Model bid changes at scale with campaign bid simulator

When we launched bid simulator in 2009, we wanted to make it easy for you to understand the impact of bids on your advertising results. Until now, you’ve been able to access bid simulator at the keyword and ad group level.

To allow you to more easily simulate and apply bid changes at scale, we’re pleased to announce the launch of campaign bid simulator.

To access campaign bid simulator, go to the Opportunities tab and select “campaign bid simulator” from the left navigation tree.

With campaign bid simulator, you can:

• View bid changes in aggregate and model changes even when keywords or ad groups might not have enough data for this on their own. 
• See what might happen if you increased or decreased all your bids by a specific percentage (10%, for example). 
• See whether you may need to increase your campaign budget to ensure it doesn’t become limited by budget at the new bid value. 
• Model what happens if you changed all your bids in the campaign to a single value. 
• Download the bid-simulation data at the account or campaign level. 
• Download an AdWords Editor-compatible file with bid amounts at the simulated level and the ad groups and keywords to which they should be applied. 

Note: this is mock data only and should not be seen as a real or accurate simulation

For more information, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Sheridan Kates, Product Manager, AdWords

Adding a new ad unit helps Concertboom boost revenue 400% while maintaining site quality

With a background in database and computer science, Internet marketing, and search engine optimization, Kooshiar Azimian is a self-described wearer of many hats. In early 2011, he channeled his diverse expertise to create Concertboom, a comprehensive concert database. Concertboom is monetized through ticket sales and Google AdSense, serving more than four million ad impressions monthly. “AdSense creates the least amount of ad waste — the advertiser gets the most value out of their ads, and the publisher gets the most money,” says Kooshiar, recalling his decision to use AdSense. As traffic increased to one million unique visitors per month, Kooshiar was looking for new ways to increase revenue from AdSense. 

A simple change brings booming revenue
Initially, Kooshiar showed just one 300x250 ad on some of his pages. A few months later, he received a personalized email from the Google AdSense team, who periodically share optimization tips to help publishers maximize revenue. The email suggested adding an ad unit or two, for a maximum of three units per page.

This surprised Kooshiar, who had previously thought one ad unit per page was the maximum allowed. “I was also a little skeptical about losing page quality, and I didn’t want to have to change my interface to serve another ad. But I said, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’ I added one unit and the result was shocking. My revenue more than quadrupled in the first week,” he recalls. 

Quality matters most
Given the benefits of this simple implementation, Kooshiar recommends other publishers give it a try, but not at the expense of site quality and user experience. “A quality site serves the right content, especially if your audience comes from search engines. Don’t trick your audience into content you don’t have. Provide content that is accurate, updated and served in a timely fashion with nice, clean graphics. Be sure to maintain page quality and a quick load time. Know your audience and consider which ad formats work best with your content. Also, make sure you’re not compromising your site aesthetic, so your website doesn’t just look like ad junk,” he advises.

Kooshiar also points out that since he maintained his focus on quality, he did not experience any change in his search ranking after adding a new ad unit.

A solid venture
After witnessing his revenue quadruple, Kooshiar is seeing Concertboom in a new light. “Before, this site was just extra cash for me, and now it’s a growing business. I can start hiring people to help me create more content,” he says. “This AdSense optimization has changed the whole dynamic of Concertboom.”

Posted by Caroline Halpin, AdSense Optimization Specialist

Monetize online videos and games with AdSense

Updated 4/3/12 at 11:20am PT to include information about the YouTube Partner Program

It seems that everyone these days is spending more time watching their favorite shows online, or playing the newest online game. eMarketer predicts that in 2015, 76% of total U.S. internet users will be regularly watching videos online, and that 40% will be playing online games. These audiences are becoming increasingly attractive to advertisers, and spend on video ads and ads within games is growing each year.

If you’re one of the many video publishers or games producers who can benefit from this growth, you might be interested to know that Google has two solutions to monetize this type of content: AdSense for video and AdSense for games. With AdSense, you’re able to deliver relevant and non-intrusive ads on your video content and browser-based games. Over the last year, we’ve seen these products take off. We’re particularly excited about the TrueView video ad format that gives viewers choice and control over the ads they watch, while delivering better returns for our publishers.

If you’re interested in monetizing your video content or games, please visit our AdSense for video or AdSense for games Help Center sections. We’ve changed our application process so that you can start to implement straight away. Follow our guidelines and once we review your integration for policy compliance, you’re ready to go. And just to clarify, AdSense for Video is for publishers who create and host videos for their own site. If you're using YouTube to host your video, you can check out the YouTube Partner Program.

The network of video and games publishers gets bigger every day, and we hope you can join us!

Posted by Daniela Bruno, Product Specialist, Video and Games, AdSense Team

Upcoming webinar on March 22nd: “GoMo for publishers”

Did you know: 8 in 10 consumers instantly abandon a mobile site if the experience isn’t up to par?¹  Mobile consumers have high expectations from content publishers today. With Google mobile searches growing 400% in the last two years, it’s increasingly important for publishers to satisfy the needs of a mobile user by building a mobile-friendly site.  That’s why we recently launched GoMo for publishers, which brings publishers a new set of tools to help build mobile-friendly websites.  

Join Google on Thursday, March 22nd at 10:00 am PT/1:00 pm ET, to discuss why it’s imperative to build for mobile and delight your fastest growing audience.  We’ll show you all the tools you need to get you ready to go mobile. Sign up today and learn... 

1. Why go mobile? 
• Your users have gone mobile in a big way, hear why you must follow suit.
2. 10 tips for building mobile sites   
• Mobile is different. Learn 10 practical tips for building engaging, uniquely mobile experiences.
3. Best practices in action   
• Hear from web publisher FindTheBest about the success they have seen from going mobile.
4. How to get started  
• Google is here to help. Learn about tools we’ve created to get you started on the path to delighting your users and maximizing your mobile revenue.

Sign up for the webinar today.  We look forward to seeing you on March 22th!

Posted by Joseph Corral, Product Marketing Manager, Google Mobile Ads

Source (1) Limelight Networks, Inc. 2011

AdSense crawler error redesign

As we explained in a previous post, there are many ways publishers can optimize their site for AdSense. One of the most overlooked is ensuring that our AdSense crawler can accurately crawl your site so that your ads are as relevant and useful as possible.

Today we're making this task easier for you with our latest redesign of the crawler access page which you’ll find on the Account Settings page of your AdSense account.

We redesigned the page with three objectives in mind:

1. Provide accurate and actionable information about your crawler errors.
2. Organize and display the information in a more readable way.
3. Provide clear and concise steps to help you fix the errors.

We’ve accomplished the goals above by:

• Keeping the information that pertains to you and removing everything else.
• Incorporating expandable sections so information isn’t overbearing and indigestible.
• Adding a new column which shows how many failed crawl requests occurred over a period of time.  This gives you an idea of the magnitude of the error.
• Adding a new ‘How to fix’ column specifically designed to help you solve the error.

This AdSense redesign is merely a first step toward empowering you with the most accurate and relevant information. This in turn allows for better decision making which can lead to more effective AdSense optimizations, and as a result, increased revenue.

Posted by Nurzhan Bakibayev - Software Engineer

AlloExpat thrives with Google AdSense

‘PubTalk’ is a new program highlighting publishers’ perspectives on display products and industry trends. In this installment, we hear from Theresa Giovagnoli, co-founder of AlloExpat.com, on the site’s 10th anniversary, about why they’ve worked with AdSense for 6+ years and how they’ve benefited from implementing simple optimization solutions.

AlloExpat.com is a worldwide expatriate social portal. It addresses the growing global expatriate community by being a one-stop information center and by connecting expats with professional expatriate service providers.

Inside AdSense (IA): What role does AdSense play in your business?

Theresa Giovagnoli (TG): We’re a very large portal and have dedicated websites and discussion forums for each country in our global network. We need a solution that effectively targets ads to a wide international audience. AdSense is simply the best and most efficient solution to do this. Thanks to a consistent revenue steam from AdSense, our web development team has been able to dedicate its attention to growing our global audience and content.

IA: What is the one success you’ve had with AdSense that you’d like to share with other publishers?

TG: One successful tactic we employed was recategorizing targetable custom channels. We are a global site with multiple regions. Earlier, all our regions were combined under one custom channel, but once we defined targetable channels by region, we saw CPC increase by 20%.  I would highly encourage publishers to set targetable custom channels at the level that best defines their site because it allows advertisers to specifically target their website by segment or region which may lead to performance uplift.

IA: Why do you love AdSense?

TG: We have managed to implement AdSense in a non-intrusive way, generating a fair amount of revenue over the years. AdSense has played a key role in our development over the years and still does today. We’d never have come this far without it.

Posted by Jennifer Chan, AdSense Team

Is your site ready for your mobile users?

Last December, we posted about the massive shift to mobile we’ve seen in your users over the past two years.  Still, 4 out of 5 online publishers don’t have a mobile-optimized website, and they risk losing their fastest-growing audience.  Today, we’re launching a new suite of tools at howtogomo.com to help publishers build mobile-friendly websites.

To help demonstrate the potential of creating a mobile-friendly site, we’d like to share the story of AdSense publisher Baby Gaga.  Two weeks after launching their mobile-friendly website they saw a 64% increase in mobile visits. This leading destination for educational materials and social support for pregnant women also saw an 82% increase in mobile page views and a 50% increase in revenue from mobile (full case study).

Today Baby Gaga’s mobile users don’t need to squint and they view more pages per visit.

Visit howtogomo.com today to:

1. See how you rate.  Use the GoMoMeter to analyze your site’s mobile user experience.
2. Start planning.  Download the GoMo Publisher Guide for mobile best practices.
3. Find a partner.  Learn about vendors who can help with implementation.

As mobile continues to take off, we believe it's important for publishers to develop a strong mobile strategy now and make the most of this new opportunity. Baby Gaga’s decision to go mobile allowed them to improve the user experience for their mobile visitors and also make more money.  We want to help you do the same.  In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing additional materials to assist you in this process, so stay tuned to Inside AdSense for further announcements!

Posted by Chris LaSala, Director, Strategic Partner Development, Mobile

Specific recommendations for individual ad units

We recently posted about personalized optimization tips you can receive via email or directly in your AdSense account. Today we'd like to introduce another form of optimization tips that we'll be rolling out over the next several weeks. These recommendations will show you how to make changes to your AdSense for Content ad unit type or format setting directly in your account in order to earn more.

To generate these new types of notifications, we use our technology to simulate the ad auction for a specific ad unit using different ad type and/or ad format settings. If our simulation shows that any of these changed settings consistently result in higher revenue for that ad unit, we’ll show a recommendation in your account. Please note that these simulations will not affect your live traffic or earnings, and you’ll only see a recommendation if our simulated auction demonstrated increased revenue for your account.

The recommendations are visible on the “Home” tab of your AdSense account so implementing a recommendation is quick and easy.

For ad type recommendations, simply click the “Do this now” button and your ad unit type will be automatically updated.

For ad format recommendations, clicking the “Create this unit” button will create a new ad unit of the recommended ad format on the “My ads” tab. To complete the implementation, replace the current ad unit code in your webpage(s) with the newly created ad unit code.

With multiple methods of bringing performance suggestions to you, we hope to help you simplify your ad management and maximize your ad revenue. For more information on personalized recommendations, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Gregory Block, AdSense Engineering

Watch our video to learn how to integrate AdSense ads with your quality content

Placing additional ad units on your site can have a big impact on your earnings. However, sometimes publishers find it difficult to decide whether an additional ad unit makes sense for their site. We've created a short video below to help you make sure you're following best practices, as outlined on Google’s webmaster guidelines, when placing new ad units on your site.

Ultimately, great content is what will help your site stand out and engage your users. We recommend that you only place ad units on pages that are rich in original content and keep the user experience in mind as you think about where you place your ads.  Take a look at the video below for more information!



Posted by Caroline Halpin, AdSense Optimization Team
 

Personalized optimization tips explained

We’ve heard from many of you that the AdSense optimization tips we regularly discuss are helpful but you’re still not sure just how these tips apply to your sites. You understand that wide formats perform better, but which of your small formats should you swap out? And which format sizes should you replace them with? Over the last year, we’ve increased our efforts to bring publishers personalized optimization messages that address these kinds of questions with the goal to provide targeted, personalized and impactful tips to as many publishers as possible.

The criteria we review to determine eligibility for a tip varies depending on the opportunity but the same principle remains true for all of them: we will only contact you if we expect you’ll see a significant benefit from making the recommended changes. Several of the success stories shared on the AdSense blog are of publishers who implemented the specific suggestions we made for their websites. For instance, Surgery Squad, FunCheapSF, and CareerPlanner all saw AdSense revenue increases between 50-200% after making the changes recommended by a personalized optimization tip.

While we can’t guarantee the same results for all publishers, each tip is generated using rigorous analysis of our entire content network to identify opportunities for significant improvement in AdSense performance. We’re constantly analyzing the performance of different AdSense configurations across all site types, regions, and verticals to determine which tweaks and adjustments will work best for your site.

When we detect a specific improvement you could make to your AdSense implementation, you’ll receive a notification from us either in an email (to the address listed as your contact email and only if you’re opted in to Performance Suggestions) or directly to your AdSense account. These messages have been around for awhile but starting this month you’ll notice a new line indicating that the message contains a personalized optimization tip that’s unique to your website and ad layout. We're also continuously working on new signals and ways to get that information to you in your account.

Be sure to check your email and AdSense account for optimization tips. We want your site to succeed with AdSense and we hope these personalized tips will help you achieve higher levels of performance from our products. As with any of our optimization tips, we always encourage you to test to find the right implementation for your site and users!

Posted by Jane Brinkley-- AdSense Optimization Team