We’re excited about 2019, are you?
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
At Google AdSense we’re excited about 2019 and really hope you are too. Thank you for inspiring us every day. Have a great holiday season!
Best Practices for Policy Compliant Growth
Monday, December 10, 2018
As a publisher, there are many challenges you face. One area of interest for any publisher is how can you grow your user base, while maintaining high quality, policy-compliant content and traffic.
At Google, we strive to create policies that are designed to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem. We consider the needs of each party - users, advertisers and publishers, and want all players to thrive.
Just as important as creating policy is the enforcement of policy violations. Enforcement is important for the quality of the network, and designed to be fairly administered. There are steps you can take to safeguard your growth efforts, while maintaining policy compliance:
Understand our policies, and develop your own policies and procedures
The first step is to read and understand our policies. These policies are posted in our Help Center, with specific FAQs called out for ease of reference. For new publishers, we created a beginner’s guide to highlight some of the most commonly violated policies.
Protect against invalid traffic
We want publishers to be proactive about tackling invalid traffic.
We’ve developed an Ad Traffic Quality Resource site designed to help publishers better educate themselves on what invalid traffic is, the risks that invalid traffic poses to their businesses, how to identify invalid traffic, and how to mitigate this type of traffic. The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) also has a growing library of resources that can provide additional context and best practices on this topic.
Get familiar with your metrics
As part of your daily ritual, you should understand what typical traffic patterns for your website look like. Anomalies, especially on non-business hours’ or holidays, are signs of potential trouble. As part of metrics review, set aside time each month, or where appropriate for your business, to train and review traffic sources and patterns with your team. We provide guidance for linking analytics to AdSense to help facilitate this process.
Ask your partners to provide summary reporting
In addition to reviewing your own traffic on a daily basis, it’s important to regularly audit traffic from your partners. When working with partners, be diligent. Ask for traffic sources, and any optimization plans your partners may have, and educate your team to recognize suspicious behavior.
Investing in good user experiences benefits the entire ecosystem. Work with partners that feel the same way.
Only trust business partners who have earned your trust
Trust, but verify. Only work with partners who adhere to best practices for sourcing traffic and growing their businesses, and require all partners to uphold safe standards when it comes to sourcing traffic and providing great user experiences. Feel empowered to ask hard questions and demand answers from those you work with, and set up time to review and analyze inventory that you’ve purchased. If you don’t feel like you are getting the responses you need, find other partners that are more responsive.
Understand what’s too good to be true and watch for it. Build bridges with quality inventory sources and partners, and put up barriers between you and those who prove untrustworthy. Many potential publishers, ad network and programmatic partners can have traffic quality that can vary quite significantly between various providers.
Focus on the User
Lastly, and most importantly, serving your end users needs should be at the heart of what you do, and a top priority. Your entire business should be focused on your customer - the user.
Websites with great, unique content have lost loyal users due to deceptive navigation, or poor and/or numerous ad placements. Great content is only part of your job. Providing a straightforward, safe, easy to navigate, and uncluttered site experience is also important for users to return to your site.
At conferences and events, I am often asked what is the one piece of advice I can give to help publishers maintain a good relationship with the Google policy team. My response is always “If you truly focus on the user, and do everything you can to help that user in his or her journey on your site, then you will likely have a long and productive relationship with Google.”
We hope these tips have been helpful. As always, please review our Help Center, and keep providing us with feedback.
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
At Google, we strive to create policies that are designed to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem. We consider the needs of each party - users, advertisers and publishers, and want all players to thrive.
Just as important as creating policy is the enforcement of policy violations. Enforcement is important for the quality of the network, and designed to be fairly administered. There are steps you can take to safeguard your growth efforts, while maintaining policy compliance:
Understand our policies, and develop your own policies and procedures
The first step is to read and understand our policies. These policies are posted in our Help Center, with specific FAQs called out for ease of reference. For new publishers, we created a beginner’s guide to highlight some of the most commonly violated policies.
Protect against invalid traffic
We want publishers to be proactive about tackling invalid traffic.
We’ve developed an Ad Traffic Quality Resource site designed to help publishers better educate themselves on what invalid traffic is, the risks that invalid traffic poses to their businesses, how to identify invalid traffic, and how to mitigate this type of traffic. The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) also has a growing library of resources that can provide additional context and best practices on this topic.
Get familiar with your metrics
As part of your daily ritual, you should understand what typical traffic patterns for your website look like. Anomalies, especially on non-business hours’ or holidays, are signs of potential trouble. As part of metrics review, set aside time each month, or where appropriate for your business, to train and review traffic sources and patterns with your team. We provide guidance for linking analytics to AdSense to help facilitate this process.
Ask your partners to provide summary reporting
In addition to reviewing your own traffic on a daily basis, it’s important to regularly audit traffic from your partners. When working with partners, be diligent. Ask for traffic sources, and any optimization plans your partners may have, and educate your team to recognize suspicious behavior.
Investing in good user experiences benefits the entire ecosystem. Work with partners that feel the same way.
Only trust business partners who have earned your trust
Trust, but verify. Only work with partners who adhere to best practices for sourcing traffic and growing their businesses, and require all partners to uphold safe standards when it comes to sourcing traffic and providing great user experiences. Feel empowered to ask hard questions and demand answers from those you work with, and set up time to review and analyze inventory that you’ve purchased. If you don’t feel like you are getting the responses you need, find other partners that are more responsive.
Understand what’s too good to be true and watch for it. Build bridges with quality inventory sources and partners, and put up barriers between you and those who prove untrustworthy. Many potential publishers, ad network and programmatic partners can have traffic quality that can vary quite significantly between various providers.
Focus on the User
Lastly, and most importantly, serving your end users needs should be at the heart of what you do, and a top priority. Your entire business should be focused on your customer - the user.
Websites with great, unique content have lost loyal users due to deceptive navigation, or poor and/or numerous ad placements. Great content is only part of your job. Providing a straightforward, safe, easy to navigate, and uncluttered site experience is also important for users to return to your site.
At conferences and events, I am often asked what is the one piece of advice I can give to help publishers maintain a good relationship with the Google policy team. My response is always “If you truly focus on the user, and do everything you can to help that user in his or her journey on your site, then you will likely have a long and productive relationship with Google.”
We hope these tips have been helpful. As always, please review our Help Center, and keep providing us with feedback.
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
Help us improve our services and products
Wednesday, December 05, 2018
We’d like to personally invite you to share your thoughts with us so that we can keep improving your experience with us.
Depending on your email preferences, you may have received a survey by email, if so please take the time to respond to it as we value your input.
In the past, we’ve used your responses to improve how we help you, ways you interact with our product, and what type of features we offer.
The survey should take about 10-15 minutes and can be answered on mobile.
Whether you’ve completed this survey before or you’re providing feedback for the first time, we’d like to thank you for sharing your valuable thoughts. We’re looking forward to feedback!
Thank you!
Depending on your email preferences, you may have received a survey by email, if so please take the time to respond to it as we value your input.
In the past, we’ve used your responses to improve how we help you, ways you interact with our product, and what type of features we offer.
The survey should take about 10-15 minutes and can be answered on mobile.
Whether you’ve completed this survey before or you’re providing feedback for the first time, we’d like to thank you for sharing your valuable thoughts. We’re looking forward to feedback!
Thank you!
[VIDEO] User-generated content
Monday, November 26, 2018
Our new video takes a deeper dive into our User-generated content policy and describes how this policy helps to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem for users, advertisers, and publishers.
Click the video below to learn more:
We hope this video helps you to better understand our User-generated content policy. For more information, you can learn more about AdSense policies in our help center.
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
Click the video below to learn more:
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
[VIDEO] Copyright infringement policy
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
We're adding more video content resources for our publishers to help them better understand various policies.
This week, our video takes a deeper dive into our Copyright infringement policy and describes how this policy helps to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem for users, advertisers, and publishers. Watch the video below to learn more:
After each video goes live, we'll be on hand to answer your questions related to the topic for a few hours on the YouTube channel. So be sure to subscribe to the channel to ensure you don’t miss an episode.
We hope this video helps you to better understand our Copyright infringement policy. For more information, you can learn more about AdSense policies in our help center.
Posted by:
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
This week, our video takes a deeper dive into our Copyright infringement policy and describes how this policy helps to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem for users, advertisers, and publishers. Watch the video below to learn more:
We hope this video helps you to better understand our Copyright infringement policy. For more information, you can learn more about AdSense policies in our help center.
Posted by:
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
[VIDEO] Dangerous or derogatory content
Thursday, November 08, 2018
We're adding more video content resources for our publishers to help them better understand various policies.
This week, our video takes a deeper dive into our Dangerous or Derogatory Content policy and describes how this policy helps to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem for users, advertisers, and publishers. Click the video below to learn more:
After each video goes live, we'll be on hand to answer your questions related to the topic for a few hours on the YouTube channel. So be sure to subscribe to the channel to ensure you don’t miss an episode.
We hope this video helps you to better understand our Dangerous or Derogatory Content policy. For more information, you can learn more about AdSense policies in our help center.
Posted by:
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
This week, our video takes a deeper dive into our Dangerous or Derogatory Content policy and describes how this policy helps to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem for users, advertisers, and publishers. Click the video below to learn more:
We hope this video helps you to better understand our Dangerous or Derogatory Content policy. For more information, you can learn more about AdSense policies in our help center.
Posted by:
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
[VIDEO] Accidental clicks
Tuesday, November 06, 2018
We're adding more video content resources for our publishers to help them better understand various policies.
This week, our video takes a deeper dive into our Accidental Clicks policy and describes how this policy helps to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem for users, advertisers, and publishers. Click the video below to learn more:
After each video goes live, we'll be on hand to answer your questions related to the topic for a few hours on the YouTube channel. So be sure to subscribe to the channel to ensure you don’t miss an episode.
We hope this video helps you to better understand our Accidental Clicks policy. For more information, you can learn more about AdSense policies in our help center.
Posted by
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
This week, our video takes a deeper dive into our Accidental Clicks policy and describes how this policy helps to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem for users, advertisers, and publishers. Click the video below to learn more:
We hope this video helps you to better understand our Accidental Clicks policy. For more information, you can learn more about AdSense policies in our help center.
Posted by
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
[VIDEO] Misrepresentative content
Friday, November 02, 2018
For the next few weeks we'll be releasing several videos, providing a more in depth look into various policy topics.
This week, our video takes a deeper dive into our Misrepresentative content policy and describes how this policy helps to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem for users, advertisers, and publishers. Click the video below to learn more:
After each video goes live, we'll be on hand to answer your questions related to the topic for a few hours on the YouTube channel. So be sure to subscribe to the channel to ensure you don’t miss an episode.
We hope this video helps you to better understand our Misrepresentative Content policy. For more information, you can learn more about AdSense policies in our help center.
Posted by:
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
This week, our video takes a deeper dive into our Misrepresentative content policy and describes how this policy helps to enable a healthy digital advertising ecosystem for users, advertisers, and publishers. Click the video below to learn more:
After each video goes live, we'll be on hand to answer your questions related to the topic for a few hours on the YouTube channel. So be sure to subscribe to the channel to ensure you don’t miss an episode.
We hope this video helps you to better understand our Misrepresentative Content policy. For more information, you can learn more about AdSense policies in our help center.
Posted by:
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
Continuing to strengthen the quality of Google AdSense
Monday, October 29, 2018
Over the last 15 years, AdSense has grown to support web publishers by connecting their audiences to advertisers, with the aim of keeping the web open and funding content creators. Earlier this month, we posted about the exciting future we have ahead of us and with this post, we'd like to tell you a little more about our upcoming quality efforts.
We’re already committed to initiatives such as the Better Ads Standards and we continue to strive to create a clean and fair ad network. Continuing our work on quality in AdSense makes it more attractive to advertisers which in turn leads to better outcomes for our partners. With this in mind, we're making some changes to the way you monetize new sites with AdSense.
What's changing?
Before you can show ads on a new site, you now have to add the site to your AdSense account. Each new site will go through a verification process which checks that you own the domain or have the ability to modify its content. The process also reviews your site for compliance with the AdSense Program policies. After the checks are completed, your site will be marked as "Ready" and you can start showing ads.
We're also renaming the My Sites tab to Sites and moving it further up the menu to make it easier to find. Any existing sites you’re monetizing should automatically appear in your sites list, accessed by clicking the new Sites tab. If you want to add more sites you’ll need to add them to this list.
How will this impact partners?
For the vast majority of AdSense users, the only change will be the new Sites tab. However, for some of you, we may ask for help to find the correct ad code when you add a new site. If we require your help, we’ll reach out through email and notify you when you sign in to AdSense. So don’t forget to make sure we have the correct email address for you and that your email preferences are up to date.
Stay tuned for more exciting updates!
Posted by:
Google AdSense Product Team
We’re already committed to initiatives such as the Better Ads Standards and we continue to strive to create a clean and fair ad network. Continuing our work on quality in AdSense makes it more attractive to advertisers which in turn leads to better outcomes for our partners. With this in mind, we're making some changes to the way you monetize new sites with AdSense.
What's changing?
Before you can show ads on a new site, you now have to add the site to your AdSense account. Each new site will go through a verification process which checks that you own the domain or have the ability to modify its content. The process also reviews your site for compliance with the AdSense Program policies. After the checks are completed, your site will be marked as "Ready" and you can start showing ads.
We're also renaming the My Sites tab to Sites and moving it further up the menu to make it easier to find. Any existing sites you’re monetizing should automatically appear in your sites list, accessed by clicking the new Sites tab. If you want to add more sites you’ll need to add them to this list.
How will this impact partners?
For the vast majority of AdSense users, the only change will be the new Sites tab. However, for some of you, we may ask for help to find the correct ad code when you add a new site. If we require your help, we’ll reach out through email and notify you when you sign in to AdSense. So don’t forget to make sure we have the correct email address for you and that your email preferences are up to date.
Stay tuned for more exciting updates!
Posted by:
[Infographic] Get ready for the holiday season
Thursday, October 25, 2018
During the holiday season advertisers have their busiest time of the year as users search for gifts and celebration ideas. Increased demand in advertising space leads to growing RPMs and surges in traffic. Make the most out of this busy season by preparing your site and ads for increased activity.
Take a look at our infographic with important tips on how to prepare for the holiday season.
You can also download it with clickable links for desktop and mobile.
Take a look at our infographic with important tips on how to prepare for the holiday season.
You can also download it with clickable links for desktop and mobile.
Posted by
Daryna Chushko - Marketing Communications Specialist
Looking back, looking forward...
Monday, October 01, 2018
Earlier this year, Google AdSense celebrated 15 years of partnering with digital content creators like you. A lot has changed since we started – new technology, new challenges, and new opportunities all driven by constantly changing user needs. A few things have endured though – the world has an insatiable appetite for great content and publishers like you remain the beating heart of the open web. Sharing in this mission with you, helping to create millions of sustainable content-first businesses on the web, keeps us going.
While we look back fondly on the last 15 years, your stories inspire us to keep looking forward. There’s lots more to do to support you and set AdSense and our ecosystem up for success for the next 15 years. With that in mind, we’d like to share a preview of how we plan to help you grow and play our part in making advertising work for everyone.
We’re just as excited about working with you now as we were when we launched 15 years ago. Thank you for being on the journey with us so far – here’s to another 15 years of partnership and shared success!
Posted by:
Matthew Conroy - Senior Product Manager
While we look back fondly on the last 15 years, your stories inspire us to keep looking forward. There’s lots more to do to support you and set AdSense and our ecosystem up for success for the next 15 years. With that in mind, we’d like to share a preview of how we plan to help you grow and play our part in making advertising work for everyone.
First up, smarter sizing, better ad placements and new formats powered by Google’s machine learning technology. We know you want to spend more time writing content and serving your users than managing ad tags and settings. We want that too. We’ve been investing heavily in understanding the best ways to increase user interest in ads, including when and what type of ads to show, while ensuring they complement your content and respect the experience of visitors to your site. Alongside these new capabilities, we’ll bring you the controls, reporting, and transparency you expect from AdSense to ensure we’re constantly meeting your needs along the way.
Secondly, we know that creating great content can take time, but making that content profitable shouldn’t. We’re hard at work on a number of new assistive features that give you more insight into your performance when you’re ready to take action, a clearer understanding of how you’re doing relative to your peers and the industry, and improved navigation to help you get it all done faster. We want to save you time so you can focus on the things that matter most to your business, like creating great content for your audiences.
Thirdly, AdSense and Google are committed to advertising that works for everyone and playing our part to ensure the ads ecosystem supports the diverse needs of publishers, advertisers and consumers. We’ll continue to meet and exceed important industry standards on ads quality, including the Better Ads Standards, to make sure that great publishers who make engaging content are rewarded, while advertisers can continue to spend with confidence.
As we launch into the next 15 years and with it deliver these new features, we may need your help to keep your account up to date. If we do, you’ll hear from us by email over the coming months. Don’t forget to make sure we have the correct email address for you and that your preferences are up to date.
We’re just as excited about working with you now as we were when we launched 15 years ago. Thank you for being on the journey with us so far – here’s to another 15 years of partnership and shared success!
Posted by:
Matthew Conroy - Senior Product Manager
Lighthouse Auditing for Publishers
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
In February, we announced the launch of SEO auditing tools in Lighthouse Chrome Extension, which is now available in Google Chrome Developer tools.
Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. Lighthouse is designed to help publishers improve the quality of their web sites, by providing tools and features for their developers to run audits for performance, compatibility, progressive web apps, SEO, and more.
The SEO audit category within Lighthouse was designed to validate and reflect the SEO basics that every site should get right, and provides detailed guidance to fix those issues. Current audits include checks for valid rel=canonical tag, successful HTTP response code, page title and description and more.
Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. Lighthouse is designed to help publishers improve the quality of their web sites, by providing tools and features for their developers to run audits for performance, compatibility, progressive web apps, SEO, and more.
The SEO audit category within Lighthouse was designed to validate and reflect the SEO basics that every site should get right, and provides detailed guidance to fix those issues. Current audits include checks for valid rel=canonical tag, successful HTTP response code, page title and description and more.
How do I use Lighthouse?
You can run Lighthouse in several ways:
Using the Lighthouse Chrome Extension:
- Install the Lighthouse Chrome Extension
- Click on the Lighthouse icon in the extension bar
- Select the Options menu, click “SEO” and click OK, then generate report
Using Chrome Developer tools on Google Chrome:
- Open Chrome Developer Tools
- Go to Audits
- Click Perform and audit
- Click the “SEO” checkbox and click Run Audit.
The SEO audits category is not designed to replace any of your current strategies, or tools, nor does it make any SEO guarantees for Google websearch or other search engines. However, it covers some of the SEO best practices that are relevant for Webmasters and publishers who want to ensure their website is visible in Search. These checks are part of best practices that we provide for our publisher partners.
Posted by:
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
AdSense now understands Telugu
Friday, June 29, 2018
Today, we’re excited to announce the addition of Telugu, a language spoken by over 70 million in India and many other countries around the world, to the family of AdSense supported languages. With this launch, publishers can now monetize their Telugu content and advertisers can connect to a Telugu speaking audience with relevant ads.
To start monetizing your Telugu content website with Google AdSense:
Check the AdSense program policies and make sure your website is compliant.
Sign up for an AdSense account.
Add the AdSense code to start displaying relevant ads to your users.
Welcome to AdSense! Sign up now.
Posted by:
The AdSense Internationalization Team
To start monetizing your Telugu content website with Google AdSense:
Check the AdSense program policies and make sure your website is compliant.
Sign up for an AdSense account.
Add the AdSense code to start displaying relevant ads to your users.
Welcome to AdSense! Sign up now.
Posted by:
The AdSense Internationalization Team
Updated impressions metrics for AdSense
Thursday, May 03, 2018
Reporting plays a key role in the AdSense experience. In fact, two-thirds of our partners consider it the most important feature within AdSense. Helping partners understand and improve their performance metrics is a top priority. Today, we’re announcing updates to how we report AdSense impressions.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC) in partnership with other industry bodies such as the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), periodically review and update industry standards for impression measurement. They recommend guidelines to standardize how impressions are counted across formats and platforms.
What’s changing?
Over the last year, to remain consistent with these standards, we have transitioned our ad serving platforms from served impressions to downloaded impressions. Served impressions are counted at the point that we find an ad for an ad request on the server. Downloaded impressions are counted for each ad request once at least one of the returned ads has begun to load on the user’s device. Starting today, publishers will see updated metrics in AdSense that reflect this change.
How will it impact partners?
Switching to counting impressions on download helps to improve viewability rates, consistency across measurement providers, and aligns the impression metric better with advertiser value. For example, if an ad failed to download or if the user closed the tab before it arrived, it will no longer be counted as an impression. As a result, some AdSense users might see decreases in their impression counts, and corresponding improvements in their impression RPM, CTR, and other impression-based metrics. Your earnings, however, should not be impacted.
We will continue to review and update our impression counting technology as new industry standards are defined and implemented.
For more information please visit our Help Center.
Posted by:
Andrew Gildfind, Product Manager
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC) in partnership with other industry bodies such as the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), periodically review and update industry standards for impression measurement. They recommend guidelines to standardize how impressions are counted across formats and platforms.
What’s changing?
Over the last year, to remain consistent with these standards, we have transitioned our ad serving platforms from served impressions to downloaded impressions. Served impressions are counted at the point that we find an ad for an ad request on the server. Downloaded impressions are counted for each ad request once at least one of the returned ads has begun to load on the user’s device. Starting today, publishers will see updated metrics in AdSense that reflect this change.
How will it impact partners?
Switching to counting impressions on download helps to improve viewability rates, consistency across measurement providers, and aligns the impression metric better with advertiser value. For example, if an ad failed to download or if the user closed the tab before it arrived, it will no longer be counted as an impression. As a result, some AdSense users might see decreases in their impression counts, and corresponding improvements in their impression RPM, CTR, and other impression-based metrics. Your earnings, however, should not be impacted.
We will continue to review and update our impression counting technology as new industry standards are defined and implemented.
For more information please visit our Help Center.
Posted by:
Andrew Gildfind, Product Manager
Let’s talk about Policy! Partnership with Industry Associations, and Better Ads Standards
Monday, April 23, 2018
Thanks to your feedback around wanting more discussion of AdSense policies, we have created some new content on our AdSense YouTube channel in a series called “Let’s talk about Policy!”.
This month, we're talking about the Coalition for Better Ads, Better Ads Standards.
These standards were created by the Coalition for Better Ads to improve ad experiences for users across the web. Google is a member of the Coalition alongside other stakeholders within the industry. The Better Ads Standards were created with extensive consumer research to minimize annoying ad experiences across devices. The Standards are currently in place for users within North America and Europe, but we are advising all our publishers to abide by the standards to provide a quality user experience for your visitors and minimize the need to make changes in the future.
Check out our video discussing the Standards to learn more:
Be sure to subscribe to the channel to ensure you don’t miss an episode.
This month, we're talking about the Coalition for Better Ads, Better Ads Standards.
These standards were created by the Coalition for Better Ads to improve ad experiences for users across the web. Google is a member of the Coalition alongside other stakeholders within the industry. The Better Ads Standards were created with extensive consumer research to minimize annoying ad experiences across devices. The Standards are currently in place for users within North America and Europe, but we are advising all our publishers to abide by the standards to provide a quality user experience for your visitors and minimize the need to make changes in the future.
Check out our video discussing the Standards to learn more:
Be sure to subscribe to the channel to ensure you don’t miss an episode.
Helping publishers recover lost revenue from ad blocking
Monday, April 16, 2018
Today, the majority of the internet is supported by digital advertising. But bad ad experiences—the ones that blare music unexpectedly, or force you to wait 10 seconds before you get to the page—are hurting publishers who make the content, apps and services we use everyday. When people encounter annoying ads, and then decide to block all ads, it cuts off revenue for the sites you actually find useful. Many of these people don't intend to defund the sites they love when they install an ad blocker, but when they do, they block all ads on every site they visit.
Last year we announced Funding Choices to help publishers with good ad experiences recover lost revenue due to ad blocking. While Funding Choices is still in beta, millions of ad blocking users every month are now choosing to see ads on publisher websites, or “whitelisting” that site, after seeing a Funding Choices message. In fact, in the last month over 4.5 million visitors who were asked to allow ads said yes, creating over 90 million additional paying page views for those sites.
Over the coming weeks, we’re expanding Funding Choices to 31 additional countries, giving publishers the ability to ask visitors from those countries to choose between allowing ads on a site, or purchasing an ad removal pass through Google Contributor. Also, we’ve started a test that allows publishers to use their own proprietary subscription services within Funding Choices.
Funding Choice gives publishers a way to have a conversation with their site visitors through custom messages they can use to express how ad blocking impacts their business and content. When a visitor arrives at a site using an ad blocker, Funding Choices allows the site to display one of three message types to that user:
A dismissible message that doesn’t restrict access to content:
A dismissible message that counts and limits the number of page views that person is allowed per month, as determined by the site owner, before the content is blocked.
Or, a message that blocks access to content until the visitor chooses to allow ads on the site, or to pay to access the content with either the site’s proprietary subscription service or a pass that removes all ads on that site through Google Contributor.
On average, publishers using Funding Choices are seeing 16 percent of visitors allow ads on their sites with some seeing rates as high as 37 percent.
Ad blockers designed to remove all ads from all sites are making it difficult for publishers with good ad experiences to maintain sustainable businesses. Our goal for Funding Choices is to help publishers get paid for their work by reducing the impact of ad blocking on them, and we look forward to continuing to expand the product availability.
Last year we announced Funding Choices to help publishers with good ad experiences recover lost revenue due to ad blocking. While Funding Choices is still in beta, millions of ad blocking users every month are now choosing to see ads on publisher websites, or “whitelisting” that site, after seeing a Funding Choices message. In fact, in the last month over 4.5 million visitors who were asked to allow ads said yes, creating over 90 million additional paying page views for those sites.
Over the coming weeks, we’re expanding Funding Choices to 31 additional countries, giving publishers the ability to ask visitors from those countries to choose between allowing ads on a site, or purchasing an ad removal pass through Google Contributor. Also, we’ve started a test that allows publishers to use their own proprietary subscription services within Funding Choices.
How Funding Choices works
Funding Choice gives publishers a way to have a conversation with their site visitors through custom messages they can use to express how ad blocking impacts their business and content. When a visitor arrives at a site using an ad blocker, Funding Choices allows the site to display one of three message types to that user:
A dismissible message that doesn’t restrict access to content:
A dismissible message that counts and limits the number of page views that person is allowed per month, as determined by the site owner, before the content is blocked.
Or, a message that blocks access to content until the visitor chooses to allow ads on the site, or to pay to access the content with either the site’s proprietary subscription service or a pass that removes all ads on that site through Google Contributor.
On average, publishers using Funding Choices are seeing 16 percent of visitors allow ads on their sites with some seeing rates as high as 37 percent.
Ad blockers designed to remove all ads from all sites are making it difficult for publishers with good ad experiences to maintain sustainable businesses. Our goal for Funding Choices is to help publishers get paid for their work by reducing the impact of ad blocking on them, and we look forward to continuing to expand the product availability.
Protecting publishers: How Advertising Policies & Policy Enforcement Work
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Online advertising helps to support the services we all enjoy and enables businesses to grow. While the vast majority of our online publishers are terrific partners, not every publisher has the best intentions. That’s why we invest a lot of time and effort in our people, policy and technology to maintain the quality of our network so that it continues to be a safe and effective place to learn, create and advertise. On March 14 we shared information about our work protecting publishers and advertisers on our network; in this post I’d like to share more detail about how our policies and policy enforcement work.
Policy
We continuously monitor ads and content for policy compliance. Our policies cover a range of content and behaviors when making money with Google ads.
Policy
We continuously monitor ads and content for policy compliance. Our policies cover a range of content and behaviors when making money with Google ads.
- For publishers, our AdSense program policies outline the kinds of websites and content we allow to show Google ads. For example, our dangerous and derogatory content policy prohibits publishers from running Google ads on content that promotes discrimination against marginalized groups.
- For advertisers, our AdWords policies determine which ads are acceptable and what types of products or services can be promoted with Google ads. For example, we prohibit technologies that attempt to deceive users or abuse our network, like auto-redirecting ads, malware-laden sites, or “trick-to-click” ads.
When creating AdSense policies, we try to strike a balance between the needs of users, advertisers, and publishers with two main goals; protecting users and respecting their experience online, and preventing inappropriate content from damaging the long-term success of the digital advertising ecosystem. To do so our policy team is comprised of professionals from a diverse array of backgrounds to help them work with a wide variety of stakeholders to craft fair and effective policies.
Technology
To enforce these policies, we use a combination of people and technology. This isn’t a simple effort, which is why we have thousands of Google employees working to maintain a safe and secure ads ecosystem. Google has over 2 million publisher relationships. In order provide defenses against bad actors, we invest heavily in technology - which enables us to monitor the clicks and impressions we receive, and also to scan our partners’ sites. These tools operate at the click, page, site, and account levels, so we can pick up bad content and bad practices (like non-human traffic) at a very granular level.
We see our relationships with publishers as a partnership, which requires publishers to do their part. Publishers need to follow best practices, understand where their traffic is coming from, and adhere to our policies. To assist publishers, we provide as many resources as possible to help them succeed. We offer a Policy Help Center, an AdSense Forum, a AdSense YouTube channel, our Inside AdSense blog, and our social channels. In addition, we speak at conferences, and host publisher events at our offices globally.
Controls
Every publisher has their own set of brand values that inform where what types of ads they will allow on their site or app. After we evaluate ads and sites for policy compliance, we provide advertisers controls they need to manage where and when their ads appear, and provide publishers the ability to control the type and format of ads appearing next to their content. We provide publishers with comprehensive controls to help publishers automatically block ads they do not want to appear on their sites, and over the last year we made changes to significantly improve the accuracy and quality of our automated filters.
The Future
Creating good policies, enforcing them consistently, and fighting invalid traffic is an ongoing investment, and something that we are proud to embrace. To help facilitate a healthy digital advertising ecosystem, we are investing more money, and more people to help detect bad content and be faster in how we handle escalations. Additionally, we are developing new technology which will allow us to be more precise in how we disable ads.
Over the coming year, we will continue to work with industry bodies in ways that help the ecosystem thrive, and make things more difficult for bad actors. We’ll continue to add new features, and controls to help advertisers, and publishers fine-tune where they want ads to appear. And lastly, in the coming months, we’ll be simplifying, and consolidating our policies, to help publishers better understand the basics of our policies, across platforms, and products.
Posted by:
John Brown
Head of Publisher Policy Communications
Let’s talk about Policy! Resources available for you to understand AdSense policies.
Friday, March 23, 2018
Thanks to your feedback around wanting us to be more transparent and clear in our policy communications, we will be tackling a policy topic each week directly from our AdSense YouTube channel in a series called “Let’s talk about Policy!”.
Last week we looked at the role of policy in the ads eco-system to gain an understanding into why we need policies and who benefits from them, this week we’re talking about the various resources available to you to understand the policies. Those resources include:
Remember that after each video goes live, we will be on hand to answer your questions related to the topic for a few hours. So be sure to subscribe to the channel to ensure you don’t miss an episode.
Posted by:
The AdSense Team
"Let’s talk about Policy!" Video series
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
For the next few weeks we will be tackling a policy topic each week directly from our AdSense YouTube channel in a series called “Let’s talk about Policy!”.
We’ve heard your feedback and understand you want us to be more transparent and clear in our policy communications. So we hope this video series will bring you more information & clarity than ever before.
This week we’re talking about the role of policy in the ads eco-system and providing information on why we create policies, who benefits from our policies and why they are important. Click the video below to learn more.
After each video goes live, we will be on hand to answer your questions related to the topic for a few hours. So be sure to subscribe to the channel to ensure you don’t miss an episode.
Posted by:
The AdSense Team
Introducing AdSense Auto ads
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Finding the time to create great content for your users is an essential part of growing your publishing business. Today we are introducing AdSense Auto ads, a powerful new way to place ads on your site. Auto ads use machine learning to make smart placement and monetization decisions on your behalf, saving you time. Place one piece of code just once to all of your pages, and let Google take care of the rest.
Some of the benefits of Auto ads include:
How do Auto ads work?
Auto ads will now start working for you by analyzing your pages, finding potential ad placements, and showing new ads when they’re likely to perform well and provide a good user experience.
And if you want to have different formats on different pages you can use the new Advanced URL settings feature (e.g. you can choose to place In-feed ads on exampleurl.com/games but not on exampleurl.com/sports).
Getting started with AdSense Auto ads
Auto ads can work equally well on new sites and on those already showing ads.
Have you manually placed ads on your page? There’s no need to remove them if you don’t want to. Auto ads will take into account all existing Google ads on your pages.
Already using Anchor or Vignette ads? Auto ads include Anchor and Vignette ads and many more additional formats such as Text and display, In-feed, and Matched content. Note that all users that used Page-level ads are automatically migrated over to Auto ads without any need to add code to their pages again.
To get started with AdSense Auto ads:
We'd love to hear what you think about Auto ads in the comments section below this post.
Posted by:
Tom Long, AdSense Engineering Manager
Violetta Kalathaki, AdSense Product Manager
Some of the benefits of Auto ads include:
- Optimization: Using machine learning, Auto ads show ads only when they are likely to perform well and provide a good user experience.
- Revenue opportunities: Auto ads will identify any available ad space and place new ads there, potentially increasing your revenue.
- Easy to use: With Auto ads you only need to place the ad code on your pages once. When you’re ready to use new features and ad formats, simply turn them on and off with the flick of a switch -- there’s no need to change the code again.
How do Auto ads work?
Select the ad formats you want to show on your pages by switching them on with a simple toggle
Place the Auto ads code on your pages
Auto ads will now start working for you by analyzing your pages, finding potential ad placements, and showing new ads when they’re likely to perform well and provide a good user experience.
And if you want to have different formats on different pages you can use the new Advanced URL settings feature (e.g. you can choose to place In-feed ads on exampleurl.com/games but not on exampleurl.com/sports).
Getting started with AdSense Auto ads
Auto ads can work equally well on new sites and on those already showing ads.
Have you manually placed ads on your page? There’s no need to remove them if you don’t want to. Auto ads will take into account all existing Google ads on your pages.
Already using Anchor or Vignette ads? Auto ads include Anchor and Vignette ads and many more additional formats such as Text and display, In-feed, and Matched content. Note that all users that used Page-level ads are automatically migrated over to Auto ads without any need to add code to their pages again.
To get started with AdSense Auto ads:
- Sign in to your AdSense account.
- In the left navigation panel, visit My ads and select Get Started.
- On the "Choose your global settings" page, select the ad formats that you'd like to show and click Save.
- On the next page, click Copy code.
- Paste the ad code between the < head > and </ head > tags of each page where you want to show Auto ads.
- Auto ads will start to appear on your pages in about 10-20 minutes.
We'd love to hear what you think about Auto ads in the comments section below this post.
Posted by:
Tom Long, AdSense Engineering Manager
Violetta Kalathaki, AdSense Product Manager
AdSense now supports Tamil
Friday, February 09, 2018
Continuing our commitment to support more languages and encourage content creation on the web, we’re excited to announce the addition of Tamil, a language spoken by millions of Indians, to the family of AdSense supported languages.
AdSense provides an easy way for publishers to monetize the content they create in Tamil, and help advertisers looking to connect with a Tamil-speaking audience with relevant ads.
To start monetizing your Tamil content website with Google AdSense:
- Check the AdSense program policies and make sure your website is compliant.
- Sign up for an AdSense account
- Add the AdSense code to start displaying relevant ads to your users.
Welcome to AdSense! Sign Up now.
Posted by: The AdSense Internationalization Team
Let machine learning create your In-feed ads
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Now we've brought the power of machine learning to In-feed ads, saving you time. If you're not quite sure what fonts, colors, and styles will work best for your site, you can let Google's machine learning help you decide.
How it works:
- Create a new Native In-Feed ad and select "Let Google suggest a style."
- Enter the URL of a page with a feed you’d like to monetize. AdSense will scan your page to find the best placement.
- Select which feed element you’d like your In-feed ad to match.
- Your ad is automatically created – simply place the piece of code into your feed, and you’re done!
By the way, this method is optional, so if you prefer, you can create your ads manually.
Posted by:
Faris Zerdoudi, AdSense Tech Lead
Violetta Kalathaki, AdSense Product Manager
Receiving your payment via EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer)
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) is our fastest, most secure, and environmentally friendly payment
method. It is available across most countries and you can check if this payment method is available to you here.
To use this payment method we first need to verify your bank account to ensure that you will receive your payment. This involves entering specific bank account information and receiving a small test deposit.
Some of our publishers found this process confusing and we want to guide you through it. Our latest video will guide you through adding EFT as a payment method, from start to finish.
To use this payment method we first need to verify your bank account to ensure that you will receive your payment. This involves entering specific bank account information and receiving a small test deposit.
Some of our publishers found this process confusing and we want to guide you through it. Our latest video will guide you through adding EFT as a payment method, from start to finish.
If you didn’t receive your test deposit, you can watch this video to understand why. If you have more questions, visit our Help Center.
Posted by: The AdSense Support Team
Our continued investment in AdSense Experiments
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Experimentation is at the heart of everything we do at Google — so much so that many of our products, including Analytics and AdSense, allow you to run your own experiments.
The AdSense Experiments page has allowed you to experiment with ad unit settings, and allowing and blocking ad categories to see how this affects your earnings. As of today, you can run more experiment types and have a better understanding of how they impact your earnings and users with some new updates.
Understand user impact with session metrics
Curious to know how the settings you experiment with impact your user experience? You can now see how long users spend on your site with a new “Ad session length” metric that has been added to the Experiments results page. Longer ad session lengths are usually a good indicator of a healthy user experience.
Ad balance experiments
Ad balance is a tool that allows you to reduce the number of ads shown by displaying only those ads that perform the best. You can now run experiments to see how different ad fill rates impact revenue and ad session lengths. Try it out and let us know what you think in the comments below!
Service announcement: We're auto-completing some experiments, and deleting experiments that are more than a year old.
To ensure you can focus your time efficiently on experiments, we'll soon be auto-completing the experiments for which no winner has been chosen after 30 days of being marked “Ready to complete”. You can manually choose a winner during those 30 days, or (if you’re happy for us to close the experiment) you don't need to do anything. Learn more about the status of experiments.
We’ll also be deleting experiments that were completed more than one year ago. Old experiments are rarely useful in the fast-moving world of the Internet and clutter the Experiments page with outdated information. If you wish to keep old experiments, you can download all existing data by using the “Download Data” button on the Experiments page.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts on these new features.
Posted by: Amir Hosseini Rad, AdSense Product Manager
The AdSense Experiments page has allowed you to experiment with ad unit settings, and allowing and blocking ad categories to see how this affects your earnings. As of today, you can run more experiment types and have a better understanding of how they impact your earnings and users with some new updates.
Understand user impact with session metrics
Curious to know how the settings you experiment with impact your user experience? You can now see how long users spend on your site with a new “Ad session length” metric that has been added to the Experiments results page. Longer ad session lengths are usually a good indicator of a healthy user experience.
Ad balance experiments
Ad balance is a tool that allows you to reduce the number of ads shown by displaying only those ads that perform the best. You can now run experiments to see how different ad fill rates impact revenue and ad session lengths. Try it out and let us know what you think in the comments below!
Service announcement: We're auto-completing some experiments, and deleting experiments that are more than a year old.
To ensure you can focus your time efficiently on experiments, we'll soon be auto-completing the experiments for which no winner has been chosen after 30 days of being marked “Ready to complete”. You can manually choose a winner during those 30 days, or (if you’re happy for us to close the experiment) you don't need to do anything. Learn more about the status of experiments.
We’ll also be deleting experiments that were completed more than one year ago. Old experiments are rarely useful in the fast-moving world of the Internet and clutter the Experiments page with outdated information. If you wish to keep old experiments, you can download all existing data by using the “Download Data” button on the Experiments page.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts on these new features.
Posted by: Amir Hosseini Rad, AdSense Product Manager