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Today we’re introducing the new AdSense Native ads -- a suite of ad formats designed to match the look and feel of your site, providing a great user experience for your visitors. AdSense Native ads come in three categories: In-feed, In-article, and Matched content*. They can all be used at once or individually and are designed for:

  • A great user experience: they fit naturally on your site and use high quality advertiser elements, such as high resolution images, longer titles and descriptions, to provide a more attractive experience for your visitors. 
  • A great look and feel across different screen sizes: the ads are built to look great on mobile, desktop, and tablet. 
  • Ease of use: easy-to-use editing tools help you make the ads look great on your site.

Native In-feed opens up new revenue opportunity in your feeds
Available to all publishers, In-feed ads slot neatly inside your feeds, e.g. a list of articles or products on your site. These ads are highly customizable to match the look and feel of your feed content and offer new places to show ads.

Native In-article offers a better advertising experience
Available to all publishers, In-article ads are optimized by Google to help you put great-looking ads between the paragraphs of your pages. In-article ads use high-quality advertising elements and offer a great reading experience to your visitors.

Matched Content* drives more users to your content 
Available to publishers that meet the eligibility criteria, Matched content is a content recommendation tool that helps you promote your content to visitors and potentially increase revenue, page views, and time spent on site. Publishers that are eligible for the “Allow ads” feature can also show relevant ads within their Matched content units, creating an additional revenue opportunity in this placement.

Getting started with AdSense Native ads 
AdSense Native ads can be placed together, or separately, to customize your website’s ad experience. Use In-feed ads inside your feed (e.g. a list of articles, or products), In-article ads between the paragraphs of your pages, and Matched content ads directly below your articles.  When deciding your native strategy, keep the content best practices in mind.

To get started with AdSense Native ads:

  • Sign in to your AdSense account
  • In the left navigation panel, click My ads
  • Click +New ad unit
  • Select your ad category: In-article, In-feed or Matched content

We'd love to hear what you think about these ad formats in the comments section below this post.

Posted by: Violetta Kalathaki - AdSense Product Manager

 *This format has already been available to eligible publishers, and is now part of AdSense Native ads.

May 8, 2017 Update: We've heard your feedback on the empty spaces resulting from an unfilled ad unit. Over the next few weeks, we’ll begin to automatically collapse unfilled ad units -- if it's safe to do so without affecting the look and feel of your site. By using “Ad balance” you’re automatically opted-in to this update.

Thank you for providing feedback to help us improve this and other AdSense features!

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Over the last few weeks you may have noticed the Ad balance subtab under My ads. This new AdSense feature will give you more control to create a great ads experience for your users.

Ad balance lets you reduce the number of ads you show to your users. Finding the right balance between the number of ads you show and the user experience on your site can lead to better overall engagement with your content. With Ad balance, you’re able to see how changes in the volume of ads you show affect your earnings, and find the balance that makes the most sense for you and your users.

By only showing your best-performing ads, you may see a minimal drop in your earnings. However, these changes may result in an overall earnings increase, since an improvement of the user experience often leads to users staying longer on your site and engaging with more of your content*.

Blog post img-01.png
Ad balance is the first example of a Lab that's being made available to all publishers. Those of you who had the Show fewer ads lab enabled have been automatically moved over to Ad balance**. Thank you for trying it out!

To learn more about this new feature, please visit the Help Center.

We’d love to hear what you think about Ad balance. Please leave your feedback within your AdSense account by clicking send feedback.

Posted by:
Dongcai Shen, Software Engineer
Rikard Lundmark, Software Engineer
Spandana Raj Babbula, Software Engineer

*We don’t guarantee any specific results. And, just as a reminder, you’re responsible for the content and layout of your site.
**Find out how you turn this feature on and off and make changes to your settings in the AdSense Help Center.

We’ve heard the feedback that publishers like you have shared about wanting more ways to control the ads showing on your site(s). Today, we’re excited to share some recent updates to General Category Blocking that give you more controls to opt-in or filter out certain categories of ads -- putting you in charge.

General Category Blocking was introduced in some countries in 2010 to help you scalably prevent competitors’ ads and ads that may not fit your audience from appearing on your site, by letting you opt out of showing ads from certain categories and subcategories such as “Finance,” “Apparel,” and “Tourism.” Over the last few weeks we’ve increased the number of categories and subcategories from 250 to 470. This update lets you be more granular and block more specific categories without overblocking and having an unwanted negative impact on earnings. For example, instead of blocking the category “Apparel,” you can now pick any of the new subcategories “Sunglasses,” “Handbags,” or “Watches.” With this update we’ve also expanded our supported languages to include Chinese (simplified), Dutch, Polish, Russian, and Turkish and made this feature available in every country supported by AdSense.




With more options available it’s important to carefully consider the impact of blocking, or allowing, a category. Blocking a general category could lower your potential earnings as the affected advertisers’ bids are excluded from the auction. On the other hand, with more subcategories available you may have the opportunity to be more granular and pick the subcategory that most closely matches the type of ad you want to prevent -- minimizing the negative impact on your earnings.

We know how important it is to have control over the ads that appear on your site, and this update is adding to a set of controls available in AdSense already. We’d love to hear what you think about these update so please leave your feedback in the comments field below.
Posted by: Konkona Kundu, Product Manager

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in October 2016 and has been updated with the most recent product announcement. 

Over the coming weeks, when you log in to your AdSense account, you'll be automatically taken to the new User Interface (UI). You will no longer be able to opt-out of the new UI.

Thank you to the more than 500,000 publishers who switched to the new UI over the last few months. Your feedback has been invaluable in launching the new UI to all of our users.

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Posted October 13, 2016

The new AdSense user interface (UI) is here. Over the last year, our product team has been hard at work bringing Material Design principles to AdSense. This new UI highlights the information that’s relevant to you on a personalized homepage and streamlines navigation.


Over the next few weeks we’ll be offering the new UI to AdSense publishers.  All you’ll need to do is opt in when you log in to AdSense: 


What’s new?

  • A fresh new look & feel. We're adopting Material Design principles with a completely redesigned homepage and menu. We’ll roll out further improvements throughout the product soon.
  • A great new homepage. All the information you need, right where you need it. We've organized your homepage into a stream of interactive cards. You can pin your favorites to the top of the stream, and arrange your homepage just the way you’d like.
  • A streamlined new menu. We’ve brought everything together in a new left hand menu.

We’ll continue to improve and refine AdSense over the coming months. While we’re making these improvements, you’ll still be able to find all the content and features that you’re used to–right where you expect them.
Opt in through the AdSense interface to try it for yourself, and let us know what you think in the feedback tool.
Posted by: Andrew Gildfind, Daniel White & Louis Collard
From the AdSense Product Team





Publishers are constantly faced with the question of how to balance content and ads to provide the best possible experience for your users. And as you might have found, there’s no easy one-size-fits-all approach. Every site and app is different, with different types of content, objectives, and users, which means that balancing content and ads will look different from publisher to publisher. When faced with this challenge, it’s important to ensure that you give your users what they're looking for in a format that’s easy to find and navigate, and this includes the ads on your page or app.

Here are a few tips to help you balance ads and content.

1. Content is king.
Your content is the reason users are visiting your site or app. If you think about it, your users are visiting your site for a reason, whether they are looking for a recipe, how to build a birdhouse, or trying to find out what’s happening in their town. By providing them with the information they're looking for, you satisfy their need in the moment that they need it the most. Check out this blog post to learn more about winning these micro-moments.

2. Design your site or app around the user journey.

By making your content the focal point on the page, and following standard web best practices, you can create a site that's visually appealing and easy for your users to use and navigate. Check out the AdSense Guide to Audience Engagement for best practices on designing user journeys, not just web pages.




3. Use ads to complement your site or app.
Ads should always supplement the content on your site, not the other way around. So when you’re placing ad units on your site, consider the user journey and how the ad format will complement your site and provide value for your users. If you want ads to look more natural, and match the feel of your content, consider using native ad units. For example, news and article publishers could consider using the native-style format called Matched content at the bottom of each article to direct readers to other relevant content on the same site. This strategy can help grow readership and your ad business. 





4. Test, test, test and test again.

At the end of the day, data will be your source of truth. If you’re considering implementing new ad units, run an AdSense experiment to see how they perform. Also, test the different formats to see what works best for your users and your page.




Remember, content is king and it’s the most important thing to users on your site. So you should always have more content than ads on each page. For more information and best practices, head over to the AdSense Help Center or join our next #AskAdSense office hours on Twitter and Google+.
Posted by: John Brown, Publisher Policy Communications Lead

Today we're launching AdSense Labs, a new subtab under the Optimization tab, where you’ll find new experimental features you are eligible to test.

AdSense Labs is the place to find, test, and provide us feedback on new features we're working on. To learn more about this new tab, please visit the Help Center.

The first two Labs we’ll be launching are Show fewer ads and Inline ads. Not all Labs are suitable for every site, so don’t worry if you don’t see a particular Lab you were expecting.

Show fewer ads 
Show fewer ads cuts down the number of ads that are shown to your users in exchange for a negligible drop in your revenue. It aims to remove at least 10% of the ads served on your site (1% or less of your revenue), by preventing low value ads from being shown to your users. To learn more about the details, visit the Help Center.

Inline ads 
Inline ads are 320x100 ad units which are automatically inserted within your mobile site as a user scrolls down the page. With this new ad format you’ll no longer need to write the logic to dynamically insert ad units on your page, we'll handle all that for you. For more information on Inline ads, check out the Help Center.



We'll be adding new Labs over time for you to try out, so be sure to check out Labs tab. 

We're keen to hear your ideas for more features you’d you like to test. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Posted by Emma Burrows
Software Engineer

Today we’ve launched automatic experiments*, the latest addition to our suite of optimization tools.

Enabling this feature allows us to run automatic experiments on a small portion of your traffic and provide you with insightful data about which ads perform best on your site. This could help you optimize your ads and potentially increase your long-term revenue and user engagement on your site**.

To enable automatic experiments on your site, visit the "Experiments" page on your Optimization tab, and switch on "automatic experiments".


The opportunities generated from these experiments will appear in the “Opportunities” page on your Optimization tab. They'll be labelled "verified by experiment,” so you’ll know they’re backed by data and tailored to your site and users.

To learn more, visit the Help Center.

We'd love to hear your feedback in the comments below!


Posted by Chris Gamble, Software Engineer


*Automatic experiments will appear in your account if you have enough eligible traffic.
**These suggestions are designed to help you optimize your pages and are not meant to guarantee any specific results. And, just as a reminder, you are responsible for the content and layout of your site. 

Today we’ve launched impression charts in the Ad review center. Impression charts provide you with insights into the frequency at which individual ad creatives are shown on your site.



Based on feedback from our publishers, we’ve replaced the previous interface with an impression chart that shows the absolute number of impressions and its distribution over time. When you’re considering blocking an ad, the impression chart can help you make a more informed decision by highlighting the potential revenue impact it may have. 

To learn more, please visit our Help Center.

We'd love to hear your feedback in the comments section below and on G+ and Twitter.
 


Posted by Liyuan Lu
Software Engineer

Last year we launched Matched content to help publishers promote their own content to readers. Since then, we’ve run some experiments and found that when a publisher used Matched content, readers tended to consume more content and spend more time on sites, resulting in a corresponding revenue increase.

If that’s not enough to convince you, take a look at the results from our experiment:


  • Number of pages viewed increased by 9% on average
  • Time spent on site increased by 10% on average


Matched content is available for sites with multiple pages and high volumes of traffic. Have a look at the site management settings in your AdSense account to see if your site(s) is eligible to run Matched content.

Make the most out of your Matched content units with these best practices:
  • Let Google help you find the right size by using responsive Matched content units. 
  • Place your Matched content unit directly below the article and either above or below your ad unit
  • Consider using Matched content on long scrolling pages

We'd love to hear your thoughts about this new feature in the comments section below this post and be sure to follow us on G+ and Twitter. 


Posted by: Vasyl Pihur, AdSense Data Scientist

* These suggestions are designed to help you optimize your pages and are not meant to guarantee any specific results. And, just as a reminder, you are responsible for the content and layout of your site. 

Today, we’re excited to introduce AdSense’s next generation ads. Page-level ads is a family of ad formats that offer a new and innovative way to help you earn money from your mobile content.

With Page-level ads, you place the same ad code once on each page that you want to show ads. They’re designed to show automatically at the right time and in the right format -  potentially increasing your earnings without interfering with your users’ mobile experience.

The benefits of Page-level ads include:


  • Optimized ads that show when they’re likely to perform well and provide a good user experience.

  • One-time set-up that only requires you to place the Page-level ad code once on each page you’d like the ads shown. 

  • Ability to adjust the settings in your account and to enable new ad formats without having to change the code on your site.

  • Additional ads on your site that don’t count towards your AdSense per page ad limit.


Watch the video below for a quick view of Page-level ads:


Currently, the Page-level ads family includes the anchor/overlay and vignette ad formats. More ad formats will be available soon.

Learn more about the Page-level ads in the AdSense Help Center. Get started with Page-level ads today and let us know what you think in the comments below.


Posted by Matthew Conroy, AdSense Product Manager


Last year we launched Matched content to help increase user engagement on your site by promoting relevant content from your site to your visitors, which may help grow your ad business as well. Starting today, you can use Matched content units to directly generate revenue by allowing ads to appear alongside your recommended content.

Matched content with content recommendations and ads

With the new “Allow ads” feature, relevant ads will appear within your Matched content units, and will be styled to complement the look and feel of your content recommendations. We'll gradually roll this feature out to all Matched content eligible publishers across the globe over the coming weeks. To enable ads, visit your My ads tab and choose “Allow ads” for your Matched content units.


Matched content is available for sites with multiple pages with unique images and high volumes of traffic. Have a look at the site management settings in your account to see if your sites are eligible and to get started with Matched content. Matched content units don’t count towards your Google content ad limit per page - to get the most out of this new tool, check the best practices in the AdSense Help Center.

As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts about this new feature in the comments section below.



 Posted by Tobias Maurer, Product Manager