Highlighting ad titles

As we continue to improve and launch new features, we’re always interested in hearing your ideas and feedback. Many of you have shared that you want to be able to change the title color of ads when a user moves their mouse over the title link. After a period of testing, we found that this feature resulted in higher earnings for publishers while also increasing user and advertiser value. We are pleased to announce today that we have updated all text ads with this change.

As you can imagine, there are numerous combinations of link and background color across the ad units on all publisher pages. After extensive testing, we have found that the color of the change itself can make a big difference: the wrong shade can even be detrimental to clickthrough rate (CTR). To determine the color that the title link will change to when a user places their mouse cursor over it, we’ll take your chosen title color and find a nearly complementary color on the color wheel. For example, a blue title would change to red. These colors outperformed all the others we tested.

We’ll continue to keep studying the effects of color on CTR and ad performance to bring you more enhancements in the future. Please also feel free to keep sharing your product feedback and suggestions!

Posted by Stephen Yuan, AdSense Engineering

Grow your audience with Google+

At Google, we help grow your audience by connecting you with new users. We introduced the +1 button so your site would stand out on search and your users could easily share your content on Google+. But, sometimes you want to join the conversation and post content directly to where people are sharing.

Today we’re introducing Google+ for Business, a collection of tools and products that help you grow your audience. At the core of this is Google+ Pages, your site’s identity on Google+.
Google+ Pages are at the heart of Google+ for Business


Google+ Pages: Have real conversations with the right people
To get your site on Google+, you first need to create a Google+ Page. On your page, you can engage in conversations with your visitors, direct readers back to your site for the latest updates, send tailored messages to specific groups of people, and see how many +1’s you have across the web. Google+ Pages will help you build relationships with your users, encouraging them to spend more time engaging with your content.


Hangouts

Sometimes you might want to chat with your users face-to-face.  For example, if you run a food blog, you may want to invite a chef to talk about her favorite recipe, or if you manage a fashion review site, beauty specialists might want to hold how-to sessions with makeup tips. Hangouts make this easy, by letting you have high-quality video chats with nine people with a single click. You can use Hangouts to hold live forums, break news or simply get to know people better, all in real time.


Hangouts let you meet your customers, face-to-face

Circles

Circles allow you to group followers of your Page into smaller audiences. You can then share specific messages with specific groups. For example, you could create a Circle containing your most loyal readers and offer them exclusive content.


The Google+ badge: Grow your audience on Google+

To help your users find your page and start sharing, there are two buttons you can add to your site by visiting our Google+ badge configuration tool:


The Google+ icon, a small icon that directly links to your Page.


The Google+ badge, which we’re introducing in the coming days. This badge lets people add your page to their circles without leaving your site, and allows them to get updates from your site via Google+.



Extend the power of +1, stand out in Google search
You can also link your site to your Google+ page so that all your +1s -- from your Page, your website, and search results -- will get tallied together and appear as a single total. Potential visitors will be more likely to see the recommendations your site has received, whether they’re looking at a search result, your website, or your Page, meaning your +1’s will reach not only the 40 million users of Google+, but all the people who come to Google every day. You can link your site to your Page either using the Google+ badge or with a  piece of code. To set this up, visit our Google+ badge configuration tool.

Bringing Google+ to the rest of Google

Our ultimate vision for Google+ is to transform the overall Google experience -- weaving identity and sharing into all of our products. Beginning today, we’re rolling out a new experimental feature to a small group of eligible publishers, Google+ Direct Connect -- an easy way for your audience to find your Google+ Page on Google search.  If you’ve linked your Page to your site and you qualify, when someone searches for your website’s name with the ‘+’ sign before it Direct Connect will send them directly to your Page. For example, try searching for ‘+YouTube’ on Google. Users will also be prompted to automatically add Pages they find through Direct Connect to their circles.

Direct Connect suggestions start populating as you type on Google.com

Just the beginning

We want to help you get your site on Google+ as soon as possible, so we’re opening the field trial for Google+ Pages to everyone today. Creating a Google+ Page only takes a few minutes. To get started, you’ll need a personal Google+ profile. If you don’t have a Google account, it’s very quick and easy to join. And if you’re looking for inspiration, check out some of the sites that are already starting to set up their Page

To learn more about how Google+ works for your site, check out the Google+ Your Business site. We’re just getting started, and have many more features planned for the coming weeks and months. To keep up to date on the latest news and tips, add the Google+ Your Business page to your circles. If you have ideas on how we can improve Google+ for your site, we’d love to hear them.

Posted by Dennis Troper, Product Management Director, Google+ Pages 

Understanding eCPM and RPM

Recently, we’ve heard some questions about the difference between eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions) and RPM (revenue per thousand impressions), as the older AdSense interface references eCPM and the newer version shows RPM. We’d like to clarify and let you know that the terms are referring to the same thing: both eCPM and RPM represent your estimated earnings for every 1000 impressions. To calculate this figure, divide your estimated earnings by the number of page views, impressions or queries that you received, then multiply by 1000. For example, if you earned an estimated $0.20 from 50 page views, then your page eCPM or RPM would equal ($0.20 / 50) * 1000 or $4.00.

Formula:
eCPM or RPM = (Estimated earnings / Number of page views) * 1000

To avoid confusion in the future, we’ll work to use only one term (RPM). RPM is a commonly used metric in advertising programs, and you may find it helpful for comparing revenue across different channels. You can learn a lot more about using RPM in our two part blog series (part 1 and part 2).

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

Edit and schedule saved reports in the new interface

We’re happy to let you know about a recent improvement to the new AdSense interface, developed based on your requests for additional efficiency when managing your account -- you can now edit and schedule saved reports. This feature allows you to set up custom reports that will be automatically emailed to you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

When viewing a report in your account, you can select the ‘Save report’ button above the graph and select your preferences. If you need to edit the report or change the scheduling settings, just click ‘Manage’ next to the Saved reports section in the navigation bar.



If you’ve been using saved reports in the old interface, please know that we’re working on a tool to help you easily import these saved reports into the new interface. We’ll be sure to let you know when it becomes available -- you’re welcome to re-create them in the meantime, but you may wish to wait for this tool.

We hope with the launch of these features, you’ll be able to better customize the way you analyze and receive information about your ad performance. Let us know what you think!

Posted by Simon Bowden and Louis Collard - 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

Meeting and collaborating with our Help Forum Top Contributors

A couple weeks ago, 32 AdSense Help Forum Top Contributors (TCs) from around the world came to our Mountain View headquarters for a two-day summit, along with almost 300 other product TCs. If you participate in our Help Forum, you've probably noticed the very visible presence of our TCs, who lead product discussions and help answer questions. During the summit, we spent a bit of time discussing opportunities for further collaboration, the development of the TC program and new ideas for Google Forum Communities.



Here are some fun facts about the AdSense TCs:
There are 82 AdSense TCs worldwide.
TCs posted over 100K times in the last 12 months.
8 of the TCs have posted more than 10K times in the Forum since they joined. We’d like to give a special mention to PeggyK of our English Help Forum, as she’s contributed an amazing 47,972 posts to date!
Thanks to all of the TCs who were able to join us -- we truly enjoyed meeting everyone face-to-face. We appreciate all of the contributions our TCs make to the AdSense community, and look forward to continued collaboration with them going forward.

Posted by Kateryna Malinovska, AdSense Team

Gold Star Partner Showcase

Over the past month, we highlighted homebuyinginstitute.com and govisitcostarica.com as the first two AdSense publishers in the Gold Star Partnership Showcase.  To recap, the showcase is an opportunity for us to publicly recognize some of our AdSense partners.

We asked publishers to submit their sites for consideration if they clearly demonstrate the following:
Exhibit original, engaging and useful content for users
Adhere to AdSense policies
Test and try new ways to optimize AdSense ad placements
Today we'd like to highlight Max Levitte, founder of cheapism.com:
Posted by Courtney Yamada, AdSense Optimization Team