Friday 4 March 2011

Google Apps welcomes AdSense

If you haven’t started using Google Apps yet to manage collaboration for your business, learn more about how to lower IT costs and improve productivity at google.com/apps.For more details, read the complete post on the Google Enterprise blog and follow all the updates on other newly available services for Google Apps users.

Google Apps welcomes AdSense

For those of you who also have a Google Apps account, we're in the process of finalizing the infrastructure that will allow you to seamlessly transition your existing AdSense account and data over to your Google Apps account. For new users, if your Apps systems administrator has enabled AdSense, you can begin using this services with your existing Apps account at google.com/adsense.

Google Apps welcomes AdSense

We recently launched an improvement to Google Apps that made dozens of Google services, including AdSense, available to Apps users for the first time. Before this improvement, Google Apps users had to create a separate account to sign in to AdSense; now, Apps users can access their cloud-based productivity applications along with AdSense using the same account.

Google Apps welcomes AdSense

Google Apps is Google’s suite of cloud-based messaging and collaboration apps used by over 30 million users in small and large businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, and non-profit organizations around the world. Apps includes products such as Gmail, calendar, documents, spreadsheets and more, specifically optimized for use in organizations.

The new AdSense interface: Greater efficiency

We’ve given you a tour and covered the greater insight and control that you get with the new AdSense interface, but we couldn’t end the series without a video about the improvements in account management. The new interface lets you find features and make changes to your account more efficiently than ever. You can also get help when and where you need it with relevant help links customized to the content of each page of the interface.

New features: New AdSense interface

For publishers using our AdSense for games and AdSense for video products, you can now create and edit channels and see reporting for these products. Learn more about AdSense for games and AdSense for videoThanks again for all of your great feedback. We’ll let you know as we continue to roll out new features. In the meantime, keep the comments coming on the blog or in this Forum discussion!.

New features: New AdSense interface

Based on feedback, we’ve updated the terms found under the Ad types section of your Performance reports to include text, image, rich media, animated image, and flash. Previously, rich media ads were referred to as HTML and animated image was called dynamic image.

New features: New AdSense interface

Ad unit impressions and queries have been renamed ‘Ad requests’ to better describe how this statistic is used for AdSense for content, AdSense for search, and other products. An ad request is recorded each time an ad unit on your site requests ads from Google's servers (for content ads) or a search query is made (for search ads). We report an ad request each time a request was sent, even if no ads were returned and public service ads, backup ads, or no ads were displayed instead.

New features: New AdSense interface

The Allow and block ads drop-down selector, which lets you see your blocking features by product, has been updated to call out the product name. This makes the interface a lot more clear for those of you using multiple products.

New features: New AdSense interface

We’ve changed the default metrics shown on the Home and Performance reports pages based on strong feedback that most of you prefer to view your earnings at the page level rather than by ad unit. As a result, we’ve switched back to page level metrics, and those of you who wish to see ad unit CTR and other ad unit level metrics can now do so under the Performance reports tab.

New features: New AdSense interface

Since our post announcing the open beta of the new AdSense interface, we’ve been working on a few additional features, listening closely to your feedback about how we can continue to improve. We’re very excited to announce a few changes that will further enhance your AdSense account management experience:

Share to Google Buzz Sensitive category blocking now available in three more languages

To help you understand the impact of applying these filters, this page also shows you the percentage of revenue and ad impressions you've been receiving from each category in the last 30 days.If you prefer to use the previous version of the AdSense interface, visit the Ad Review Center, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. Once you click 'change', you'll be able to see the full list of categories you can block.

Share to Google Buzz Sensitive category blocking now available in three more languages

If you’d like to set up sensitive category blocking, sign in to your AdSense account. We recommend using the new AdSense interface, which you can access by clicking the “Try the new AdSense interface” link that appears in the upper corner of your account. Once you're in the new interface, visit the Allow and block ads tab and choose the Settings page to edit the list of sensitive ad categories you wish you display.

Share to Google Buzz Sensitive category blocking now available in three more languages

With sensitive category blocking, you can prevent ads from up to 11 specific categories from appearing on your pages. Ads in these categories will be blocked if they're in any of the supported languages, regardless of how they've been targeted to your pages.

Share to Google Buzz Sensitive category blocking now available in three more languages

Since our announcement last August that sensitive category blocking had been expanded to more languages, we’re excited to say the language expansion has gone even further!

This week, publishers in Thai, Turkish, and Russian-speaking countries can now block ads in sensitive categories for all supported languages. The full list of supported languages spans English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, and now Thai, Turkish, and Russian.

New Interface Wednesdays: Graphs right in your account

Select the metrics you want to see by checking the boxes next to the graph. You can also hover over the graph to get detailed metrics for a specific day, just like in Google Analytics. The graph will appear for just about any type of report you run, making it easy for you to visualize performance. Above the graph, you'll find buttons to save reports that you commonly use and set a report of your choosing to be the default report with a single click. Of course, you can still export the data to a CSV to further process the data in a spreadsheet as well.

New Interface Wednesdays: Graphs right in your account

For our first ‘New Interface Wednesdays’ post, we’d like to highlight the graphical reporting under the Performance Reports tab in the new interface. The new graphs make it easy to see trends in your performance. Rather than scanning rows of numbers, you can view impressions, clicks, and earnings, all in one graph.

New Interface Wednesdays: Graphs right in your account

This is the first post in our ‘New Interface Wednesdays’ series. Every Wednesday for the next few months we'll highlight something new you can do in the new AdSense interface. From time to time, we’ll also share stories directly from publishers who've been using the new interface and announce additional features we’ve recently added.

Upcoming changes in backup ad options

If you'd like to discuss this change with other publishers or provide feedback to our team, join the conversation in our Forum. We’ll be updating our Help Center entries and troubleshooters to reflect this change as well. Thanks for your patience as we complete this transition.

Upcoming changes in backup ad options

You’ll also notice that the option to select PSAs as backup ads no longer appears in your account. We’re working to provide new backup ad options, and will keep you updated with any developments right here on Inside AdSense.

If you’d like to update the settings for your backup ads at any time, sign in to your account and follow the instructions for the interface you’re using:
  • New AdSense interface: Visit the My Ads page and select the ad unit you’d like to update. Then, change the settings for ‘Backup ads.’
  • Old AdSense interface: Visit the Manage Ads page under the My Account tab, and click ‘Edit Ad Settings’ for the unit you’d like to change.

Upcoming changes in backup ad options

What does this mean for you as a publisher? If you’ve previously selected ‘Show public service ads’ in the ‘Backup ads’ section of the new AdSense interface (or the ‘Alternate ads or colors’ section in the old AdSense interface), you’ll begin to see that when we’re unable to serve paid ads to your pages, a blank space will appear instead of a PSA. On the other hand, if you’ve opted to show non-Google ads from another URL or to show a solid color, you won’t be affected by this change; your choices will continue to be applied in cases when we aren’t able to show paid ads

Upcoming changes in backup ad options

As always, we’re committed to supporting our non-profit partners, which is why we’re continuing to offer free AdWords advertising for these partners via Google Grants; the Google Grants program is just one part of our larger Google for non-profits initiative. Also, ads in the Google Grants program are unaffected by this change. They'll continue to appear on AdSense sites and you'll earn from valid clicks and impressions, just like with normal ads. To learn more about the latest in Google Grants, including recent tips, events, and clinics, visit the official Google Grants blog.

Upcoming changes in backup ad options

As a refresher, PSAs are unpaid ads that can appear on publisher sites when we aren’t able to serve a paid ad. This can occur for a number of reasons, such as when relevant ads aren’t available for a page, or when a publisher has exceeded the amount of time to verify their address by receiving a Personal Identification Number.

Upcoming changes in backup ad options

We frequently review our product and feature offerings to ensure they’re as effective as possible. Based on these reviews and on feedback from our non-profit partners, we’ll gradually begin retiring public service ads (PSAs) from AdSense sites so that we can focus our efforts on developing new opportunities for these partners.