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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Getting the most from your 336x280 ad unit

To ensure you are always getting the best results from your ad units, we recently introduced some updates to our ad serving process enabling our larger ad units to serve similar-sized display ads. We’ve already updated this for our 300x600 and 970x90 ad units and now we’ve extended this flexibility to our 336x280 ad unit, allowing it to serve a 300x250 ad when doing so will maximize the performance of that ad unit for the publisher.

With this change you may now occasionally see a 300x250 ad served in your 336x280 ad unit when that unit is opted in to showing image ads. 300x250 and 336x280 image ads will both compete for your 336x280 ad unit with the most competitive ad served thus maximizing the earnings on your ad unit. When a 300x250 image is served it will be centered in the 336x280 ad unit as illustrated below.

300x250 display ad served within a 336x280 ad unit

Aside from ensuring that you’re getting the most from your ad units, this change gives advertisers the opportunity to expand their reach with their existing ad creatives. To maximise your earnings potential with this change, don’t forget to enable both text and image ads for your ad units. You can opt out of having similar-sized display ads served in your ad units but remember this may impact your earnings. When you opt out, this applies on an account level and not just on an individual ad unit. To opt out, go to the Allow & block ads tab in your account, click the Ad serving tab in the top horizontal bar and select the block option under the “Similar Sized Display Ads” header. Tell us what you think about these new changes on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Amit Mhatre - AdSense Software Engineer
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New controls and transparency in the Ad review center

Publishers often tell us that they would value more information on the ads displayed on their sites, along with greater control over which ads are displayed. The Ad review center is a key tool for publishers giving you the option to review individual ads and choose whether to let those ads show on your pages.

To further increase transparency and control, we’re happy to announce that we’ve launched several enhancements to the Ad review center, improving overall usability and giving you better insights into the ads shown on your site.

First, the Ad review center now includes an impressions-based progress bar, which shows you the total coverage of the ads you have reviewed so far. This new feature tells you the percentage of ads you have reviewed relative to the total impressions on your site. For example, if the bar reads 79% you have already reviewed ads that total 79% of your impressions.

Next, you now have more access to information on a specific ad simply by hovering over the creative and clicking on the magnifying glass in the bottom right corner. You can preview the landing page of an ad to learn about the user experience and we have also added additional information such as the time remaining before an ad in the ‘upcoming ads’ queue is auto-approved, advertiser and ad network details plus the duration of video ads.

Finally, publishers can now review and block visually similar ads by simply uploading a screenshot or logo, or searching for text in images, thanks to the integration of Google image search technology into the Ad review center. Try out these new features in our Ad review center and share your feedback on our AdSense+ page.

Posted by Fiona Herring - AdSense Product Manager
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Updates to our ‘Modifying Ad Code’ Policy

Web trends and technology demand that your site evolves quickly to maintain a growing user base. We’ve heard your questions and feedback on areas like responsive design, and we’re happy to let you know that we’ve updated our existing guidelines around modifying the AdSense ad code. We hope that this increased flexibility will help you continue enhancing the user experience on your site.

Going forward, we will permit publishers to make modifications to the AdSense ad code so long as those modifications do not artificially inflate ad performance or harm advertisers and otherwise comply with our Terms and Conditions and program policies. This will enable you to try a range of techniques on your site such as:

• Responsive design: Enabling publishers to create a single webpage that will adapt to the device on which it’s being viewed, whether it’s a laptop, smartphone or tablet, to maximize user experience.
• A/B testing: Running a test by creating multiple versions of a page, comparing user behavior to see which page is the most effective.
• Setting custom channels dynamically: Tracking performance of segments of users, sections of your site, or other behavior to maximize ad and user experience.
• Ad tag minification: Enabling your site pages to load faster by reducing the amount of data to be transferred.

For more details and to find the specific code snippets related to the bullets above, visit our updated Help Center article.

Even with this new flexibility, it’s important to proceed with caution to ensure the ecosystem remains balanced for publishers, users and advertisers. Please note that publishers must not make modifications to the AdSense code if those modifications are not permitted by our program policies. Publishers should always use caution when modifying the AdSense code and must not use techniques like hiding ad units, implementing the AdSense code in a way that covers content, creating ‘floating ads’, or manipulating ad targeting as they are a violation of our policies. More information about these types of prohibited techniques can be found in our updated Help Center article. In addition, please be aware that some types of code modification may prevent ads from appearing correctly, which may negatively impact your revenue.

We also look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions on our AdSense +page.

Posted By Nick Radicevic - AdSense Product Manager
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Introducing the revamped Google Publisher Toolbar

Over 234,000 of you have installed the Google Publisher Toolbar since it launched early last year. The Toolbar is a Chrome extension that gives you up-to-date information on your AdSense account such as earnings and performance and access to ad overlays that offer reporting and blocking controls directly on your site.

We’ve spent a lot of time looking at ways to further enhance this tool to give you richer functionality and more control over the ads displayed on your site. Today, with your feedback, we’re happy to share the revamped Google Publisher Toolbar.

The Google Publisher Toolbar will continue to include the same popular functionality as before in addition to a new feedback mechanism and blocking capabilities.

The new user interface makes detailed and up-to-date information on your account instantly accessible and includes the following features:

• Pop-up account overview: Giving you quick access to your estimated account earnings summary for today, yesterday, this month and last month as well as information on your top 5 channels or sites by revenue over a variety of date ranges.
• Ad Details: Giving you detailed information and full insight into a specific impression including buyer and advertiser details, the creative associated with the current view and now includes the ability to block the ad by buyer.
• Feedback box: You can now share your feedback directly with Google through our new feedback box embedded in the user interface.

As always, please be assured that clicking the ad overlays generated by the toolbar is permitted, and won’t generate any invalid clicks. If you haven’t already installed the Toolbar, you can download it from the Chrome Web Store. If you’re already using the Toolbar, no action is needed on your part as it’ll automatically update with the revamped version. Tell us what you think of the revamped Toolbar on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Fiona Herring - AdSense Product Manager
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AdSense now speaks Vietnamese

The Google AdSense team is pleased to announce the official launch of Vietnamese language support for AdSense for content.

Why Vietnamese language is important to Google
Vietnam is one of the fastest growing online markets in the world, with huge potential ahead. The online landscape has evolved rapidly in the last few years, becoming as vibrant and colorful as the streets of Hanoi.

We hope that introducing Vietnamese language support will help fuel even more great quality content creation, while helping advertisers reach out to a booming online user base through display ads.

How to get started

1. Please start by familiarizing yourself with the AdSense program policies. Need a refresher? Update your understanding of the policies by taking this AdSense policy quiz.
     
2. Sign up for an Adsense account by enrolling your Vietnamese language website.
     
3. Once your AdSense account has been approved, congratulations, simply add the AdSense code to your site to start displaying relevant, contextually targeted ads.

Chào mừng đến với chương trình adsense!

Posted by Emanuele Brandi - Product Sales Lead
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Richer user engagement with the new 970x90 ad size

It’s been just a few months since we launched a new, larger 300x600 ad size, giving you the opportunity to attract brand advertisers looking for large spaces to engage with users. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback and are happy to let you know that we’ll be expanding our range of available ad sizes to include the brand-friendly 970x90 ad unit.

970x90 ad units are a newly adopted IAB standard and are also known as ‘super leaderboards’. This larger ad size is another visually impactful placement for advertisers to promote their products and services even on wider screens.

970x90 Text Ad

970x90 Image Ad

Please note that since the 970x90 unit is new to our network, you’ll currently see mainly text ads appearing in this format. The new super leaderboard ad unit can show up to four text ads organized in a column layout but, as with other ad sizes, the number of text ads per unit may vary per impression. When enabling image and rich media ads for this unit, display ads in the size of a 728x90 unit will be displayed initially. Over time, we expect that the inventory of image and rich media ads for the 970x90 will grow and you’ll see more full-size display ads being served.

As always, we strongly recommend considering your content when placing your ad units to ensure both users and advertisers have a great experience with your site. Please note that the limit for AdSense for content ad units still remains at three per page.

We look forward to hearing what you think about the new 970x90 ad size. Feel free to share your thoughts and feedback on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Omer Gimenez Llach - AdSense Software Engineer & Johan Land - AdSense Product Manager
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Preview landing pages in the Ad review center

If you're looking to manage the ads that can appear on your pages, be sure to check out the controls available in the Ad review center. To help save you time, we recently added the ability to find and review ads more efficiently. Today, we’re happy to announce a new feature which enables you to not only view a specific ad, but to also check the landing page where this ad leads -- all directly within your account.

If you're looking for more insight into your users' experience with the ads on your site, the landing page view offers you a quick and easy view of what users see when clicking on an ad. This in turn will help you make a more informed decision about whether or not an ad is suitable for your audience.

To try this new feature, simply log in to your AdSense account and navigate to the “Allow and block ads” tab. As you review individual ads in the Ad review center, hover over an ad and a small magnifying glass will appear in the bottom right corner. Click on the magnifying glass and you'll see the ad and its specific landing page.

Please note that this feature is currently only available in accounts with the language preference set to English. However, we’re planning to roll this feature out in other languages soon. In the meantime, please feel free to share your feedback on this new feature on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Pedro Diaz - AdSense Software Engineer

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Enhancing text ads on the Google Display Network

Text ads have proven to be a great way to help advertisers extend their Google search campaigns to sites in the Google Display Network, enabling publishers like you to earn revenue from your content. This is why we're continuing to work on improving text ads, even as we introduce new ad formats.

One change, rolling out this week, will make the look and feel of text ads more consistent as consumers and advertisers use screens interchangeably, and distinctions between devices fade. You'll notice a new clickable arrow icon, as well as slight optimizations to font size, spacing and text layout. These enhancements are among the largest that we have made to text ads, and our experiments indicate an uplift in clicks across publishers on the Google Display Network.

These changes will happen automatically for most text ads on your pages, and the color of the arrow icon will be based on the color palette you’ve selected for your ad units. For instance, if the background of your ad units is white, the icon will be grey; for other background colors, the icons will be a different shade of the background color. Consistent with our program policies, we ask that publishers refrain from mimicking these arrows or placing similar images around their ad units. Below are some example of this new text ad format in the 200x200 and 300x250 ad unit sizes.

200x200 Ad Unit

300x250 Ad Unit

We understand text ads are important to our publishers’ business and we’ll continue to innovate on new formats. Please feel free to share your feedback and suggestions with us on our AdSense +page; we look forward to helping you find new ways to grow your online businesses.

Posted by Johan Land and Stephen Yuan

More flexible controls with site-level blocking

One of the top requests we hear from publishers who manage multiple websites is the ability to block different ads for different sites. For instance, you may want to block a category of ads from appearing on a children’s site you run, but allow those same ads to appear on a separate sports-related site you also manage. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve AdSense to meet your needs and help you earn the most possible from all of your sites, we’re happy to let you know that this level of granular blocking will be available for AdSense for content within the next days.

There are two steps to getting started with these new flexible controls, once they're enabled in your account:

1. Site management:
To allow you to take actions on a site-level basis, you’ll first need to let our system know which domains and subdomains you own. Under your ‘Home’ tab, visit the ‘Account Settings’ page and navigate to the ‘Access and authorization’ section. From here, you can create your Owned sites list which already contains domains from your existing URL channels and manually add further domains or subdomains. Or, claim a site from an automatically populated “Unclaimed” sites list, which shows all sites where your ads are receiving impressions. Note that manually entering subdomains into the list will enable you to block ads from those specific pages while still allowing the ads to appear on the top-level domain.

2. Site-level blocking:
Once you’ve set up your Owned sites list, visit your ‘Allow and block ads’ tab. You’ll notice some updates, including a new navigation bar, new horizontal tabs, and an option for site-level blocking; your Owned sites list will appear under ‘AdSense for content’ in the navigation bar. To block ads from a specific domain or subdomain, just select it from the list in the left-hand navigation and make updates. If you’d like to apply any blocking changes to all of your sites, just select ‘All my sites’ from the left navigation.

With site-level blocking, you can block by URL; if sensitive and general category blocking are available in your language, you’ll be able to apply these options as well. Please keep in mind that there’s a product-wide limit of 500 URLs that can be added to a block list. And as always, we recommend blocking ads with caution, since doing so decreases the potential revenue you can earn.

Ready to get started? Visit our Help Center for detailed instructions on how to manage sites and set up site-level blocking rules. We’d also love to hear your feedback on this new feature -- visit our AdSense +page to leave a comment and discuss your thoughts with other publishers.

Posted by Adomas Paltanavičius - AdSense Engineering