This past November I attended the Content Revenue Strategies (CRS) conference at Ad-Tech: NYC. This event was geared for publishers and advertisers within the internet marketing industry. I was really attracted to this event as publisher for two reasons. One- the prior year at Ad-Tech ‘08 there was no Google Adsense Representative present to talk to publishers. I distinctly remember that they had a huge booth, with only reps for analytics and AdWords…with no AdSense rep to be found. At the time I was really in need of some advice- and I wanted to hear directly from the source. If you have ever tried to get in touch with Google, then you probably know this- but Google is nearly impossible to get a hold of. At CRS, I got to meet directly with a Google Adsense Representative at their optimization lounge. She helped me develop a better A-B testing model, and gave me some great insight into how I can easily analyze reports. In addition to this, she also white listed my account for Google AdSense’s new beta interface. Secondly- I was also attracted to CRS because of the amazing seminar schedule & format. The topics ranged from an open AdSense publisher forum, to tips/tricks to improve your eCPM. These seminars were helpful because they provided clear advice on how we can earn more as publishers.
In this blog post I will be exploring some of these new additions to the Google Adsense interface, and will also provide you with insight on how you can earn more revenue as an internet publisher.
New Additions to Adsense:
Analytics-like timeline
Google Adsense beta interface overview
As we can see by this screenshot, the interface is starting to look like Google Analytics. The most significant upgrade to the new Adsense interface is the timeline. I don’t know if anyone did this…but in the old Adsense- if we were to view a timeline like this, we would need to export > download as .crs > open excel > insert chart > select the cells > edit the grpah…and voila! Now with the new interface it’s much easier to make decisions because you can visualize your earnings over a period of time. In addition to this, you can also quickly (and I mean quickly) analyze the performance of your channels…
Click on performance reports…
Google Adsense new beta interface
Within performance reports, we can run a “quick report” from the beginning of the month aggregate- to the beginning of the month by channels. If we break it out by channel we get to view on the default metric, estimated earnings. What’s really a nice feature is that you can compare on all sorts of metrics, such as CTR, eCPM, and Impressions. We can use this informaiton to help guide decisions on our advertising structure. For example, if a 300 x 250 channel isn’t working on the bottom right hand column of my index page…I could see the click thru difference from this zone compared to my primary 300 x 250, which would prompt testing another ad unit size on the page. Before I go too far with that…let’s move on…
Now that you’ve seen what the new Adsense looks like, I’ll share some advice on improving your Adsense revenue.
One Major Concept
The click-thru-rate does affect the eCPM value for your campaigns, but isn’t the only variable that will impact your eCPM. Take a further look at how you can analyze revenue fluctuations @ the AdSense blog.
What does this mean? Improve your CTR by placing ad units near where people are looking. Common ad units such as the 300×250 and 728×90 will have more campaigns in the “pool of advertisers”, therefore the cost of your inventory will go up- as more advertisers are trying to fill that space. It’s wise to include these ad units, but it’s also important not to overexpose AdSense. If you have more than 3 units per page, you are effectively diluting your CTR and eCPM. More is less; find the right balance on your page. Just as Google reiterated several times throughout CRS, Test your ad inventory, and when you’re done- test some more.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to reading your comments
- Kyle
