad settings, webpages and content are performing relative to other AdSense publishers. It’s organized into different categories, such as revenue optimization and site health, with each category scored on a scale of one to five blue dots indicating your performance.
You can further understand your performance and the steps you can take to improve it by following the suggestions and improvement tips in each category. Items that you should fix will be flagged by a red or yellow exclamation mark and once fixed, may help to increase your traffic and/or revenue. You’ll also be able to see updates to your score as you make improvements. In case you’re wondering if Google will take any action on low scores, the answer is no - this in an informational tool only to give you greater insights into how your site is performing.

We hope you find the scorecard a valuable tool in maximizing user experience on your site and further growing your online business. Read more about the scorecard in our Help Center and share your feedback on the AdSense +page.

Posted by Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager
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We’re simplifying earnings reporting for YouTube partners


One of the most exciting things about YouTube is all the partners building businesses around doing what they love. We now have thousands of partners who are making video creation a full-time endeavor. And, we’re listening to feedback and working to improve the process of earning money on YouTube.

So, in an effort to ensure we deliver our partners the most accurate and consistent financial performance data for their videos, we are making some changes in how YouTube interacts with AdSense. Starting April 1, 2013, AdSense will no longer calculate and report AdSense for Content Host earnings for YouTube partners. Instead, AdSense earnings from YouTube videos will only be calculated by YouTube and displayed in YouTube Analytics.

What does this mean for you as a YouTube partner?
First, expect no change in how you are paid. The payments tab in AdSense will show your monthly YouTube payments as one total amount as you will continue to be paid via AdSense. Rather, this change means that if you want to view your YouTube financial performance, you should go to YouTube Analytics where you can continue to find a comprehensive view of all your sources of earnings for your YouTube videos. YouTube Analytics has improved the timeliness of earnings reporting to within 24 hours after the end of the day, Pacific Time. You can still view page views and clicks and also manage ad blocking in the AdSense interface for your YouTube videos. If you use other AdSense products, their calculation and reports will be unchanged in the AdSense reporting interface.

Have you ever wondered what the difference between AdSense earnings and YouTube earnings was? As a bit of background, many YouTube partners have ad earnings from two sources: auction-sold ads (AdSense earnings) and reserve-sold ads (YouTube earnings). YouTube serves the optimal ads when a viewer watches the video. Previously, AdSense calculated and reported the auction-sold AdSense earnings. YouTube calculated reserve-sold and miscellaneous earnings and reported both AdSense and YouTube earnings. Now, having only the YouTube system calculate all your earnings will simplify and streamline your video reporting.

We take accurate financial calculation and reporting very seriously, and believe this change will reduce reporting confusion and prepare all our partners for new ways to grow their earnings.


Andy Stack, YouTube Product Manager
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A new look for personalized ad unit optimization recommendations in your account

Just over a year ago, we introduced recommendations for individual AdSense for content ad units, directly in your account. In addition to the personalized tips you might receive via email, these recommendations provide specific suggestions for improving your account performance by changing ad unit type or format settings of individual ad units.

Based on your feedback, we’ve further improved the look and feel of these recommendations. Next to the specific optimization suggestion, you’ll now also see a graph that visualizes your expected revenue gain from the suggested optimization. The new graph allows you to assess instantly what you might gain from the suggested optimization and whether or not it’s worth updating your implementation. However, we can only perform the simulations and generate recommendations for your ad units if you have created your ad units directly via the ‘My ads’ tab in your AdSense account. If you're still using the older AdSense code, please upgrade your ad code following the instructions in our Help Center.


Our recommendations are based on ad auction simulations for a specific ad unit using different ad type and/or ad format settings. We’ll only show a recommendation if our simulation predicts that a change of settings consistently results in higher revenue for that ad unit. Please note that the new design including graph and total projected revenue uplift will only be visible for new recommendations. Recommendations generated before today’s date will remain in the old design.

We hope that the improved design of our recommendations in the account helps you continue to optimize your account performance. Let us know what you think about the new design by sharing your feedback on the AdSense +page.

Posted by Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager
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Learn with Google for Publishers presents: Meet a Product Manager

We’ve seen from our AdSense +page and in-person events that AdSense publishers love to discuss current product features and interact with our team. With this in mind, we’re kicking off a Hangout series with AdSense Product Managers to connect you with the Googlers who look after the AdSense product roadmap. For the series kick-off, we’ve invited Allan Livingston, who has been the AdSense Group Product Manager for 3+ years, to host a Hangout On Air on our AdSense +page. Join the session to meet Allan, hear answers to your AdSense product questions, and learn some AdSense tips.
Join the event

The event will take place this Thursday, March 28th, from 9:00am-9:30am PT (4:00pm-4:30pm GMT) on the AdSense +page. Ask your questions by joining the event and posting your questions in the comments section. Also, feel free to +1 questions previously added by other publishers that you’d like addressed. If you’re not able to view the live session, a recording will be available afterwards on our AdSense YouTube channel.

We look forward to hanging out with you online this week!

Posted by Ashli Meske, Inside AdSense Team
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Keep track of account changes with reporting notes

Your performance reports provide insights into how much you're earning and the factors that impact those earnings. As you may remember, we recently added the ability to view changes to your account in more detail using the “Show events” checkbox or a separate event report. Change events are automatically generated and are shown as small flags on your reporting graphs. Those annotations help you keep track of the actions you’ve taken in your account, like adding a new ad unit or blocking an additional category, and help you determine the impact of your changes.

Based on your feedback, we’ve made further improvements to this reporting functionality. In addition to these automatically generated events, you can now also manually add notes you want to keep track of. This will allow you to find out whether actions which aren’t directly related to your AdSense account, like a website redesign or an advertising campaign for your site, may have had an impact on your earnings. Every user can see all the notes which have been added to an account by other users and can add, edit, and delete their own customized notes.

To add a personalized annotation, visit the ‘Performance reports’ tab in your account. You can either view the changes as an overlay or open a separate event report. Click on ‘Add note’ directly below the graph to add a new annotation to your report. For more information and detailed instructions, please visit our Help Center.
We hope you’ll find this update helpful, and we look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager

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A makeover for Performance reports

Your performance reports are the key to understanding your AdSense account activity and earnings. This is where you can get vital information about your account, quickly and easily. We’re constantly working to enhance performance reports, and so today, we’re introducing some changes that improve the usability of the reports and make them more visually compelling.

When you visit your “Performance reports” tab, you’ll notice changes like these:
  • The graph area covers a wider area of the screen.
  • The list of metrics has been moved from the right hand side to the top in an interactive scorecard.
  • There are new buttons for day, week and month for the usual timeline graph to allow for more control over granularity when analyzing activity over longer time periods. 
  • You can choose “Events” on a timeline report graph or select the “Events” report from the left navigation to see how specific account changes are related to account performance.
  • There are new graph types available, such as pie or bar charts, to visualize the data you’re looking at. In addition, the “Countries” report shows you where your users are located on a world map: 
We hope you enjoy these changes -- stay tuned for more updates. For additional information visit our Help Center and feel free to leave comments and feedback on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Daniel White - Software Engineer, AdSense Reporting

A new look for the AdSense interface

We’ve been making continuous improvements to the AdSense interface, whether it’s adding new features or redesigning pages you frequently use.  As part of our Google-wide initiative to deliver a simpler, more beautiful experience across all of our products, in the next few days we’ll be giving your AdSense account a facelift. Your account will still have the same general structure, but you’ll notice some gradual updates to introduce cleaner design elements. If you’re also using Analytics or AdWords, you’ll be familiar with some of the updates.

Here’s a sneak peek of the new look:


One of the changes you’ll notice is the location of help content in your account, which we’re moving from the left navigation bar to a dedicated ‘Help’ link in the top right corner of your account. We’ve also added the ‘Send Feedback’ link there so you can quickly let us know if something isn’t working as intended. Please note that account support won’t be available from this link, so we ask that you continue to use our Help Center to find answers or contact forms for specific questions.
Also, when visiting the “Performance reports” tab, you’ll notice that your reports are now organized by type. Click ‘Common reports’ to access your standard reports, and then use the new date range selector. You’ll still be able to choose to either see your default report or daily account performance, just as before.

We’ll be gradually introducing these updates to AdSense accounts in the next few days, and we welcome your feedback and suggestions in the meantime. Feel free to leave a comment on our AdSense +Page, and stay tuned to our blog for additional updates. If you have questions about these updates, visit our Help Center for more information.

Posted by Arlene Lee -- Inside AdSense Team

Update on forms of payment available on our new payment system

We recently let you know about upcoming improvements to the Payments page in your account, designed to provide you with a better experience and address your feedback. These changes are part of an upgrade to our payment system, and over the coming months we’ll continue to roll out these upgrades to all publishers.

For publishers located in countries where we offer payments via Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), we’ve made improvements to this form of payment to give you quicker access to your earnings. Once your account has been upgraded to our new system, EFT payments will appear in your bank account just days after posting to your Payments page. As always, EFT payments are free of charge, less error prone, more efficient and the most environmentally-friendly payment method.

With these changes, please note that the new system won’t support check payments in countries where we offer EFT as a form of payment. If you’re located in a country where we offer EFT payments and you currently receive check payments, please be advised that you’ll need to complete a few steps once your account is upgraded. However, no immediate action is required on your part at the moment. Once your account is transitioned to the new system, you’ll receive an email notification with detailed instructions on setting up EFT payments.                

For our readers who are located in countries where we don’t yet support EFT, please know that we’re working hard to improve the payments process and find ways to send you your payments as quickly and securely as possible. If you have any questions, please sign in to your AdSense account and visit the Payments section in our Help Center for the most relevant information.

Posted by Colm Keady, Partner Payments

Ad blocking part II: Blocking unwanted ads


Happy Friday and welcome to the second installment of the ad blocking series! In our first blog post, we talked about different reasons for blocking ads and common myths about ad blocking. Today we’ll discuss how to block ads you don’t want to allow on your site. Once you’ve identified the ads you don’t want to show, there are a few ways to block them: by advertiser URL, general or sensitive category (limited language availability), ad network, and individual ad creative. Below, we’ll bust more myths commonly believed about blocking unwanted ads.

Myth: The ‘Allow and block ads’ tab of my account is the only place I can block ads.
In addition to blocking ads via the AdSense interface, you can install the Google Publisher Toolbar to block ads while viewing your pages in a Chrome browser. The Publisher Toolbar is a Chrome extension that lets you view up-to-date information about your AdSense account, offers an overview of your earnings and performance, and provides ad overlays with in-page reporting. For more details on this new Chrome extension, visit the Inside AdSense blog post.

Myth: Because the ad is an image or rich media, there’s no way to find the destination URL without clicking the ad and violating AdSense policy.
As a publisher, you have a few options when trying to find out which URL you want to block:

  • If you’re using Chrome, install the Publisher Toolbar extension mentioned above, which allows you to block ads as you’re seeing them on your site. 
  • In your AdSense account, you can opt into the Ad Review Center where you can see all of the ads shown on your site, including text, image, and rich media ads. 

Myth: I don’t see any ads in the Shown Ads tab of the Ad Review Center, but I see ads on my site. The Ad Review Center doesn’t work! 
The Ad Review Center is a tool that allows you to review individual ads and choose whether or not to let them be displayed on your pages. Ads in the Ad Review Center have shown within the last 30 days. If your site has not shown any ads within the last 30 days, no ads will show in the Ad Review Center. Also, if you have very low traffic on your site, you may not see ads in the Ad Review Center. After you’ve submitted the request to opt in to the Ad Review Center, please allow 24 to 48 hours for ads to begin showing under the Shown Ads tab. Read more information about the new and improved Ad Review Center in our previous Inside AdSense blog post.

We hope that this blog post has busted some of the myths associated with the ad blocking feature. Have more questions? You can submit them by commenting on the post on the Google AdSense +page. We’ll be answering those questions in a Google+ Hangout on Air on Tuesday, August 7th at 10am PDT. We hope you can join us!

Posted by: Wesley Houser, Inside AdSense Team