How to show AdSense ads that are non-standard sizes

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 the number of ads shown."

My guess is that this means that initially they will just fit a standard text-unit ad within your custom size, but may manage to figure how how to fit in more content over time, as they observe what display options make most money for you (and thus for them).

What will custom-size display ads look like:

For display ads (ie ones that show pictures which the advertiser has created), AdSense will work out the best size ad to show in the custom space that you select; the only guarantee is that "the selected ad will not be larger than the space requested".

There are some accompanying  rules about maximum and minimum AdSense ad-unit sizes, and any custom ad size that doesn't satisfy these restrictions simply won't appear on a page.  These rules may change (so do go and check the official version) - but to start with they say that:

• Only one dimension can be greater than 300 pixels
• The minimum width is 120 pixels
• The minimum height is 50 pixels
• Neither height nor width can exceed 1200 pixels.

One more point:   a while after the 300x600 ad-unit was introduced, they also added a rule saying there could be no more than one of these units per page.   With custom ads, they simply say:

As always, please use your best judgement when using custom-sized ad units; ad units similar in size to the 300x600 ad format will be subject to similar placement restrictions.

How to create a custom-sized AdSense advert for Blogger

1. Log into www.adsense.google.com using your AdSense account.
2. Start to create an ad unit in the usual way,
3. Select "Custom ad size" from the Ad size drop-down and enter the width and height that you want for for your ad unit.
4. Copy and paste the ad code into the HTML source code provided by AdSense, and add it to your blog in the usual way.

Note: you will only be able to do this if you have gone through the full AdSense sign-up process. If you do not have a custom-domain and signed up for AdSense after the fast-track process for hosted-content was introduced, then your only option is to choose standard ad-sizes from the regular Add-a-gadget > Adsense process.

How to make AdSense ads in your site load faster

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 'Asynchronous (BETA)' from the Code type drop-down menu

• Install the code into your blog in the same was that you install any other 3rd party HTLM .

You may also want to use techniques like centering gadgets on your blog - but remember that the changes which you are allowed to make to AdSense code are very limtied.

Troubleshooting

AdSense are still describing this new code as "beta" - this means they're pretty sure it's ok, but it might still have some glitches.   So if you do use it, check out your blog in a variety of browsers (ie Chrome and Firefox) to make sure that it's working, and keep an eye on your AdSense earnings too - if they drop unexpectedly, you might want to switch back, and check if that was the problem.

They recommend that if you are going to use the asynchronous code, you should change all the ad-units on your site at once. This could take a while if you've installed ads inside your blog psots but may be worth the effort.  That said, personally I'm going to wait until the new code isn't described as "beta" anymore before I put into the posts in one of my blogs.

Does it work?

Just before I published this post, I replaced the AdSense ads on this blog with the new versions of the code.  Do you think that it makes Are-You-Blogger load quicker?

Has it made your own blog load more quickly?

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Related articles:

How to put AdSense ads inside Blogger posts

How to add a gadget to your blog

Installing 3rd party HTML into Blogger

Does search-engine traffic matter for your blog? 5 reasons why not

Tools for measuring how quickly your blogger pages load

How to centre-align gadgets in Blogger

Allowable changes to AdSense ad code

AdSense now allow changes to their advertisement code

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 to "maximize ad and user experience" - and most of their Terms and Conditions about what you're not allowed to do still hold, so it's clearly not carte blanche to make any changes you want.

Provided you have enabled a mobile template then responsive / adaptive website design isn't and issue which Blogger users have to worry much about - although there are some things you can and should do.

A/B testing is certainly relevant- and I'll be looking to see how much support their code offers for this.

Right now, I'm not sure how relevant dynamic custom channels and minification are for Bloggers - will be investigating this over the coming weeks.

See AdSense's help-centre article for details and the specific code snippets related to the these types of changes.

Setting up Google Analytics so it gets AdSense data from more than one blog or website

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 worked well, until mobile templates were introduced. By default, mobile templates don't show HTML-Javascript gadgets. And while this can be changed, it involves editing your template (so brings back the "what if the template is changed" issue) - and it relies on the mobile-visitors using devices that run  Javascript.

So Blogger added a field to the Settings tab where you can enter the Google Analytics profile ID for the blog:   GreenLava over at BloggerSentral wrote an excellent post about using this, including how to
check if your existing template has the code needed to make use of this new field.

But recently I've noticed that while setting up Analytics this way collected data about visitor numbers, it doesn't always get data about AdSense (eg how many ad-impressions, what page do "clicks" come from, what were the keywords, what browser were getting the AdSense clicksetc). In fact, this data has been missing for all but one of my blogs recently.    So I did some investigation and found that this is deliberate - but that you can fix it.

Getting AdSense data from Analytics

If you only have one blog, and you have linked your AdSense and Analytics profiles, and  put AdSense ad units in your blog by getting the ad-code from AdSense and adding it as code, then you should be seeing AdSense data in your Analytics account.

To check, log in to Analytics and check the Reporting > Standard reports > Content panel:   when you expand it there should be a line for AdSense, and when you click that line some data should appear in the middle report panel (assuming your blog has some non-ad-blocked visitors).

But if you have more than one blog or website, then AdSense data is only put into Analytics for the one that is identified as "primary" in your Analytics profile. (For me, this is was the first blog that I added AdSense to.)

To get AdSense data in Analytics for more than one site, you need to get the tracking code-snippet for non-primary website from Analytics and install it in your blog.  See below for exact instructions for this.

I've found that AdSense ad units that were added from Blogger's Add-a-gadget wizard don't report data through Analytics even if the tracking code is installed - and this support article from Google confirms that this is expected behaviour.   I haven't been able to find any way to work around this, as yet.

How to get the AdSense tracking code for non-primary websites and blogs

Log in to Analytics with the Google account that owns your AdSense profile, and in which you have linked AdSense and Analytics.


Click on the Admin tab in the top right hand corner of any page.


In the Accounts section, click on AdSense Linking.


In the Secondary Analytics Properties list, find the name of the site you want the tracking code for (if you have more than one account).  


Click the Code Snippet link to the right of the chosen profile name.


Copy the code that is shown, and install it to your blog.   As menioned above, there are two choices for doing this:

• Edit your template and add it to the header (ie somewhere between <head> and </head>) -  but remember that it will be lost if you change templates again in future.

• Add it using an HTML-Javascript gadget which you put near the top of the page - but note that you won't get AdSense data from mobile visitors.

Repeat this for any other blogs, except your primary one, which you want Analytics to track AdSense data for.

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Related Articles:

Adding a HTML-Javascript gadget to your blog

How to edit your Blogger template

Showing gadgets on mobile templates

AdSense and AdWords - what's the difference

Setting up AdSense for your blog

Newer AdSense ad-unit sizes are now available inside Blogger

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 newer ad-sizes (eg 300x600 wide skyscraper) are now available there.    I have no idea how long they've been there - but I haven't seen it mentioned on any of the other blogs I read, so thought it was worth a mention here.

This doesn't solve all my issues, but did mean that I could use a standard AdSense gadget on a blog where I was particularly keen to have one that filled the whole width of the sidebar.

Like they say in Tesco - every little helps!


Update:   shortly after I wrote this post, AdSense announced a new ad-size (970 x 90 pixels) - and unfortunately it's not included in Blogger's AdSense widget.  

New resources and help-options for Google AdSense publishers

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 an approved AdSense account".

Also, publishers who usually earn $US25 or more a week are now eligible for consultations via email, to help with

• Managing your AdSense account
• Discussing strategies to grow more business.

Account-holders who qualify see an alert about this on the contact options page. Google target a 2-day response time, although they note it may be slower during peak times.

It's not clear whether publishers who were signed up quickly via a publishing partner (like Blogger) will qualify or not.  I cannot test this, because I signed up using the older full-sign-up process - but I'd suspect that they won't.