Looking to earn revenue from your content? Google’s AdSense program provides site owners a way to display Google AdWords ads and earn a percentage of revenue. For AdWords advertisers, AdSense is the basis for Display Network ads. In other words, Display Network ads are placed on sites that have signed up for AdSense.
Ads can be customized to match a website’s look and feel while ads are matched to web properties based on relevancy. This combination of consistent look and feel and highly relevant ads enhances the overall user experience.
Let’s jump in and learn the benefits of AdSense and how to implement so you can start earning additional income from your web content. Or, if you are an AdWords advertiser, how the overall process works.
AdSense Benefits
AdSense can be used to generate revenue in a variety of ways. The program is broken into 5 products. They are:
- Content
- Search
- Video
- Mobile
- Games
Now we’re going to break down each AdSense product’s key benefit and how they work.
Content
Key Benefit: Millions of advertisers in the AdSense network means millions of opportunities to show highly relevant ads on your web properties.
How Does it Work? Google’s targeting system matches AdSense ads based on relevancy. AdSense users have the ability to customize ads look and feel along with blocking ads you don’t want appearing on your site.
Search
Key Benefit: Make your site’s content searchable along with the ability to customize the look and feel of those results.
How Does it Work? The AdSense search product is broken into two sub products. They are Google Custom Search and AdSense Custom Search Ads.
Google Custom Search is ideal for adding search functionality and making money from those searches by displaying ads alongside those search results. When users click on ads, the site owner earns revenue.
AdSense Custom Search Ads is very similar to the Google Custom Search Product. However, with AdSense Custom Search Ads, the ads displayed are in direct relation to users queries, making the ads even more relevant, which increases the chances they will be clicked.
Video
Key Benefit: AdSense for Video provides the ability to earn revenue from a site’s video content.
How Does it Work? Google employs a special technology called Interactive Media Ads. This technology essentially makes a call directly from your Flash video player to the AdSense network and says ‘show me ads’. Once this call is made, AdSense renders the ads.
Sites owners cannot participate in this program if their video content is hosted on YouTube. YouTube has its own monetization program called ‘YouTube Partner Program’. Refer to this program if interested in monetizing your YouTube assets.
Mobile
Key Benefit: AdSense also allows content owners to monetize web properties. Mobile specific ads can be included on a mobile site and those ads can be customized to that site’s look and feel. An additional benefit of Mobile AdSense is the ability to earn revenue through both the CPC and CPM model.
How Does it Work? Mobile AdSense works the same way as it does for desktop sites. In order to use Mobile AdSense, you will need to have a mobile site.
Games
Key Benefit: AdSense is uniquely designed to deliver ads that help earn revenue from gaming sites. You have control of deciding where ads appear, whether it be before a game starts, in the middle during level changes, or when the game is over. This flexibility provides the ability to monetize multiple ways throughout the gaming experience.
Advertising on game sites also provides access to some of the worlds top brands. Google states that advertisers such as McDonalds, Wrigley, and Esurance run campaigns that are part of the AdSense network. Having ads for these brands appearing on your web properties surely adds loads of credibility to them.
How Does it Work? So long as the games are compliant with Google policies, there should be no barriers to game advertising through AdSense. Google states the technical requirements are to use a flash based game launcher that’s integratable with Google IMA3 SDK.
Implementing AdSense
Now that we’ve discussed key benefits of the various AdSense products and how they work, let’s talk about how we implement AdSense within your web properties.
Implementing AdSense is fairly simple. First step is to sign up for an account. The examples below outline this process.
Once your AdSense account is set up, the next step is to generate the code. AdSense code is generated by clicking on the ‘my ads’s tab and then clicking ‘get code’.
After the code has been generated, it will have to be pasted it into pages you want the ads to appear on, so long as the pages meet Google’s terms and conditions. Google provides an implementation guide for pasting AdSense code into the HTML source code of your site. These instructions cannot be precise as every website functions differently. For more information on code implementation, click here.
Conclusion
AdSense offers a unique opportunity to take web properties and turn them into revenue making machines. The ability to control look and feel of ads and where they appear on your site can make the difference between a successful or unsuccessful AdSense venture. With just a few short lines of code, you can be up and running in a short period of time, so get started today!
