Get the most up-to-date data on your account with local time zone reporting

We know that access to the most up-to-date data on your account is important in understanding how it’s performing on a daily basis. Up to now, we’ve reported your daily earnings based on Pacific Standard Time (PST). Over the next couple of weeks however, you’ll be able to view your daily earnings based on your local time zone, giving you the latest information.

You can set up your time zone reporting preferences from your account in a few quick steps. From the Account information section on your Account settings page, a field now exists for time zone information where you can select your preferred local time setting. When you update your time zone preferences, you can expect to see some anomalies in your local earnings data for that day. Depending on your local time zone, you’ll either see a reduction or a spike based on whether the change means you are gaining or losing hours - keep an eye out for a notification in your account on this. It’s important to note that this does not affect your payments data which will always remain in PST.


When you update your time zone preferences, your existing saved and scheduled reports will be migrated to your preferred time zone automatically while future reports will also be based on your indicated preference. Updating your time zone preference will only affect your earnings data going forward and does not apply retrospectively.

Learn more about time zone reporting in our Help Center and make sure you’re getting the most up-to-date earnings data on your account.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager
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Doing more with the reporting dimensions in your account

The performance reports in your AdSense account are key to understanding your earnings and to identifying optimization opportunities. We’re continuously reviewing your feedback in order to improve the reporting functionality for you. Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of two new, long-awaited features that provide you with a more detailed segmentation of traffic in your reports.

Combining different reporting dimensions
The Countries report shows your performance broken down by the country of users who engaged with the ads on your pages. In addition to viewing a country breakdown for reports by ad type, bid type, and targeting type, you’ll now also be able to see a Countries report when viewing the reporting dimensions URL channel, custom channel, and ad unit. This will allow you to segment your traffic further and get a better understanding of your account performance in different locations.

Please note that the country breakdown of reports by URL channel, custom channel, and ad unit will only be available for reports with date ranges starting March 9th and later.

Introducing a new reporting dimension
In order to help you get more granular insights into your performance on a site level, we’re introducing a new reporting type for Owned sites. “Owned” sites are all sites specified as owned in the site management feature, and the new reporting dimension for Owned sites will be a subset of the Sites report. In contrast to the Sites report, however, you’ll be able to combine the Owned sites report with the Countries report. This will allow you to segment your traffic in more detail and understand the performance of your sites across different countries

Please note that historical data in Owned sites reports will be available from the date that a site was added or claimed as “owned”. You’ll only be able to view country breakdowns for Owned sites for reports with date ranges starting March 22nd 2011 or later. If a site is removed from the “Owned” sites list, it will no longer show in the report.

We hope that the improvements to our reporting features will help you better segment and understand where your users are coming from and whether there are performance differences across different countries.  You can also use this information to isolate potential invalid activity. Unexpected use can be a sign that you are receiving potential invalid activity. Please share your feedback on our AdSense+page and let us know what you found out thanks to these new functionalities.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager
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Increasing the accuracy of AdSense reporting

We know many of our publishers use multiple Google products on a regular basis, and one of our top priorities is to ensure that each interaction across our products provides a seamless experience. To better align the way we report performance across all of our publisher products and ensure accuracy, we’re updating the way certain data is shown in AdSense accounts.

As you may know, your earnings at the end of each month currently reflect the amount you've earned less any deductions for invalid activity. This is a step we’ve always taken to ensure advertisers are not charged for such activity. Until now, however, clicks and impressions associated with this activity still appeared in AdSense performance reports. Starting May 1st, we'll remove those associated clicks and impressions to address this discrepancy and provide you with the most accurate reporting.

So what does this mean for your AdSense account? First and foremost, this change will not impact your earnings in any way. In most cases, removing the invalid activity from your reports means you can expect to see a slight decrease in clicks and impressions, causing a slight increase in CPC (cost-per-click) and RPM (revenue per thousand impressions). The clicks and impressions that we’ll no longer show in reports include activity like accidental clicks, so metrics like your CTR (clickthrough rate) will more accurately reflect your site's performance. You might also see a more noticeable difference in your AdSense reporting when compared with your own account statistics measured through other tools. Please note that this change won’t affect the way we screen for invalid activity.

As a reminder, we encourage you to keep up to date on ways that you can monitor your website for such activity – we have a lot of resources in our Help Center covering this topic. Finally, note that reports for dates prior to May 1st will be unaffected.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager
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Understanding the dynamics of the AdSense auction - Part II

Earlier this week, we started a two-part series to help you better understand the AdSense ad auction and how it helps you earn the most money possible. We shared how text and image ads compete in the same auction, and that our system selects either ad type based on the predicted value -- sometimes resulting in one image ad winning out over multiple text ads. Following on that discussion, today we’ll turn our attention to just text ads.

If you’re using one of our large ad unit sizes like the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper, you may have noticed that you’ll sometimes see multiple text ads in the ad unit, while only one or two ads at other times. As we noted earlier this week, our system predicts the value of each competing ad for every impression, based on historic performance and comparison across a variety of scenarios. There can sometimes be cases where our system determines that one or two specific text ads are significantly higher-performing than the other eligible text ads, and that showing them separately would result in higher performance than if the ads were shown together with lower-performing ones. When this occurs, we’ll show them alone, and this means you’ll see less than the full number of text ads in the ad unit.

We know that it can sometimes be confusing to see fewer text ads appearing in an ad unit, and that it can create extra white space, but please know that this behavior is intended to help you earn the most from all of your impressions. As we continue to make improvements to the rendering of the ads and develop new ad formats, we’ll keep you posted right here on our blog.

Thanks for joining us for this series. We hope you found it useful; please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Johan Land - AdSense Product Manager
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Understanding the dynamics of the AdSense auction - Part I

We often hear questions from publishers about why the number of ads that appear in an ad unit can vary, and what that means for revenue. If you’ve ever wondered why less than four text ads sometimes appear in larger formats, or why one image ad can show instead of four text ads, keep reading -- today, we’re kicking off a two-part series to shed more light on the topic.

The answer ultimately boils down to the AdSense ad auction, and is a way to maximize your revenue. As a refresher, in the ad auction, advertisers bid to show their ads on your site: The number and price of ads in the auction changes from impression to impression, based on how much advertisers are willing to spend and how they've set up their ad campaigns. This is why we call the ad auction ‘dynamic’. In addition to their bids, advertisers are also ranked based on their Quality Score to ensure a good user experience.

To help you understand how our system selects between different ad types, today we’ll first focus on how text and image ads compete within the same auction for your ad space. Let’s say you have a 728x90 leaderboard and have enabled both text and image ads to appear. For every impression, our system predicts which ad type will be more valuable. When selecting the “winning” ad(s) for your page, our system takes the advertisers’ bids and Quality Scores into consideration and also considers historical data for specific ads, in order to predict overall performance.

So, even though a leaderboard could show up to four text ads, it may sometimes be the case that the one image ad will outperform all of the competing text ads. In other words, if you see one image ad appearing in your leaderboard, it’s because it is more valuable than the eligible text ads combined. By maximizing competition for your ad space, you’re also maximizing your revenue potential -- this is why we always recommend enabling both text and image ads for your ad units, which maximizes competition for your ad space.

Don’t miss the second part of our series later this week to learn more about how the number of text ads per ad unit is determined in AdSense ad auction. In the meantime, feel free to leave your feedback and thoughts on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Johan Land - 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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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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Uncover trends and AdSense insights with Analytics

Knowledge is power: Insightful data on account performance and user behavior can help you optimize your AdSense implementations. By linking your AdSense account to a new or existing Analytics account, you’ll gain access to additional information that can help you identify opportunities to monetize your content more effectively.

Here are just some of the questions you’ll be able to answer when combining AdSense data with reports in Analytics:
  • How are my users interacting with my site? With In-page Analytics, you’ll have access to a visual assessment of how users interact with your web pages. This can help you determine the most strategic locations in which to place ads.
  • Where and why are visitors leaving my site? Identify pages with high bounce rates to determine the percentage of visitors who only see one page during a visit to your site. Users might behave in this way for a variety of reasons, but you can work to provide the best user experience possible by optimizing the content and ad implementation on these pages. 
  • Which traffic sources and URLs help me earn the most? Determine which pages generate the highest AdSense revenue, and then replicate those successful implementations on other parts of your site. You can also set up custom channels for pages that perform well to create attractive placements for advertisers to specifically target. In addition, try content experiments and test different page layouts to compare the performance of key metrics.
To gain these types of insights and more, be sure to link your AdSense and Analytics accounts. Based on publisher feedback, we’ve just improved the linking process to make it more straightforward. Keep in mind that you can only link one AdSense account to one Analytics account, and that the AdSense login must be an ‘Administrator’ on the Analytics account. To get started, visit the ‘Access and Authorization’ section of the Account settings page in your AdSense account and follow the instructions. For more details, please refer to the AdSense Help Center.

To help you get started with your AdSense data in Analytics and show you some relevant information at a glance, we’ve created this easy-to-use dashboard. Select one of your profiles to import, and you’ll be able to quickly see and customize the reports which matter most to you. You can access this dashboard at any time from the relevant profile by clicking the ‘Home’ tab.

Do you have feedback about using Analytics reports or the dashboard? Feel free to leave a comment on our AdSense +page and discuss your thoughts with other publishers.

Posted by Esteban Talavera - Software Engineer, AdSense Reporting

Improvements to AdSense reporting features

We’ve recently made a few improvements related to AdSense reporting to help you find information more quickly and to address some of the most common asks we’ve heard from you. Good things come in threes -- so here are three recent updates to look for in your account:

1. View all-time reports


When selecting a date range for your reports, you’ll now have an ‘All time’ option to view all earnings, impressions, and clicks accrued since your first impression. If you used the previous AdSense interface, you may remember this feature -- it now has a new home in the current AdSense interface as well.

2. Quickly access reports from the My ads tab

We’ve added quick links to your reports under the My ads tab, eliminating the need to search for ad units or channels in your reports. When viewing your ad units, custom channels, or URL channels on the My ads tab, just click ‘View report’ below a specific line item to view performance data for that particular ad unit or channel. This feature is particularly useful if you’re looking for channel data that isn’t linked to ad units in the interface, and will help you save time.


3. Download CSVs in the correct local formatting

Just as the placement of commas and periods can change the meaning of sentences, the same is true when it comes to numbers and figures. As you may know, an amount written as $1,000.00 in the US or UK would be written as $1.000,00 in most of Europe and South America. Previously, only the $1,000.00 format was available for downloadable reports, which created difficulties for a number of international publishers trying to export CSVs to analyze the data. Now, based on your language preference, you can export CSVs with figures in the relevant format.

Have any feedback or suggestions to share? Feel free to leave a comment or post them on our AdSense +Page.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Understanding your reports on Google-certified ad networks

Since launching a new report to show you how much you’re earning from Google-certified third party ad networks, we’ve received questions from publishers around how to make sense of the numbers they’re seeing. Some have let us know that they’re now blocking lower-performing ad networks based on revenue per thousand impressions (RPMs), a practice which can actually have a negative impact on overall revenue. Today, we’d like to take a moment to address your questions and provide more guidance around understanding your reports and blocking specific ad networks.

Let’s first talk about analyzing RPM figures. If you’ve ever tested color combinations for your ad units using channels, you’re probably used to comparing the RPMs of each channel to determine which one is most effective. Then, once you find the most effective combination, you remove all the other options and only use the optimal one. This works for channels, but it’s important to keep in mind that with Google-certified ad networks, the same approach doesn’t apply.

It’s true that in both situations, RPM represents the estimated earnings you'd accrue for every thousand impressions you receive. However, when you test layout options with channels and remove the ones that don’t perform well, this action doesn’t directly impact the dynamics of the ad auction. Picking a blue background over green won’t automatically remove certain ads from being eligible to appear in that ad space -- it just helps certain ad spaces perform better. With Google-certified ad networks, RPMs are dependent on the available ad inventory. Blocking an ad network will remove eligible ads from the auction, and so we strongly recommend against blocking ad networks solely based on RPM. Let’s look at an example:

Ad networksImpressionsRPM
Network A10,000$1
Network B14$3
Network C1000$0.50

Network B has the highest RPM and appears to be outperforming the other networks. It’s important to note though that this metric is based on only 14 impressions and might not reflect the same revenue for the next 1000 or 10,000 impressions. The value of impressions can vary widely, so the RPM for a small number of impressions can be misleading.

Network C has the lowest RPM. However, blocking Network C because of this might have a negative impact on revenue. This is because our system will always maximize the value of every impression in an auction -- if an ad from Network C appeared on your pages, it was because any other eligible ads that could have appeared would have generated less revenue for you. By Blocking Network C, another network with a lower-paying bid might win the ad auction instead.

In general, blocking reduces the number of ads participating in the ad auction, which can then have a negative impact on your potential revenue. Please keep in mind that blocking “low paying ads” is a myth, as any ad that appears on your page has won the auction for that space and will earn you the most possible.

At the same time, we also understand that you sometimes need to prevent ads from appearing due to the content of the ad or advertiser. You have several options in your account, which are suitable for different scenarios.

With your feedback in mind, we’re constantly working on offering you more control over the ads appearing on your sites, so watch this space for further announcements! However, don’t forget to carefully consider which ads you’re blocking to ensure that you reach your full revenue potential.

Posted by Arlene Lee -- Inside AdSense Team