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!

Bringing the benefits of TrueView to our video publishers

It’s no secret that I watch a lot of video ads. It’s one of the perks (or pains!) of working in the video advertising business. And yet, I was surprised to see that my younger cousins were gathered around a laptop showing each other their favorite ads over the weekend. Maybe it runs in the family. More likely, people just love watching great content and engaging ads. Every statistic we’ve seen shows that sharing and watching online videos has become a part of everyday life, and that the gap between video ad spend and audience attention is slowly narrowing. At Google, we’re always trying to improve the experience of watching video ads. With that in mind, we’re rolling out a new ad format called TrueView to our network of video publishers.

TrueView ads, pioneered on YouTube, differ from traditional video ads in two main ways. First, they give viewers choice - for example, the ad may be skippable or present a choice of ads to watch. Second, TrueView ads are sold through a Cost Per View (CPV) basis. You may be familiar with Cost Per Click (CPC) where the advertiser pays when someone clicks on their ad; similarly with CPV ads, advertisers are charged when a viewer chooses to watch the ad.

For example, say you're about to watch an interview with the makers of a new movie on The Hollywood Reporter. A TrueView in-stream video ad will start to play and a counter will appear giving you the option, after five seconds, to skip the ad and continue watching the video.

We believe TrueView is a win for users, publishers and advertisers. Users have more control over the ads they see. Advertisers get to combine the engagement of video with the precision of online advertising. And publishers see higher returns, since advertisers value a truly engaged audience.

A small group of our AdSense for video publishers are already using TrueView ads on a portion of their video inventory, and have seen RPMs equal or better than standard pre-roll ads, while dramatically improving the user experience. TrueView video ads also help to decrease audience drop-off rates by 40% on YouTube Partner sites when compared to regular in-stream ads, which means more viewers are continuing to watch videos.

One of our partners The Hollywood Reporter has been experimenting with TrueView ads and has already seen a significant increase in viewer retention. Product Manager Reed Halstrom tells us, “We’ve seen video views increase by 21% and viewed minutes increase by 17% since we started using TrueView ads.”

If you have existing video content on your site and are interested in gaining access to TrueView video ads through AdSense for video, please leave your details by completing our online form. We’re committed to improving the overall online video viewing experience and will continue to work with our publishers and advertisers to make that happen - which should come as no surprise.

Happy Halloween from the AdSense Team

We hope you have a spooktacular day!

Updates on the AdSense mobile interface and low bandwidth version

If you’ve tried out the mobile-optimized AdSense interface that we launched in March, you know that it gives you quick access to important information from your account including earnings, basic reports and some alerts, without the need for Flash. Starting today, you can access this same interface from most desktop browsers as a low bandwidth version -- this is particularly helpful if you’re using a slower internet connection. You can toggle between the the different versions by clicking the links “Classic / Low bandwidth” in the top right corner of the screen. Please note that your preferences are saved for both mobile and desktop versions. For example if you’ve accessed the low bandwidth version from your desktop, we will show you this interface first the next time you log into your account.

When you use the mobile interface or low bandwidth version and navigate to the Home tab, you’ll be able to see your estimated and finalized earnings, quick links to standard and saved reports, and account alerts. In the Reports tab, you’ll find quick reports (aggregated data for 7 days, 30 days, current month, last month) and your saved reports. In addition, you now have more insights on earnings as you can see data on Page Views, Clicks, Page CTR, CPC, Page RPM and Estimated earnings in a table underneath the earnings graph.

Stay tuned for more new features to come in the future. In the meantime, try the enhanced mobile-optimized and low bandwidth AdSense interface. As always, you can find more information in our Help Center.

Grow your audience with Google+

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: 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.

Google+ Pages are at the heart of Google+ for Business

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 Pages:

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.

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).

Ad serving explained

As an AdSense publisher, you know that the ad revenue you’re earning from your site is important to maintaining and growing your online business. In addition to AdSense, are you also using other ad networks on your pages or selling some of your ad space directly to specific advertisers?

If so, you may have found that it can be time-consuming to determine and manage when and where your ads should show, in order for you to earn the most money possible. And if an advertiser has very specific requirements for their campaigns -- such as only appearing during a certain time of day or only to users located in a certain country -- it can be challenging to fulfill these types of requests.

That’s where an ad server like DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business can help. An ad server helps you deliver ads to your pages, allowing you to manage ads from AdSense, multiple ad networks, and directly sold ads. Watch our introductory video below to learn more:



If you’ve started using multiple ad networks or have started receiving requests from advertisers to place their ads on your site directly, DFP Small Business is a great solution. Sign up for a free account, or visit our Help Center to learn more.