New publisher application process

We’re continually evaluating our AdSense application process in order to ensure the safest possible network for our advertisers, as well as the best possible experience for you, our publishers. With that in mind, we’ve now implemented a change to our initial review process that will result in a stronger AdSense network. Improving the quality of the network will drive more interest and demand from advertisers, increasing the earning potential for all of our publishers.

Starting today, we’ll begin adding a new step to the review process and sending notifications at two key points. After a new application is submitted, we’ll begin with preliminary checks on the site and the applicant’s submitted details. If the application passes through this first stage, we’ll notify the applicant by email, grant them account access, and provide them with ad code to place on their submitted site. It’s essential at this stage for the applicant to place the ad code on their site, as the review process can’t be completed until the ad code is implemented.

However, live ads won’t immediately appear once the ad code has been placed on the submitted site. Since the application hasn’t been fully approved yet, temporary “blank ads” will be shown instead. These blank ads will blend in with the background of the page, so users won’t see them and the user experience won’t be impacted. As a result, there’s nothing to click on and thus revenue can’t yet be generated. If the applicant logs into their AdSense account at this stage of the review process, they’ll see a reminder that their account is still under review.

Soon after the ad code has been added to the submitted site, a final approval decision will be made and the applicant will be notified by email. Newly approved publishers will see live ads automatically appear in the existing ad units on their pages. These publishers are then welcome (and encouraged!) to add more ad units to their submitted site and to any other policy-compliant sites they own. We also encourage new publishers to ensure their sites are available to be crawled by the AdSense robot (Mediapartners-Google), and also to use our best-performing ad formats.

If you’d like more information about this new approval process, please visit our Help Center or feel free to post questions about this topic in our Help Forum.

Thanks for being a valuable member of AdSense as we continue to improve the quality of our network.

Posted by Max Cohen, Product Manager

Getting to know you at AdSense In Your City events

During this summer, a few of us on the North America AdSense team had the pleasure of meeting publishers in person during AdSense in Your City events. First, we stopped by our office in Boulder, Colorado to provide publishers with AdSense updates and tips (and we fell in love with the city as well!). We then headed to our offices in Toronto and New York to host a series of similar events for local publishers. It was a busy week, but we thoroughly enjoyed the valuable face-to-face time with you.

While our goal during these events is to provide information to you, we also learn a lot from our attendees. We asked a few participants some questions about AdSense and the event, and here’s what they had to say:

What is your favorite thing about AdSense?
“Depth of advertisers. Allows me to do what I do best.” Darren O.
“AdSense was the easiest and most effective way to monetize my site.” Andrew D.

What did you learn from the AdSense in Your City event?
“I’m very interested in DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business. Right now I use a more limited ad server and I can likely increase CPM with better technology.” Darren O.
“It always amazes me how you can learn more about optimizing your revenue when attending Google sessions like this. It helped me focus on AdSense issues I have neglected over time. I will definitely implement and test some changes that were suggested. Also, I have met other publishers and learned from them.” Max L.

What tip do you have for other publishers?
“Jump in and try it [AdSense] - it’s super easy.” Darren O.
“Simple changes such as color and ad position have increased my CTR by over 30%.” Andrew D.

Thanks for providing candid feedback and we hope to continue hearing from you. We’ll be visiting other cities through our AdSense in Your City program, so make sure you’re opted in to our mailings so we can inform you about upcoming events!

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

Join us at GDC Online in Austin

This year the Google AdSense team will be attending the Games Developer Conference Online (GDC Online) expo on October 10th, 11th and 12th in Austin, Texas.

As part of the GDC Online, we’ll be hosting Google Developer Day where we'll share ways in which publishers can use AdSense and AdMob to monetize their online games, websites and mobile applications. After our session, we're looking forward to chatting with publishers and developers at the conference, and we'll also be available at the Google booth to discuss and demo our AdSense for Games, AdSense for Content and AdMob products.

If you have an online flash game or mobile app and are interested in the potential of earning revenue from ads, we hope you’ll be able to join us on Google Developer Day and visit our booth on the expo floor.  For more information on our presence at GDC Online, including session and speaker details, please visit the event site or read our related post on the Google code blog.

Hope to see you in Austin!

David Hall,  Google AdSense Partner Development

New home for URL channels under the My ads tab

If you’ve logged in today, you may have noticed that you can now create and manage your URL channels under the My ads tab. Since you already manage your custom channels from the My ads tab, we hope this move will provide a more consistent experience when managing all of your channels. At the same time, you can continue to view the performance of your various channels under the Performance reports tab.

As a reminder, URL channels allow you to track earnings for your domains, subdomains or pages. With this change it’s possible to create URL channels for AdSense for content, games, video, mobile AdSense for content, and AdSense for hosted content in the new interface. You can also remove or deactivate channels that you’re no longer using. Learn more about URL channels.




Keep in mind that with the recent launch of the Sites report, you can now see your domain and subdomain earnings without the need to set up URL channels. For tracking page level data or any other grouping of pages, however, please feel free to continue creating URL channels.

Posted by Bob Kemp - AdSense Engineering

Enhancing the new AdSense interface and retiring the older version

Over the past months, we’ve been working to improve the new AdSense interface and develop features that provide you with additional insights, control, and efficiency. Beyond the visual redesign, some of the new features only available in the new interface include multi-dimension reporting, reporting by country and platform, and search functionality in the Ad review center.

We’ve also heard your feedback on features from the older interface that you wanted to see in the newer version. In response, we’ve recently rolled out top-requested features like the ability to create scheduled reports and view channels on the Home tab.

While we’ve been investing in new features within the new interface, we’ve also been discussing our plans to move away from the older version. With that in mind, we’ll be retiring the old interface in mid-November. We’re continuing to focus on building new functionality into the new interface, and are excited about the additional improvements we plan to deliver.

If you haven’t already, we recommend switching to the new interface as soon as possible to familiarize yourself with the updated layout and new features. To do so, sign in and click the 'Try the new AdSense interface' link in the upper corner of your account. We understand that this adjustment may take some time, so you'll still be able to toggle back and forth between the two interfaces during the coming weeks. To address a common question we’ve heard, switching to the new interface won’t affect your ad targeting or earnings in any way.



In the meantime, we encourage you to watch our video tutorials, which will guide you through completing common tasks in the new interface. You can also find detailed information in our Help Center for the new interface.

Thanks for all the feedback you’ve provided about the new interface -- please do keep the suggestions coming. We appreciate your patience during this transition, and look forward to continuing to improve the new AdSense interface to meet your needs.

Posted by Allan Livingston - AdSense Product Manager

Prepare for the upcoming holiday season with placement targeting

With the holidays right around the corner, premium brand-name AdWords advertisers are preparing for the season by increasing their marketing budgets and scheduling targeted campaigns. You can prepare too by taking advantage of placement targeting to allow advertisers to directly target your site.

While all sites are eligible for placement targeting, there are things you can do to help increase the amount of placement targeted ads on your site. First, turn your custom channels into ad placements. Be sure to fill out a well-written title and description to help potential advertisers understand the audiences they’ll reach by bidding on your site. Some details to include in the description are your site name, vertical, ad position, ad size and site demographic.

Next, ensure you are using our most successful ad units and are placing them in optimal positions. Finally, claim your site in Ad Planner. Following these steps will help advertisers find your site to target and choose where to place their ads on a specific section or area. Placement targeted ads typically receive much higher RPMs, which results in higher earnings for you.

Creating targeted channels is easy and a great way to earn extra revenue, but it takes time for them to show up for advertisers, so act soon! Just follow the instructions in our Help Center. Once you've made the changes, not only will your ads be ready for this holiday season, but they'll also be targetable by advertisers for every premium campaign in the future.

Posted by Jamie Firkus, Inside AdSense team

Policy webinars recap

Based on your feedback from our previous blog posts, we’ve heard you’d like to learn more about our policies. Over the past few months, the AdSense Policy team has hosted webinars with publishers from across North America, Russia, Turkey, Poland, Italy, and France. In keeping with our monthly policy tips, we’d like to take this time to recap on our recent publisher events and to summarize our findings for you.

Policies are in place for the success of publishers and advertisers. One of the common pieces of feedback we hear from AdSense publishers who are just starting out is that there’s a lot of information to read about the program. We understand that it can be challenging navigating our policies, and frustrating not being able to talk to a policy specialist directly. As a result, our policy team was available to answer your top questions during these recent webinars. In addition, the Policy team delivered a condensed overview of common policy violations to avoid and general best practices and tips to help maintain your account in good standing.

We went through a run-through of live demos and examples, which attendees told us were helpful. Many found that overall the sessions were helpful and that they gained a good understanding of our policies. Many publishers were unaware of the resources available to help you with policy notifications in our Help Center. We’ve posted your top policy questions and our answers on our Google Moderator page, which we encourage you to take a look at. If you’d like to listen to a recording of our presentation, please watch our YouTube video.

We’d like to thank all of you for your great feedback and questions. If you found the policy webinars valuable or have suggestions on which topics you’d like to hear about next, let us know by leaving a comment below. If you’re interested in attending future events like these, make sure that you’re opted in to ‘Special Offers’ in your email preferences within your AdSense account. We look forward to hosting more policy webinars in the future, and look for more policy updates from us by subscribing to the AdSense blog.

Posted by Cecelia Choi, AdSense Policy Specialist