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Where Adsense Should Appear
Where Adsense Should Appear
Where Adsense Should Appear
- When deciding whether to incorporate Adsense into your website there
are several factors to consider. Many feel that it diminishes their
brand, whilst others see it as a useful tool for visitors which creates
revenues and makes their content profitable.
The choice can largely come down to the commercial goals and the purpose of your website. Many businesses who sell products decide to place Adsense adverts within their website. This would appear to be a strange choice, opening up opportunities for rivals to promote their service or product to your potential customer base.
The choice can largely come down to the commercial goals and the purpose of your website. Many businesses who sell products decide to place Adsense adverts within their website. This would appear to be a strange choice, opening up opportunities for rivals to promote their service or product to your potential customer base.
Where Adsense Should Appear
Many
publishers claim that they are only doing this to allow companies who
provide ancillary services to advertise. These claims have some merit,
as those who for example sell pillows could provide those who sell
bedding with an opportunity to advertise.
Although this would make sense, there are still those online retailers who allow rivals to penetrate their audience. Many claim that there are still benefits in allowing your direct competitors to advertise within your website. One of these is that ultimately if visitors wish to see your competitors they would be able to see them through a Google search regardless. This may be true however the thought of an established brand like coco-cola having a Pepsi advert in their website is not even a possibility.
Another factor which is considered in this situation is that publishers do not feel that Adsense is effective in making conversions. They feel that visitors who would click on adverts are not highly qualified customers, as they would quickly navigate to the materials or products that interest them if they were.
Despite Adsense being a questionable choice for online retailers, it is surely a good supplementary service for other varieties of online publishers. For example, a website which provides a free service like dictionary.com gets high levels of traffic, and is able to make their service profitable through adsense. This has been the case for Bloggers who originally provided content free of charge, being unable to reach the scale that is necessary to contract with advertisers directly.
This could also apply to other previously free services, including wider forms of information broadcast, and news for example. In 2006 a man who later published a selection of Videos claims to make $19,000 a month through adsense, claiming that he was also contacted through Google to help him increase the CTR (Click Through Rate) that he achieved. The thought of success like this has been a major factor in stimulating online publishers to opt for Adsense.
Many publishers also claim that adsense makes their website look more professional. Those who are able to contract with advertisers are generally seen to provide a service with large appeal, and therefore those unfamiliar with the program may feel that the Adsense advertiser is in this position.
Adsense however, is also aligned with those publishers who use the service purely to provide links to adverts. Everyone has done a Google search, clicked on an Adwords advert and came into a website which reads top ten resources on… This is a major problem, as is generally something that surfers find frustrating. If people see that it says adverts by Google, and they then see adverts by Google on another site, they may align that site with consumer unfriendly practices. This is therefore an issue which Google has to address, to maintain Adsense as a reputable service.
Regardless of the disadvantages and the websites for which the service may be inappropriate it is still a useful tool for website visitors. Those who visit a website, and click on a link provide revenues for the publisher, whilst those who provide free services are able to generate revenue.
The only fear that Google has, is that rival PPC programs offer better deals to publishers and they decide to go elsewhere, therefore taking advertisers with them. However, ultimately it is best for advertisers and publishers if they largely remain in same PPC circuit.
Although this would make sense, there are still those online retailers who allow rivals to penetrate their audience. Many claim that there are still benefits in allowing your direct competitors to advertise within your website. One of these is that ultimately if visitors wish to see your competitors they would be able to see them through a Google search regardless. This may be true however the thought of an established brand like coco-cola having a Pepsi advert in their website is not even a possibility.
Another factor which is considered in this situation is that publishers do not feel that Adsense is effective in making conversions. They feel that visitors who would click on adverts are not highly qualified customers, as they would quickly navigate to the materials or products that interest them if they were.
Despite Adsense being a questionable choice for online retailers, it is surely a good supplementary service for other varieties of online publishers. For example, a website which provides a free service like dictionary.com gets high levels of traffic, and is able to make their service profitable through adsense. This has been the case for Bloggers who originally provided content free of charge, being unable to reach the scale that is necessary to contract with advertisers directly.
This could also apply to other previously free services, including wider forms of information broadcast, and news for example. In 2006 a man who later published a selection of Videos claims to make $19,000 a month through adsense, claiming that he was also contacted through Google to help him increase the CTR (Click Through Rate) that he achieved. The thought of success like this has been a major factor in stimulating online publishers to opt for Adsense.
Many publishers also claim that adsense makes their website look more professional. Those who are able to contract with advertisers are generally seen to provide a service with large appeal, and therefore those unfamiliar with the program may feel that the Adsense advertiser is in this position.
Adsense however, is also aligned with those publishers who use the service purely to provide links to adverts. Everyone has done a Google search, clicked on an Adwords advert and came into a website which reads top ten resources on… This is a major problem, as is generally something that surfers find frustrating. If people see that it says adverts by Google, and they then see adverts by Google on another site, they may align that site with consumer unfriendly practices. This is therefore an issue which Google has to address, to maintain Adsense as a reputable service.
Regardless of the disadvantages and the websites for which the service may be inappropriate it is still a useful tool for website visitors. Those who visit a website, and click on a link provide revenues for the publisher, whilst those who provide free services are able to generate revenue.
The only fear that Google has, is that rival PPC programs offer better deals to publishers and they decide to go elsewhere, therefore taking advertisers with them. However, ultimately it is best for advertisers and publishers if they largely remain in same PPC circuit.
How to stop AdSense ads appearing in random positions (Auto Ads)
In the last weeks, we received many emails from users reporting AdSense ads appearing randomly on their sites. Some even disabled Advanced Ads and still saw those ads. Either way, in all cases the irritation was not caused Advanced Ads, but a major change in AdSense. However, there is something we did about this anyway.
AdSense QuickStart warning by Advanced Ads
The blue message was added by Advanced Ads to inform ad managers about automatically placed ads on your site.
How to disable this warning?
Do you want to disable the "This ad was automatically placed here by AdSense" warning?
Go to Advanced Ads > Settings > AdSense and enable Disable violation warnings.
Disable AdSense violation warning
In any case, this warning is only visible to admins and not your visitors.
You're using WordPress and would like to get Advanced Ads for free?
Enter the URL to your WordPress website and install Advanced Ads.
Automatic ads with Auto Ads
On February 20th, 2018, AdSense introduced Auto Ads, a feature that placed AdSense ads automatically on websites. Auto Ads can make the job of webmasters much easier, but also causes a lot of confusion when ads appear in less optimized positions. We wrote about this feature and how to set it up here.
Side note: in early 2017, there was already a feature called QuickStart, which worked almost like Auto ads, so this is not entirely new. We just updated this article accordingly. Auto Ads also replaced Page-Level Ads.
For new AdSense accounts, Auto Ads are disabled by default and since it is placed through the verification ad tag it is easy to forget that you once set it up.
While it is yet too early to say whether this feature is a benefit for publishers or a manual optimization of ad positions works better, using both options will only cause problems, since there might be too many ads on your site.
Personally, we believe that placing the ads manually is a better basis for optimizing them, especially when you can split test for positions.
Auto Ads warning in Advanced Ads
In version 1.7.26 of Advanced Ads we added a warning above automatically placed ads like Auto Ads – see the image on top of this article. This warning is only visible to logged in ad managers!
In our experience, users who install and run Advanced Ads usually intend to control the position of their ads and running QuickStart ads and your own positions can cause conflicts.
However, if you feel irritated by this warning you can disable all AdSense warnings in Advanced Ads > Settings > AdSense.
How to disable Auto Ads?
In case you don't want to see these ads on your site, you have different methods to remove them.
Disable the Auto Ads option
You could just go to your AdSense account and search for My Ads > Auto ads in the main menu.
Depending on whether you have Auto ads enabled through global settings or through groups for individual sites, you can just go to that section and disable the ads you don't want to see automatically injected to your site.
There could be a short delay until the ads no longer appear.
You could also just remove the Auto Ads code completely from your site to stop all kinds of automatic ads. See the instructions below.
Remove the ad code
Whether you still have the AdSense verification code enabled or you placed the code for Page-Level Ads into the header of your site, since they are identical, you could remove it in order to also remove Auto Ads.
When you added this code with Advanced Ads then just go to Advanced Ads > Settings > AdSense and disable the Verification Code & Auto Ads option.
Manually placed AdSense ad units are, of course, still going to work.
If ads still appear then please flush the cache of your website, if you are using one, and make sure the AdSense Auto Ads code was not placed with another method, e.g. directly into your theme, through a theme option or another plugin.
In the last weeks, we received many emails from users reporting AdSense ads appearing randomly on their sites. Some even disabled Advanced Ads and still saw those ads. Either way, in all cases the irritation was not caused Advanced Ads, but a major change in AdSense. However, there is something we did about this anyway.
AdSense QuickStart warning by Advanced Ads
The blue message was added by Advanced Ads to inform ad managers about automatically placed ads on your site.
How to disable this warning?
Do you want to disable the "This ad was automatically placed here by AdSense" warning?
Go to Advanced Ads > Settings > AdSense and enable Disable violation warnings.
Disable AdSense violation warning
In any case, this warning is only visible to admins and not your visitors.
You're using WordPress and would like to get Advanced Ads for free?
Enter the URL to your WordPress website and install Advanced Ads.
Automatic ads with Auto Ads
On February 20th, 2018, AdSense introduced Auto Ads, a feature that placed AdSense ads automatically on websites. Auto Ads can make the job of webmasters much easier, but also causes a lot of confusion when ads appear in less optimized positions. We wrote about this feature and how to set it up here.
Side note: in early 2017, there was already a feature called QuickStart, which worked almost like Auto ads, so this is not entirely new. We just updated this article accordingly. Auto Ads also replaced Page-Level Ads.
For new AdSense accounts, Auto Ads are disabled by default and since it is placed through the verification ad tag it is easy to forget that you once set it up.
While it is yet too early to say whether this feature is a benefit for publishers or a manual optimization of ad positions works better, using both options will only cause problems, since there might be too many ads on your site.
Personally, we believe that placing the ads manually is a better basis for optimizing them, especially when you can split test for positions.
Auto Ads warning in Advanced Ads
In version 1.7.26 of Advanced Ads we added a warning above automatically placed ads like Auto Ads – see the image on top of this article. This warning is only visible to logged in ad managers!
In our experience, users who install and run Advanced Ads usually intend to control the position of their ads and running QuickStart ads and your own positions can cause conflicts.
However, if you feel irritated by this warning you can disable all AdSense warnings in Advanced Ads > Settings > AdSense.
How to disable Auto Ads?
In case you don't want to see these ads on your site, you have different methods to remove them.
Disable the Auto Ads option
You could just go to your AdSense account and search for My Ads > Auto ads in the main menu.
Depending on whether you have Auto ads enabled through global settings or through groups for individual sites, you can just go to that section and disable the ads you don't want to see automatically injected to your site.
There could be a short delay until the ads no longer appear.
You could also just remove the Auto Ads code completely from your site to stop all kinds of automatic ads. See the instructions below.
Remove the ad code
Whether you still have the AdSense verification code enabled or you placed the code for Page-Level Ads into the header of your site, since they are identical, you could remove it in order to also remove Auto Ads.
When you added this code with Advanced Ads then just go to Advanced Ads > Settings > AdSense and disable the Verification Code & Auto Ads option.
Manually placed AdSense ad units are, of course, still going to work.
If ads still appear then please flush the cache of your website, if you are using one, and make sure the AdSense Auto Ads code was not placed with another method, e.g. directly into your theme, through a theme option or another plugin.
How does Google Adsense Works?
What is Google Adsense and how does it works? Can you make a living out of Adsense or is it another myth? Read our guide for beginners to Google Adsense and learn how you can start using Adsense on your website or blog.
What is Google Adsense?
If you are a beginner to blogging and to the online World in general, you may have heard about Google Adsense or seen the adsense ads when you searched something on Google and visited a website that is using Adsense.
Adsense Ads on Publisher Website
Adsense Ads on Publisher Website
In this guide, I will try to give you an overview of what is Adsense and how it works by taking into account my thoughts when I first started using Adsense (15 years ago) and questions I received from other bloggers over the years.
Adsense highlights:
It is owned by Google.
It generates a large part of Google's income.
Adsense ads are shown in the websites that participate in the Google Adsense program (these are called the Adsense Publishers).
Adsense is a platform for publishers i.e. those people that have a website and want to show Google Ads. The system for advertisers i.e those who want to advertise their products or services in Google, is Google Ads.
Adsense ads can be shown on mobile devices as well.
Adsense works with EPC (earnings per click) and CPC (cost per click). Publishers will get paid for clicks on ads appearing in their websites.
Currently (July 2018), Adsense publishers receive 68% of the click cost and Google 32%. This means that if an advertiser pays $1 for each click on his ads, the adsense publisher will get $0.68 and Google $0.32
Anybody (above 18) with a website that meets the Google Adsense guidelines can participate in the program.
Adsense has strict rules that should not be violated for any reason. It is your responsibility as an adsense publisher to know and follow the rules.
Adsense has a number of products suited for desktop websites, videos, games, mobile apps and more.
Adsense ads can have a number of formats and sizes including text and images.
Adsense publishers get paid monthly by Google.
How does Google Adsense works?
Now that you have a better idea on what is adsense, let's see how it works.
Application process
#1 – Create Adsense Account
The first step is to go to http://www.google.com/adsense and create an account. Your adsense account is associated with a Google Account like the one you use to login to gmail, youtube etc.
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#2 – Add Adsense to your website
Before being accepted to the program, Google needs to check that your website adheres to the adsense guidelines. To pass this step, you need to add adsense code to your site so that the Google crawler can access your website's content.
This is a very important step because as we will see below there are cases that your application may not be accepted.
During this step and until you are fully approved, adsense ads are not shown to your website but they are hidden by default. If your application is accepted, ads will start to show and you will get paid for the clicks.
Have in mind that this is a once off process since after you are accepted as an adsense publisher, you can run adsense on any website you want (provided of course that it is not violating any adsense rules).
#3 – Setup your payment information
The next and final process in the application process is to add your payment information so that you receive payment and the end of the month and once you passed the minimum threshold of $100.
Please note that before receiving any money from Adsense, Google will verify your postal address by sending you an envelope with a confirmation code so make sure that the details you provide for your postal address are correct.
Ad placement
Where do the ads appear?
When you are a verified adsense user, you can login to your dashboard and create new ad units.
Adsense Ad Types
Adsense Ad Types
When creating an ad unit you will select the size (for example responsive ads, 336×280), type (text and display ads, matched content, in-article ads, in-feed ads), style (text and border colours) and then you will be given a code (javascript) to add in your website where you want the particular ad to appear.
In the space provided Google may decide to show 1 or more ads.
How many adsense ads can you show per page?
In the past you were allowed to show up-to 3 adsense units per page but this rule is no longer valid. You can show as many ads you have per page, provided that they do not interfere with the user experience.
Where should I place my ads?
The general rule is to place the ads where they can be seen by your visitors but without violating any adsense or google webmaster quality guidelines.
You can use these simple rules:
Place 1 ad unit above the fold in the main content of the website (not sidebar)
Place 1 ad unit in the sidebar. The 160×600 is very good for placing in the sidebar
Place 1 ad unit at the end of your page or article (preferably in the main content area)
Adsense Guidelines on Ad Placement
How does Google decide what kind of ads to show in my website?
That's not an easy question to answer since there are many factors taken into account before an ad is shown. You can assume that Google will try to show ads that are relevant to your content and interesting for your users.
In case you want to block an ad (or group of ads) from showing, you can do so by visiting "Allow and Block Ads" in your adsense account.
How much money can you make with Adsense?
This is a very common question and I have already provided a detailed answer in my previous posts, How much does adsense pay and Can you still make money with Adsense.
In summary how much money you will make from adsense depends on:
The amount of traffic your website receives
The type of traffic
The number of advertisers in your niche
The type of content you have on your website
The position of your adsense ads
How to increase your adsense revenue?
Once you have adsense running, there are a number of things you can do to maximize your earnings. You can read more details in my post 10 tips for maximizing your adsense earnings, but have in mind that asking your friends to click on your ads is NOT one of them.
How to increase your chances of being accepted by adsense?
If you take a look at Adsense forum, there are many people complaining that their applications for joining the Adsense program were rejected.
To increase your chances of being accepted to adsense follow these simple rules:
Make sure that your website has a lot of content (a number of pages indexed by Google)
Make sure that your content is unique and original (not copied from other websites)
Make sure that your pages do have text content (not only images and videos)
Make sure that you placed the test adsense code in all your pages and that you have ad units above the fold
Don't apply for an adsense account if your website is less than 3 months old (that's not an official rule of Adsense, it's my recommendation). For some countries (India, Pakistan, Middle east) you may have to wait for your domain to get at least 6 months old before being accepted to Adsense.
Can you make a living out of Adsense?
If you take a look at the success stories provided by Adsense, you will see people (Website owners) that live exclusively from Adsense. So the answer to the question is Yes, you can make a living out of Adsense BUT my 15 years experience of working online, tells me not to count on this.
The reason is not that it is not a reliable platform but because you need a lot of traffic to make money from adsense and this cannot in any way be guaranteed.
You may receive a lot traffic from Google now but after a change to their ranking algorithm, your traffic drops and you lose a large portion of your income.
The above can happen not because you are trying to violate any rules and trick Google but because the competition online is so big that you cannot be 100% sure that your current rankings will remain forever in the same positions.
Conclusion and Final thoughts
Adsense is a great way to make money online. It's easy to use, it's reliable and it works better than any other platform. Adsense works by giving you the opportunity to create ad units of different types and sizes and add those to your website. Google fills that space with ads that are related to your content and audience using a complex algorithm.
When someone clicks on ads appearing in your website, you get a large portion of the revenue. While it's easy to setup and use, there are a number of things you can do to increase your revenue by tweaking your ad positions and settings.
If you don't have an adsense account, the first step is to apply and get accepted to the program and then hope that someday you will also be featured in the Google Adsense success stories!
Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions on how adsense works.