Ad blocking part II: Blocking unwanted ads

Happy Friday and welcome to the second installment of the ad blocking series! In our first blog post, we talked about different reasons for blocking ads and common myths about ad blocking. Today we’ll discuss how to block ads you don’t want to allow on your site. Once you’ve identified the ads you don’t want to show, there are a few ways to block them: by advertiser URL, general or sensitive category (limited language availability), ad network, and individual ad creative. Below, we’ll bust more myths commonly believed about blocking unwanted ads.

Myth: The ‘Allow and block ads’ tab of my account is the only place I can block ads.
In addition to blocking ads via the AdSense interface, you can install the Google Publisher Toolbar to block ads while viewing your pages in a Chrome browser. The Publisher Toolbar is a Chrome extension that lets you view up-to-date information about your AdSense account, offers an overview of your earnings and performance, and provides ad overlays with in-page reporting. For more details on this new Chrome extension, visit the Inside AdSense blog post.

Myth: Because the ad is an image or rich media, there’s no way to find the destination URL without clicking the ad and violating AdSense policy.
As a publisher, you have a few options when trying to find out which URL you want to block:

• If you’re using Chrome, install the Publisher Toolbar extension mentioned above, which allows you to block ads as you’re seeing them on your site. 
• In your AdSense account, you can opt into the Ad Review Center where you can see all of the ads shown on your site, including text, image, and rich media ads. 

Myth: I don’t see any ads in the Shown Ads tab of the Ad Review Center, but I see ads on my site. The Ad Review Center doesn’t work! 
The Ad Review Center is a tool that allows you to review individual ads and choose whether or not to let them be displayed on your pages. Ads in the Ad Review Center have shown within the last 30 days. If your site has not shown any ads within the last 30 days, no ads will show in the Ad Review Center. Also, if you have very low traffic on your site, you may not see ads in the Ad Review Center. After you’ve submitted the request to opt in to the Ad Review Center, please allow 24 to 48 hours for ads to begin showing under the Shown Ads tab. Read more information about the new and improved Ad Review Center in our previous Inside AdSense blog post.

We hope that this blog post has busted some of the myths associated with the ad blocking feature. Have more questions? You can submit them by commenting on the post on the Google AdSense +page. We’ll be answering those questions in a Google+ Hangout on Air on Tuesday, August 7th at 10am PDT. We hope you can join us!

Posted by: Wesley Houser, Inside AdSense Team

Ad blocking part I: To block or not to block?

Think of your website as your kingdom. You’re in control of what will be shown. AdSense provides strong controls that enable you to allow and block ads on your website. Ad blocking shouldn’t be thought of as a means of account optimization, but as a way to make sure you’re satisfied with the ads that are shown. Over the next few days, we’ll be busting some of the most common myths associated with ad blocking that we’ve heard from publishers.

Myth: It doesn’t matter how many ads I block, they’ll just be removed from my site.
Ad blocking should be used sparingly. Displaying all ads creates the most competitive atmosphere in the ad auction, with the largest amount of ad inventory possible competing for an impression on your site.

That said, there are some good reasons for blocking ads:

• You’re sensitive to the content of a particular ad (or category of ad) and would prefer it not to show on your site (e.g., politics, sexuality, or religion).
• You want to block ads from a particular company because you already have a direct advertising deal from them.
• You want to block ads from a competitor of your business.

Myth: If I block low paying ads I'll make more money.
Even if a particular ad is only contributing a small portion to your revenue, blocking it will likely cause a lower revenue-generating ad to show. We'll always display the highest-paying ad, so if an ad appeared on your site, it meant that it was the highest-performing ad of all available.

Myth: I blocked some ads for a few days and my earnings went up. This means blocking helped my earnings grow!
Earnings in your AdSense account can constantly fluctuate. Your revenue depends on a number of variables from traffic changes on your site to advertisers changing their bids. Be careful when assuming that correlation indicates causation!

As mentioned in this Help Center article, we target ads based on your content and audience. The ads that you see aren’t necessarily the same ones your users see (e.g., interest-based advertising and geotargeting). Also, ads that may seem off-topic to you as a publisher might actually be the most valuable to the user in that browsing session.

Myth: If I block enough ads, I can essentially pick the ads that will show on my site.
As Hal Varian, the Chief Economist at Google, stated in a previous post, the ads that win in the auction are the ones that are expected to deliver you the most revenue, while ensuring a good user experience. The same ads don’t always appear on your site for a variety of reasons, ranging from changes in advertiser spend to geotargeting of users.

Now that we’ve addressed some common myths, we invite you to join us for a Google+ Hangout On Air focused on ad blocking. It’ll take place on Tuesday, August 7th at 10am PDT, and you’ll have the opportunity to learn more about ad blocking and hear answers to your related questions. To submit a question about ad blocking, simply leave a comment on the post on our AdSense +page. We also encourage you to +1 questions posted by other publishers that you’re interested in hearing the answers to.

Stay tuned for part II of our ad blocking series on Friday!

Posted by: Wesley Houser, Inside AdSense Team

Manage your AdSense account with multiple users

Need to give AdSense account access to a business partner because you manage the account together? Today, we’re happy to let you know that this top-requested feature has been added to the AdSense interface.

From now on, you can invite trusted colleagues or partners to sign in to your AdSense account and also run reports, manage payment information, and generate ad code. In addition, this new user management feature can also be used to change the Google Account login linked to an AdSense account.

We currently support two types of users on an account: Administrator and Standard user. Both types of users have full access to the AdSense interface, but only Administrators can add or remove users. As a publisher with an approved account, your access level for your account has now been set to ‘Administrator’. You can invite other people to access your account, designate them as Administrators or Standard users, and later change these settings if needed.

Please note that when another person is invited to access an AdSense account, they’ll need to use a verified Google Account login that isn’t linked to any other AdSense account or application. In addition, please be aware that Google AdSense is unable to mediate access disputes between users. As a result, we recommend exercising caution when sharing account access.

You can learn more about inviting users and find answers to the most frequently asked questions from existing or invited users in our Help Center.

We hope that this feature will allow you to manage and share your AdSense account in a more efficient way. Feel free to share your feedback and suggestions on our Google+ page.

Posted by Nick Radicevic -- Product Manager

Improvements to AdSense reporting features

We’ve recently made a few improvements related to AdSense reporting to help you find information more quickly and to address some of the most common asks we’ve heard from you. Good things come in threes -- so here are three recent updates to look for in your account:

1. View all-time reports

When selecting a date range for your reports, you’ll now have an ‘All time’ option to view all earnings, impressions, and clicks accrued since your first impression. If you used the previous AdSense interface, you may remember this feature -- it now has a new home in the current AdSense interface as well.

2. Quickly access reports from the My ads tab

We’ve added quick links to your reports under the My ads tab, eliminating the need to search for ad units or channels in your reports. When viewing your ad units, custom channels, or URL channels on the My ads tab, just click ‘View report’ below a specific line item to view performance data for that particular ad unit or channel. This feature is particularly useful if you’re looking for channel data that isn’t linked to ad units in the interface, and will help you save time.

3. Download CSVs in the correct local formatting

Just as the placement of commas and periods can change the meaning of sentences, the same is true when it comes to numbers and figures. As you may know, an amount written as $1,000.00 in the US or UK would be written as $1.000,00 in most of Europe and South America. Previously, only the $1,000.00 format was available for downloadable reports, which created difficulties for a number of international publishers trying to export CSVs to analyze the data. Now, based on your language preference, you can export CSVs with figures in the relevant format.

Have any feedback or suggestions to share? Feel free to leave a comment or post them on our AdSense +Page.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Introducing redesigned Payments pages

To make the payment process easier and more flexible, we’ll soon be introducing some changes to the “Payments” and “Account settings” pages in your AdSense account. At the moment, this new payments interface is available to a small set of AdSense accounts, but we’ll gradually roll it out to more publishers in the upcoming months. When the new Payments page is enabled for your account, it’ll look like this:

Here’s a summary of the changes and added benefits of the new payments interface:

1. Redesigned Payment summary and Payment settings pages
- Payment method is now called Form of payment.
- Unpaid finalized earnings is now called Current balance.
- Redesigned transaction history table shows you the latest activities at the top.
- New toolbar support allows you to filter, print, export, or download transaction information.

2. More flexibility with your payment settings
- New extended timeline allows you to change your payment information until the 20th of any month.
- You can choose any payment threshold greater than the default payment threshold based on your reporting currency.
- You can also hold your payments until a specified date.

3. Improved navigation of the payments interface
- Centralized locations to manage your Payment settings and Payee profile.
- Contextual help is displayed based on the pages you navigate to.

This is just a first step towards providing a better payment experience, and we’ll continue to add improvements over the coming months. For additional details, please sign in to your AdSense account and visit the Payments section in our Help Center.

Posted by Ernest Yip, Product Manager, Payments Team

Bringing you a more powerful Ad review center

Whether it’s via blog comments, forum threads, or in-person events, we’ve heard your feedback about AdSense ad controls and the enhancements you’d like to see. With that in mind, today we’re thrilled to announce that we’re rolling out an entirely new version of the Ad review center. It’ll give you more control over your ads and make it easier than ever to manage the ads showing on your pages.

New controls
The new Ad review center will show you ads of all targeting types (contextual, interest-based, and placement) that have appeared on your pages, and allow you to review them. With placement-targeted ads, you can still review them before they show up on your site. And now, rather than grouping ads together, you can make decisions on individual ads to control what appears on your site at a granular level.

Improved efficiency
We’ve also made the Ad review center easier to use. When you’re reviewing ads, we’ll now first show you the ads that are getting the highest number of impressions on your pages -- or, if you’re holding placement-targeted ads for review, we’ll first show you those that are likely to get the highest number of impressions on your pages. Ads that don’t receive or likely won’t receive any impressions on your sites won’t appear in the tool. As a result, you’ll save time and be able to focus your efforts on reviewing only the ads that your users may see.

In the new Ad review center, you can simply click on an ad to block it. To block multiple ads, highlight and drag the ads to block them all at once. We’ve also provided a magnified view when you hover your mouse over an ad, as well as the option to see an ad in full size, as we know that it can be difficult to see details in ad thumbnails.

Ready to use the new Ad review center?
If you’ve used the Ad review center in the past, the new version will be available in your account in the next few days. If you haven’t yet enabled this feature yet, visit the Allow & block ads tab to get started. Please note that this feature isn’t compatible with Internet Explorer 7 or earlier -- visit our supported browsers page for more information.

For placement-targeted ads, we recommend keeping your review preference set to the default of 'Run ads immediately' and then reviewing them after they’ve started running. This is because ads don't participate in the auction while they’re held for review, which could potentially lower the winning bids and as a result, your overall AdSense earnings.

For more information, visit our Help Center. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you more updates to the Ad review center -- so stay tuned! Feel free to leave us a comment with your thoughts and feedback in the meantime.

Posted by Dan Stokeley - Product Manager

AdSense crawler error redesign

As we explained in a previous post, there are many ways publishers can optimize their site for AdSense. One of the most overlooked is ensuring that our AdSense crawler can accurately crawl your site so that your ads are as relevant and useful as possible.

Today we're making this task easier for you with our latest redesign of the crawler access page which you’ll find on the Account Settings page of your AdSense account.

We redesigned the page with three objectives in mind:

1. Provide accurate and actionable information about your crawler errors.
2. Organize and display the information in a more readable way.
3. Provide clear and concise steps to help you fix the errors.

We’ve accomplished the goals above by:

• Keeping the information that pertains to you and removing everything else.
• Incorporating expandable sections so information isn’t overbearing and indigestible.
• Adding a new column which shows how many failed crawl requests occurred over a period of time.  This gives you an idea of the magnitude of the error.
• Adding a new ‘How to fix’ column specifically designed to help you solve the error.

This AdSense redesign is merely a first step toward empowering you with the most accurate and relevant information. This in turn allows for better decision making which can lead to more effective AdSense optimizations, and as a result, increased revenue.

Posted by Nurzhan Bakibayev - Software Engineer

Specific recommendations for individual ad units

We recently posted about personalized optimization tips you can receive via email or directly in your AdSense account. Today we'd like to introduce another form of optimization tips that we'll be rolling out over the next several weeks. These recommendations will show you how to make changes to your AdSense for Content ad unit type or format setting directly in your account in order to earn more.

To generate these new types of notifications, we use our technology to simulate the ad auction for a specific ad unit using different ad type and/or ad format settings. If our simulation shows that any of these changed settings consistently result in higher revenue for that ad unit, we’ll show a recommendation in your account. Please note that these simulations will not affect your live traffic or earnings, and you’ll only see a recommendation if our simulated auction demonstrated increased revenue for your account.

The recommendations are visible on the “Home” tab of your AdSense account so implementing a recommendation is quick and easy.

For ad type recommendations, simply click the “Do this now” button and your ad unit type will be automatically updated.

For ad format recommendations, clicking the “Create this unit” button will create a new ad unit of the recommended ad format on the “My ads” tab. To complete the implementation, replace the current ad unit code in your webpage(s) with the newly created ad unit code.

With multiple methods of bringing performance suggestions to you, we hope to help you simplify your ad management and maximize your ad revenue. For more information on personalized recommendations, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Gregory Block, AdSense Engineering

Mobile becomes a core component of AdSense

We launched AdSense for mobile content before the smartphone revolution when everyone had a flip phone. Our goal was to help pioneering publishers monetize their mobile content. Since then, we’ve seen mobile technology advance and an increasing number of consumers are viewing content from “smarter” mobile devices. To make it easier for publishers to use AdSense to monetize mobile web pages, we've migrated all mobile ad unit sizes, including the mobile banner ad unit, into the core product.

All mobile ad sizes, including the 320x50, will be available through AdSense for content.

The new AdSense ad code automatically formats the ads for the device. We will continue to support high-end ad requests from our AdSense for mobile content product until May 1, 2012. We strongly encourage publishers who have designed mobile web pages for high-end devices to use the new AdSense ad code to avoid disruptions to service. Note that publishers with mobile websites built for WAP browsers should continue to monetize using AdSense for mobile content.

We continue to be committed to helping our AdSense publishers monetize their content as the mobile ecosystem evolves. For more information about AdSense or to learn more about how this transition may impact you, please visit our AdSense Help Center.

Posted by Vishay Nihalani, Product Manager, Mobile Ads

Taking your channels to a new limit

As you know, channels in your AdSense account are powerful reporting tools. Custom channels help you track ad performance and enable advertisers to target their ads for maximum impact, while URL channels allow you to deep-dive into the performance of AdSense for content on your subdomains.

To date, you’ve been limited to a total of 200 custom and URL channels, and many of you have asked for more. That’s why today, we’re very excited to announce that we’ve raised this limit to 500 custom channels per product, and 500 URL channels for AdSense for content. You’ll see your available custom channels count clearly displayed in the custom channels table, and also highlighted in the “create new custom channel” pop-up.

This change will enable you to expand your testing, and you’ll be able to do more granular analysis of how different formats, ad styles, and ad types perform. In addition, you can use your increased allocation of custom channels to create new ad placements for advertisers to target directly. This can help increase the amount you earn from placement targeting, as advertisers will be able to review the information you’ve provided about your ad units to match their campaigns to your site and audience. As the holidays approach and advertisers look to create additional placement targeted campaigns, now is the perfect time to set up more custom channels and ad placements.

Log in to your AdSense account today and visit your My ads tab to get started.

Posted by Alex Benton -- AdSense Engineering

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.

Posted by William Montgomery -- AdSense Engineering

View your earnings from Google-certified ad networks

Back in August 2009, we started to allow multiple Google-certified ad networks to compete against AdWords ads for the display ad space on your sites. We’re pleased to announce that you now have access to a new report that allows you to to view earnings by ad network.

As a refresher, the Google-certified ad networks feature is powered by DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and allows additional networks to compete in the auction to help you earn the most revenue possible. We’re confident that our vast AdWords inventory can provide the highest paying ad, but on the few occasions when it can’t, this feature simply allows more ads to be eligible to appear on your pages. This increased competition can potentially lead to higher earnings for you in the long run. Note that the auction process doesn’t change with these ad networks – our system will still always show the highest-paying ads, whether they’re from these Google-certified ad networks or the AdWords program.

With today’s new report, you’ll be able to see a breakdown of impressions, clicks, and earnings by Google-certified ad network. To view this report, log in to your account and visit the Performance reports tab. Click ‘Ad networks’ in the side navigation to see which networks served ads on your pages and how they performed. When comparing the performance of different ad networks, bear in mind that some metrics like RPM can be affected by networks targeting certain value impressions. Please note that there is no historical data prior to September 27, 2011.  

Google-certified ad networks bring you all the benefits of working with multiple networks but also with the safety, convenience and controls offered by AdSense. All third party networks are required to adhere to our standards for ad quality, speed and user privacy. In addition, you have the ability to block entire networks and control ad blocking via the Ad review center. Please do keep in mind that blocking specific networks can reduce the number of eligible ads to appear on your pages and may affect your overall earnings. Just like with AdWords ads, the more ads competing to appear on your pages, the more you can potentially earn. 

For more information about Google-certified ad networks, please visit our Help Center. 

Posted by Vincent Zanotti - AdSense Engineering

Introducing ad styles: an enhanced feature replacing color palettes

If you’ve been following our announcements in the last few weeks, you know we’ve been committed to bringing you features that you’ve been missing from the old AdSense interface. We’re now launching another long-requested feature: ad styles. Ad styles extend and enhance all of the functionality of our old color palettes. With ad styles, you can create customized combinations of colors, fonts, and corner styles and then easily apply these to the ad units and search engines across your site.

The best part about ad styles is that when you edit an ad style in the new interface, any ad units or search engines that are using this style will automatically be updated with your changes. So if you want to test a new color for the ad units on your site to see how it performs, you can create a new ad style and apply it to some of your ad units. If it performs well you can then apply it to all of the ad units in your account or revert back to your old colors just as easily. We think this feature will save you time by eliminating the need to re-assign the colors to each ad unit individually.

To create a new ad style, visit the ‘My ads’ tab. Click ‘Ad styles’ in the navigation bar and then the ‘+New’ button. You can then assign existing ad styles to your ad units during the ad unit creation process.

Posted by Jessica Hummel - AdSense Engineering

Two more reporting enhancements to help you deep dive into your AdSense earnings

In the last weeks, we’ve continued to iterate and improve the features in the Performance reports tab to give you as many tools as possible to understand your earnings. We are especially focusing on improvements that allow you to understand the cause of revenue fluctuations and where your earnings are coming from. With these goals in mind, we’re excited to announce two new developments for all publishers:

Event history

You can now see small flags on your reporting graphs, which note actions you’ve taken that might have influenced your earnings. For instance, if you blocked a category of ads from your pages last Tuesday and then created a new leaderboard the next day, you’ll see these two actions marked in your reports as well as details of the actions shown under the graph. Try the feature out by visiting the Performance reports tab, and clicking the ‘Events’ button just below the date range selector.

Tablets earnings included in the Platform report

Back in July we launched the Platforms report so you could analyze your earnings based on the type of device your visitors used to access your site. Now, you’ll be able to view your earnings from users on tablet devices. These earnings were previously included under high-end mobile earnings but given the market trends towards mobile and tablet devices, we wanted to provide you with additional granularity in this report. If you notice a significant amount of your earnings coming from mobile and/or tablet devices, we recommend optimizing your site and ads for mobile users.

Leave us a comment and let us know what you think about these new features!

Posted by Louis Collard - AdSense Engineering

Enhancing the new AdSense interface and retiring the older version

Over the past months, we’ve been working to improve the new AdSense interface and develop features that provide you with additional insights, control, and efficiency. Beyond the visual redesign, some of the new features only available in the new interface include multi-dimension reporting, reporting by country and platform, and search functionality in the Ad review center.

We’ve also heard your feedback on features from the older interface that you wanted to see in the newer version. In response, we’ve recently rolled out top-requested features like the ability to create scheduled reports and view channels on the Home tab.

While we’ve been investing in new features within the new interface, we’ve also been discussing our plans to move away from the older version. With that in mind, we’ll be retiring the old interface in mid-November. We’re continuing to focus on building new functionality into the new interface, and are excited about the additional improvements we plan to deliver.

If you haven’t already, we recommend switching to the new interface as soon as possible to familiarize yourself with the updated layout and new features. To do so, sign in and click the 'Try the new AdSense interface' link in the upper corner of your account. We understand that this adjustment may take some time, so you'll still be able to toggle back and forth between the two interfaces during the coming weeks. To address a common question we’ve heard, switching to the new interface won’t affect your ad targeting or earnings in any way.

In the meantime, we encourage you to watch our video tutorials, which will guide you through completing common tasks in the new interface. You can also find detailed information in our Help Center for the new interface.

Thanks for all the feedback you’ve provided about the new interface -- please do keep the suggestions coming. We appreciate your patience during this transition, and look forward to continuing to improve the new AdSense interface to meet your needs.

Posted by Allan Livingston - AdSense Product Manager

Edit and schedule saved reports in the new interface

We’re happy to let you know about a recent improvement to the new AdSense interface, developed based on your requests for additional efficiency when managing your account -- you can now edit and schedule saved reports. This feature allows you to set up custom reports that will be automatically emailed to you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

When viewing a report in your account, you can select the ‘Save report’ button above the graph and select your preferences. If you need to edit the report or change the scheduling settings, just click ‘Manage’ next to the Saved reports section in the navigation bar.

If you’ve been using saved reports in the old interface, please know that we’re working on a tool to help you easily import these saved reports into the new interface. We’ll be sure to let you know when it becomes available -- you’re welcome to re-create them in the meantime, but you may wish to wait for this tool.

We hope with the launch of these features, you’ll be able to better customize the way you analyze and receive information about your ad performance. Let us know what you think!

Posted by Simon Bowden and Louis Collard - AdSense Engineering

New home for URL channels under the My ads tab

If you’ve logged in today, you may have noticed that you can now create and manage your URL channels under the My ads tab. Since you already manage your custom channels from the My ads tab, we hope this move will provide a more consistent experience when managing all of your channels. At the same time, you can continue to view the performance of your various channels under the Performance reports tab.

As a reminder, URL channels allow you to track earnings for your domains, subdomains or pages. With this change it’s possible to create URL channels for AdSense for content, games, video, mobile AdSense for content, and AdSense for hosted content in the new interface. You can also remove or deactivate channels that you’re no longer using. Learn more about URL channels.

Keep in mind that with the recent launch of the Sites report, you can now see your domain and subdomain earnings without the need to set up URL channels. For tracking page level data or any other grouping of pages, however, please feel free to continue creating URL channels.

Posted by Bob Kemp - AdSense Engineering

View your top channels on the new interface homepage

You’ve been asking, and today we’re excited to announce that you can now view your top 10 performing custom and URL channels directly on the homepage of the new AdSense interface. We understand that many of you log in frequently throughout the day to check in on your stats, and this latest change will allow you to get a quick snapshot directly from the new interface. 

When you log in to the new AdSense interface, you’ll see your top channels by estimated earnings along with the percentage change for the selected time period. So if you’ve chosen to view the last 7 days, you’ll see your top performing channels for that time range along with the percentage change they experienced compared to the prior 7 day period. 

Thanks for all of the feedback you provided about bringing this report to the new interface -- you can check out this update by logging in to the new AdSense interface today. As a reminder, we’re gradually moving away from the older version and focusing on building improvements like these in the new interface. We encourage you to continue familiarizing yourself with the new interface, and as always, please feel free to leave us a comment with your thoughts and suggestions.

Posted by Dan Banfield - AdSense Engineering

View domain level performance data easily with the sites report

Are you using URL channels to track the performance of specific domains and subdomains where you’re showing ads? If so, we’re happy let you know that this information will now be tracked automatically in the new interface, within the sites report. (If you participated in the beta test for the new AdSense interface, you may have tried an initial version of the sites report. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve improved the report and are now making it available to all publishers.)

With the new sites report, you’ll no longer need to manually create a new URL channel to track each new domain or subdomain where you’ve placed your ads. This will help ensure that you have more detailed data about your ad performance from the get-go, without any additional effort required on your part.

Also, instead of creating URL channels, you can start using more of the 200 channels available in your account to create custom channels. These allow you to track and group your ad units on an even more granular level. (And don’t forget to turn those custom channels into ad placements, so advertisers can find and target them!)

The sites report tracks performance data for your content, mobile content, feeds and domains data. You’ll also be able to use the multi-dimension reporting feature to analyze your site's performance by ad type, targeting type, platform, and more. Please note that your sites report will only contain historical data beginning in late June 2011. In addition, there are a few limitations to this report for publishers with an extensive number of domains -- more information is available in our Help Center.

To get started with the new sites report, sign in to the new AdSense interface and navigate to the Performance reports tab. Choose Sites in the left navigation.

We hope this new report helps you view your data more quickly and easily -- feel free to share your comments and thoughts below.

Posted by Guillaume Ryder - AdSense Engineering

New insight into how users are accessing your site

Today, we’re excited to offer you a brand new report that shows you the platforms that your visitors are using to access your site. You’ll be able to see a breakdown of your earnings based on where your traffic is coming from, which you can use to then optimize your site and give users a better experience. For instance, if you find that you’re receiving a high percentage of traffic from mobile devices, we’d encourage you to create a mobile version of your website and monetize it with AdSense for mobile content.

With this feature, you’ll be able to see your performance data broken out into these categories:

- Desktop - all traffic coming from desktop users
- High-end mobile devices - includes smartphone devices
- Other mobile devices - includes low end and mid-range phones

Try out this new report by navigating to the new interface and clicking on the Performance reports tab. Choose Platforms in the left navigation.


And as a quick reminder, we’re gradually moving away from the older version as we continue to focus on reporting improvements like these. Do you have feedback about this new report, or are there other reports you’d like to see? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments field below. If you haven’t yet tried the new interface, learn more about getting started today.

Posted by Vincent Zanotti - AdSense Engineering