In this fourth article in this series, I’m going to cover some new features and improvements that are now available to AdSense publishers that weren’t available a few years ago.
Some of these new features could give you enough reason to try AdSense out again on your Blog, so you may want to pay attention.
Ad Review Center – Category Filters
In the past, one of the challenges that Bloggers had as AdSense publishers was that it was difficult to control what type of ads were shown on their site.
This was especially true for Bloggers who like to cover multiple topics on their Blog.
Google AdSense now allows us to instantly see which category of ads is earning us the most money, and which types of categories of ads are being shown the most on our site.
Here’s a screenshot from my account to show you what I mean:
AdSense Categories
As you can see, each type of category that has appeared on my website is shown in this list. The categories vary from Cosmetic Procedures to Weight Loss. For each category I can see what percentage of my recent ad impressions were served to that category.
What’s even more cool though is that I can see what percentage of my recent earnings comes from each category. I’ve only been testing AdSense on my site for the last few weeks so far, so I’m not going to be making any changes yet, but this kind of data is invaluable.
If for example a large chunk of my ad impressions are going to a category that isn’t earning me any kind of money, I can easily filter out that category and AdSense will no longer serve any ads on my site from that category.
This is an awesome way to maximize the value you get out of each ad impression. It is also a great way to improve the quality of your site to your visitors. For example, if your visitors are not clicking on any ads related to politics or dating sites, then just filter those categories out. Instead, focus your ad impressions on the types of ads your visitors are interested in.
I don’t know when Google added this feature into AdSense, but I didn’t see it available until I re-installed AdSense on my Blog a few weeks ago.
To see what kind of categories are performing best for you, and to see where your ad impressions are going, login to your AdSense account and go to “AdSense Setup > Ad Review Center > Category Filters”.
Google Certified Ad Networks
Yet another somewhat hidden feature to AdSense is that Google has now partnered with a whole bunch of ad networks to display ads on your Blog. What this means is that AdWords advertisers now have to compete with other ad networks for your advertising spots.
This is a huge benefit to AdSense publishers, and from what I’ve seen in my account, it’s something that is automatically turned on.
There is a way to filter out ad networks if you wish to do that. You can go in and see a listing of all the ad networks that Google has partnered up with right inside your AdSense account and block any or all of these networks from having access to show ads on your Blog.
Here is a screenshot of what that looks like:
AdSense Ad Networks
Here’s a video that Google released talking about AdSense Ad Networks:
With Google partnering up with all these ad networks, I think it’s going to become more and more profitable to show AdSense ads on your Blog.
Google AdSense and Google Analytics Integration
This is probably my favorite new feature of AdSense. Integrating my AdSense statistics with Google Analytics allows me to see things such as:
Top AdSense content that’s me money
Percentage of AdSense revenues from each piece of content
Top AdSense referrers showing me what are my most profitable AdSense traffic sources
Trends graphs showing me daily revenue trends
etc.
This video does a much better job explaining what you can see in AdSense now:
And here’s a video that Google released on how to link your AdSense and Google Analytics:
New Google AdSense Interface
Google AdSense is now also beta testing a new AdSense interface. If you’ve ever used the old AdSense interface, I’m sure you’ll agree that it was clunky and annoying.
The new interface looks a lot sleeker and seems to be working fine for me even though it’s still in beta testing.
Here’s a screen-shot of the new interface I got from Google’s Blog:
New AdSense Interface
As you can see it’s much sleeker and more useful than the old AdSense interface. Although the integration with Analytics will take care of some of these stats already, having a quick glance overview of your earnings just by logging into your AdSense account is really useful.