Thepipbuzz

This article describes Page-level ads, a new type of AdSense advertisement which Google has recently introduced.   It includes how to set up these ads if you use Blogger, and some troubleshooting information about them.   It also describes how to fix an error in the code which is supplied, which causes a message like "Attribute name "async" associated with an element type "script" must be followed by the ' = ' character". What are Page Level AdSense ads Google has recently introduced a new type of Adsense ad-units , which may be shown to people who visit a website using a mobile device (eg smartphone of tablet), There are two types of Page-level ads: Vignette ads:   When a visitor on your site clicks on a link to another page on you site, a vignette ad may be loaded as a full-page overlay which the user needs to close before they see the page which they navigated to. Overlay ads:   these are smaller ads which show at the top or bottom of your sc...

This article describes a way to tell Google about problems with activity on your AdSense account. I noticed a link to an Invalid Clicks Contact form in a recent blog-post from Google. You can find the form here . Basically, this is a way to tell Google if you think that something has gone wrong with your AdSense account, for example if you are being click-bombed or similarly targeted by malicious people or activity. This caught my attention because exactly that happened recently here on Blogger-hints-and-tops: from reading the AdSense help forums, it seems that bots (or something) were attacking Link Units, and suddenly lots of people were getting huge increases in both click-through rates and revenue-per-click. At the time, I followed the advice given there: Remove the Link Units,  Remove the site from the approved list   Post a "me too" message on the support forum thread,  Wait for Google to act against the bad guys.  But it still felt wrong not to take a more ...

If you use AdSense to make money on your blog, and have a mobile template enabled (which should, unless the blog is about something that makes no sense on a mobile device),  then it's an extremely good idea to have at least one AdSense ad-unit that was made with Blogger's official AdSense widget rather than by getting the code from AdSense and installing it manually. This is because the a majority of gadgets don't show up on the screen when a visitor using a mobile device (cellphone or tablet) looks at a blog which has a mobile template set up for it - and by default this includes AdSense gadgets.   When a mobile visitor looks at a blog, Blogger does check to see if AdSense is used on it, and if so it shows one or two ad-units to them.  But unfortunately these checks only detect AdSense gadgets, not AdSense code in HTML/Javascript gadgets or added directly to the template.   So the net effect is that unless you have one of the official AdSense gadgets, mobile visit...

This article introduces AdSense Direct, a new way to use AdSense to manage advertising that you directly sell ads on your blog or website - and to fill those spaces with AdSense ads when there are no Direct ads running. AdSense have announced a new feature called AdSense Direct, which will let AdSense publishers (ie people showing ads on their blogs or websites) manage directly-sold ads using their AdSense account. "Management" means that after an advertisement and campaign details are set up and approved, the ads will show on your site without any changes to your site (apart from having AdSense ads in on it), and having all contracts, invoicing and payments handled through your AdSense account. How to use AdSense Direct Arrange a direct deal with an advertiser -- this can be any advertiser, even one that doesn't currently use AdWords. Enter the details into your AdSense account; more details about this here . You will be given a link which you email (etc) to the adverti...

This QuickTip is about AdSense's new custom-size-advertisement option, which lets you choose the height and width of each advertisement that you show on your site. Today, AdSense announced that we can now make ad-units in any size that we want - within certain restrictions.   They don't use the phase in the text of their announcement, but the post-URL for their says that this feature is  " the-next-evolution-of-responsive-ads " - so I guess it can be seen as part of the efforts to cater to mobile-readers and mobile site-publishers, even though these ads themselves don't adapt to according to the size of your visitor's screen. What will custom-size text ads look like: For text ads, AdSesne, will work out the best number of text ads to show in each ad-block, and the individual ads will be shown the same way they that the look inside the standard ad-sizes. Note that they say "For unique ad unit sizes, our system will need some time before it can optimize th...

This article is about a new, faster, type of AdSense code which is available, and how you can add it to your blog. AdSense have announced that they are now providing a new, faster, type of code for their ads. This code is "asynchronous", which means that other content on the page will still keep on loading, even if the advertisement is delayed. This a good thing, because it lets your blog's visitors see your posts more quickly.  Also, if SEO matters for your blog , then having it load as quickly as possible is important, because Google likes pages that load quickly. How to put asynchronous Adsense ads into your blog Blogger have not commented, but I am 99.99999% certain that the new asynchronous ad-code has not be implemented into the AdSense gadgets that are available from Blogger's Add-a-gadget tool . So to put it into your blog, you need to: Follow the standard instructions for getting AdSense code for a website. When you reach the Ad code box, choose 'Async...

This QuickTip is about a change to AdSense's policies about modifying their ad code: in short, you are now allowed to change the code in certain way, to achieve certain things. AdSense have announced changes to their "Modifying ad code" policy. In the past, publishers weren't allowed to change AdSense ads in any way other than what could be done through the AdSense ad-code generator or Blogger's Add-a-gadget / Adsense tools. Now, however, some changes are allowed, so you can do things like: Responsive design : creating a single webpage that adapts to the device on it�s being viewed on (eg laptop, smartphone or tablet). A/B testing : creating multiple versions of a page and comparing how they are used to see which page is the most effective. Setting custom channels dynamically: Ad tag minification : Enabling your site pages to load faster by reducing the amount of data to be transferred. In several places, AdSense say that the goals of these changes should be ...

This article is about setting up Google Analytics on your blog in a way that includes data for AdSense clicks and behaviour. Google Analytics and Blogger. Analytics is Google's tool for measuring website performance:    how many visitors, how long do they stay for, what pages do they look at - and if you use AdSense, where are your earnings coming from. It's a major step up from Blogger's Statistics displays, and has far more details eg where the visitors came from, what browser they are using. When people first started using Analytics with Blogger, they followed the standard Analytics instructions to edit their template and add the tracking code to it. However if they switched to use a different template , the tracking code was lost unless they remembered to re-install it - and many people didn't remember. So some Google engineers started telling people to put the code into an HTML/Javascript widget instead, because widgets are kept through template changes. ...

This QuickTip shares a feature that I just noticed inside Blogger's Add-a-gadget > Adsense option. Previously I've mentioned that rather than using the AdSense gadget offered by Blogger's Add-a-Gadget wizard, I usually get ad-code from AdSense and put this code into my blog as an HTML widget. This gives: Access to a wider range of ad-unit sizes,  Better control over the gadget alignment ,  Ability to re-use  AdSense's colour palettes that I've saved before Access to an "image ads only" option that Blogger doesn't have. The downside that if I have enabled a mobile template for the blog, then visitors who look at it using a mobile device don't see any ads.   I did find work-around for this, but it had a nasty side effect if I wanted to add another gadget to the template - and that's a story for a different post. Tonight I happened to look at the options in the Add-a-gadget > AdSense  option again, and was delighted to notice that the new...

This Quick-tip is about some new help resources and options that Google has recently introduced for AdSense publishers - including ones who use AdSense through Blogger. If you put AdSense ads into your blog or website , you are known as a "publisher", because you "publish" materials where advertisements, placed by people known as advertisers, can be placed. Recently Google announced  a simplified, personalized contact options page for AdSense publishers , backed by an an email-based "help" service. This is a single source for many commonly used AdSense troubleshooting tools and articles, which often help you to resolve problems very quickly. Some troubleshooters lead to " issue-specific contact forms that generate emails to our team ". These are backed by automated tools, that help to fix problems very quickly. Google say that " The new contact options page, troubleshooters, and specialized contact forms are available to all publishers with...

This Quick Tip describes a new rule that AdSense is introducing to their terms and conditions, about how often the new 300x600 ad unit can be used on a single page. Recently AdSense introduced two new sizes of ad-unit, the 300x600 Large Skyscraper and the 300x50 mobile-banner . These aren't available from the AdSense add-a-gadget or ads-between-posts options in Blogger - but once you've been fully approved for AdSense , it's easy enough to add them to your blog by getting the code from AdSense, and installing it to Blogger the same way you install any other 3rd party code . Personally, I like the 300x600 - it looks much more natural in several of my blogs, because it's more like the other things in the sidebar. Many of the ads it is showing at the moment are text-ads, because advertisers are still developing image-ads in the new size.  But even the text ads look better, especially in sites where I am trying to blend ads with other content. (Believe it or not, I hav...

This quick tip is about a new feature that AdSense have just announced, which lets you control the types of ads that are banned - by website, instead of just for your entire AdSense account. For a long time, I've recommended that Blogger-users who use AdSense should: Protect their account from malicious use , and  Stop sexual-content ads from showing to be sure that they meet Blogger's Terms and Conditions. The second of these steps is basically about telling AdSense not to show certain categories of ads on your blog. One of the bug-bears with this is that, until now, it's been all-or-nothing:  you could ban ad-categories from either all your sites or none of them.     For example, one of my sites is likely to be visited by people who are unhappy with the idea of dating agencies using suggestive photos of young women in the ads.   Until now, I've had to ban this category from all my sites, to be certain that they weren't show on the sensitiv...