Showing posts with label zzz - check update for new AdSense interface. Show all posts

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Showing image-only AdSense ads in your blog

This article is about how to show image-only AdSense ads in your blog.

Blogger and AdSense

It's easy to Set up AdSense on your Blog: Just go to Monetize > AdSense - and then follow the prompts to apply for an account.

Once you've been approved, it's easy to put AdSense ads into your blog:

Design > Page Elements > Add a Gadget > Adsense - for ads in your sidebar, header, footer etc
Design > Page Elements > Blog Posts (edit) - for ads in between posts

But the advertisement format options that Blogger provides for are limited: you can only choose either text-only or image-and-text ads. There is (currently) no option for image-only ads.

To guarantee that your blog displays image ads only, you need to get the ad-code from AdSense, and put it into an HTML-Javascript gadget or inside a Post (or Page)

How to display image only ads:

1 Log into AdSense with the Google-account that you use to manage your ads. (There may be some cases where this is not the same Google account that you use to manage the blog where the ad is displayed)

2 Go into the AdSense Setup > Get Ads tab.

3 Choose AdSense for Content

4 Configure your ad:

Work through the items in the wizard to (I like to choose single-page, so everything is visible at once). If you've chosen the Ad Unit radio button, then beside it there is a drop-down that lets you choose:

Text-and-image,
Text-only,
Image-only.

5 At then end of the wizard, you are shown some HTML code. Copy and paste that code.

6 Go to Blogger (with the account you use for the blog).

7 Place the ad:

If it's going in a gadget, Choose Design > Page Layout > Add a Gadget > HTML-Javascript and paste the copied code into the Contents field. Save the new gadget, and drag-and-drop it to wherever you want

If it's going in a post, see putting AdSense ads inside Blogger posts

To request image-only for the ads that are shown at the bottom of individual posts (via Design > Page Layout > Blog Posts/edit), you would need to edit the design-template. Instructions for this will vary depending on what template you have, and are beyond the scope of this article. But you can put a gadget at the bottom of all the blog-posts that are shown on a screen - just make the gadget the usual way, and drag it to underneath the Blog Posts gadget

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Jump Breaks are Useful even if you only show one Post per Screen

This article explains why it is useful to put jump-breaks into your post, even if normally you only show one Post on each "page" (ie screen).

Overview

Jump breaks are a feature that lets you show only the top portion of a post to start with: if the reader wants to see the rest of the contents, they need to click on a "show me more" link, which expands to show the whole post.

Google have described adding "After the jump" breaks to posts, and the various factors involved in using them.

I'd never bothered with them, because on almost all of my blogs, I only show one Post per Screen.

However I recently realised that it is worthwhile putting them in anyway: if only one Post is showing, they won't have any affect. But there are some screens where they are helpful.

Not all Screens are Like the Main Screen

(NB Until Google introduced Pages, I would have said Posts and Pages: now, I say Posts and Screens: a Post is one item that you publish, a Screen is a collection of them. Most of the Google Help documentation still talk about Pages in this way - but it's confusing, because of the static-pages feature getting the same name.)

The main screen is that one that is opened when a reader goes to your blog for the first time, or when they select an article (eg from the archive gadget) and go to it.

However there are various other types of screen too. For example:

The Labels gadget displays all (or a group of) the labels that you have given to posts.

When a reader clicks on a label in this gadget, the Screen displays a list of Posts that have this label.

The Archive gadget displays the dates that posts have been made on.

When a reader clicks on a time-period (eg month, week) in this gadget, the Screen displays a list of Posts that were posted in this time.

In these Screens, more than one Post is displayed (no matter what setting you have for Posts per Page). And if your Posts have jump-breaks near the top, then this list looks a lot more like a list, so is a lot easier for your readers to use. (You can see an example of this by clicking here - this will show you a list of all the posts in this blog about Facebook, for example)

Using a Post Template

I now have a template for new posts, because this makes it so much easier to structure articles in the same way, which makes them better for readers.

The Jump-break, which shows in Compose mode, makes a useful distinction between the article summary at the top (more about why this is useful later - that article's not finished yet!) and everything else after the break.

AdSense

If you are an AdSense publisher, then Google have said that there are some AdSense ads which are cost-per-view, not cost-per-click, but that advertisers are only interested in having them showing when a reader first looks at the page. Google have a way of calculating whether a specific advertisement is "above the break" or not. We don't know what the rule for this is, but my guess is that this may include asking whether the ad is above or below a jump-break.

Monday, March 15, 2010

AdSense and AdWords - what's the difference?

This article explains the difference between AdSense and AdWords, from a Blogger's perspective.

What are they?

AdSense lets you publish other people's advertisements on your blog:

You create the posts (or pages) that ads go on or with, choose where ads should go on your blog, and say what colour scheme to use.
Google deals with the advertiser for you, chooses what ads to put in you blog, and pays you if your ads are "successful" (more about that below).

AdWords lets you advertise your blog (or other website) in search results and/or on other people's websites or blogs

You set up the Ad, and say how much you're willing to pay each day and per click.
Google negotiates ad placements for you (you're competing with other people who want to advertise in AdSense, and also with advertisers in their other advertising networks), and charges you if readers interact with your ad.

Costs and Benefits:

AdSense is free for publishers (you are a publisher if you put AdSense ads on your blog) - and you get paid if your readers view or act on certain that are shown on your blog.

AdWords is not free for advertisers, but many people think that it is cost-effective. There is a sign-up fee (varies from country to country - for me in Europe recently, it was E10), and you also pay each time that a reader clicks one of your advertisements, or (in some cases) each time your advertisement is displayed. You have a high level of control over how much you bid to have your advertisement shown (minimum of 1c per click) and can set a maximum budget per day (eg $1.00).

AdWords is the tool that may generate traffic for you.

AdSense is the tool that may generate revenue for you.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

AdSense Layouts: using tables, not too many Divs

This article has details about laying out AdSense ads side-by-side with the text in your Blogger postings.

Previously I've explained how to put an AdSense ad-unit "in-line" in your blog post. Using this approach, the advertisement is put in a block of its own, and your content starts again underneath it.

However you can use DIV statements to allow your text to flow around the ad. I've described how do use this approach for putting text and pictures side by side in your blog, and it could easily be used for ad-unit code instead.

That said, in Jan 2010, AdSense's blog gave advice to:

"avoid embedding the ad code in excessive div tags or nested frames".

They didn't say what counts as excessive - but just in case, it may be a good idea to use a separate div for the ad rather than embedding <div> statements.

If you do want to put an ad and your content side-by-side, it may be better to use a table to lay them out. To achieve this, you need to edit the HTML behind the post. To get to this click on the HTML button in the top right of the editor (post Sept-2011 Blogger) or the Edit HTML tab in the top right of the editor (pre-Sept 2011 Blogger).

Use a piece of HTML code like this:

<br />
<table border="0" style="width: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>PUT THE POST TEXT IN HERE </td>
<td>PUT THE AD-TEXT IN HERE </td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>

AdSense Troubleshooting: Extra line breaks

This article is about fixing problems with AdSense advertisements that are caused by having extra line-breaks in the ad-code.

Putting AdSense ads into your posts - what can go wrong

Previously I've explained how to set up AdSense for your blog, and how to put AdSense advertisements
right inside a post rather than in the header, footer or sidebar.

However AdSense ad code won't work if it has any extra line breaks added to it. This is why, to put it you need to paste the code into the editor in Edit HTML mode, not Compose mode. And to be certain, I also recommend that you make sure the "use <br /> tags" option (previously called "Ignore new lines") is chosen as well.

If you don't do this, ie if you put the code into the Post Editor while you are in Compose mode, Blogger seems to insert extra <br /> tags (ie new lines) in places. And this causes the ad to not be displayed.

Fixing the problem

If you encounter this problem while putting ad-code into a post in this way, it's best to go in to Edit HTML mode and:

remove the whole piece of Ad code
in a separate window, log into AdSense (www.google.com/adsense), choose the Ad you want from from Adsense Setup / Manage Ads
copy the ad code
swtich back to your blogger window and paste the ad-unit in again

Removing the line-break characters by hand is tedious to do, and I've found it's very hard to get right.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Targeting AdSense ads to a subset of page content

There are some websites where contextual targetting is not a good idea, because they attract the wrong sort of advertisements. For AdSense, one work-around is to target your ad-content to a certain sub-section of the overall post..

Contextal Advertising

Google's AdSense is perhaps one of the best known contextual advertising programmes.

It works by looking at the page that and advert is to be shown on, and choosing a suitable ad for that page based on the key words shown on the page.

In many cases, this works well: a page about losing weight will have lots of words that attract ads from a weight loss company, for example.

But there are cases when it doesn't work so well: a blog exposing the "myths" of conventional medicine, and suggesting natural remedies for many problems may well target advertisements from mainstream practitioners and companies.

To avoid this, use section targetting.

Section targeing tells Google what sections to take more (and less) notice of when matching ads to page content.

It can be particularly useful to get some parts of sites ignored. For example, if you have a paragraph like

"my site shows blah, blah, blah, excluding foo1, foo2 and foo3"

and foo1, foo2 and foo3 are things that there are a lot of irrelevant ads for, then using targeting to say "ignore the bit starting with excluding" might be a good idea.

For instructions how to do section targeting that works with AdSense, see: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23168

What your readers see

Ideally, the only difference that your readers will see is more relevant advertising.

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