Joining AdSense

The first step in becoming an AdSense publisher is applying for and starting
an AdSense account. As with AdWords, opening the account doesn’t obligate
you in any way and doesn’t cost a dime. Nothing about AdSense ever costs
you anything.
The AdSense account never requires your credit card information but you
must at some point supply tax information so that Google can pay you. That
information consists essentially of your tax ID number or Social Security
number. (The latter is the appropriate identifier for sole proprietors and
small-business operators with no employees.) You use the W-9 form to
convey this information to Google. You may fill out and submit that form
online or mail a paper version of the form through an anachronistic institution
known as the “post office.”
AdSense offers three significant features:
 Performance reports. Use your account to check the number of
AdSense ad displays at your pages, the number of clickthroughs, the
clickthrough rate (CTR), and your earnings. This information can be
delineated by date range.
 Payment reports. Use this section to check your history of payments
received. Google pays monthly, whenever $100 or more is due.
 HTML code for ad layouts. This section provides HTML code for all
available ad layouts and color palettes.
If Google doesn’t know you through the AdWords program, you must apply
for an AdSense account. The application process takes only a few minutes,
but the acceptance process and opening the account can take up to three
days. If you’re an AdWords advertiser and use the same password for the
AdWords and AdSense accounts, your AdSense account starts immediately.
To get going, follow these steps:
1. Go to the AdSense home page here:
www.google.com/adsense
2. Click the Click Here to Apply button.
3. Fill in the Email address and Password fields, and then click the
Continue button.
If you have an AdWords account, you may use its e-mail address and password
for your AdSense account. If you don’t have an AdWords account,
you must enter your e-mail address and create a password, though it can
be the same password you use for any other Google account, such as a
Google Answers account. For this series of steps, I assume that you don’t
have an AdWords account.
4. Fill in all the information required on this page and click the Submit
button.
Included here is an opt-out check box for periodic newsletters from
Google. Don’t worry about spam; Google is the least spammy company I
know. Frankly, I wish it would send more e-mail.
210 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
5. Open the e-mail verification from Google and click the supplied link.
This standard e-mail verification procedure lets Google know that you’re
for real.
6. Wait for Google’s acceptance e-mail.
After you receive that, you can log in to AdSense with the password you
chose in Step 3.
If you open your AdSense account as an AdWords user, with the same e-mail
and password combination, Google skips the formal application procedure
through e-mail just described. Instead, Google assumes you’re legit and takes
you directly to your new AdSense account. Along the way, Google lets you fill
out the necessary tax information. Starting your account this way, as an
AdWords user, gets you off to a quicker start. If you have an AdWords account,
I can think of no reason to open an AdSense account as a new user instead.
Even if you own more than one site, and intend to publish AdSense ads on all
your domains, open just one account. If you start a new account for each site,
and if Google connects the dots between them, your accounts might all be
closed. Some AdSense users do have multiple accounts that they procured by
writing Google for special permission. If you want to try acquiring your own
permission after opening one account, use the Contact Us link on your account
pages. The purpose of running multiple accounts is to separate the reporting of
different sites, because AdSense currently lumps everything into one set of
reports. The account doesn’t distinguish Web sites owned by the account
holder, even though the account holder is perfectly free to create and paste
AdSense code into any site he or she owns. Help is on the way. Google recognizes
the demand for site-specific accounting and is working to provide it.
Creating Your AdSense Code
AdSense is a simple, automated program. You need only place a snippet of
code into your page’s HTML, and then let the ads appear. When your page is
visited and loads into the visitor’s browser, the code reaches into Google and
pulls the appropriate ads onto your page. As with other ad servers, your
page content comes from two locations: The editorial content originates from
your server, and the ads come from Google’s server. This mechanism is invisible
to the visitor, and Google ads load extremely fast, thanks to the absence
of graphics.
After joining AdSense, Google provides you with a bit of HTML code. You
choose which pages you want ads to run on, and paste the code on those
pages. For this task you don’t need to know much about HTML, but it helps
to know a little more when you want to manually alter the code (in Googleapproved
ways).
Chapter 12: Starting an AdSense Account and Publishing Ads 211
As I walk you through the creation of AdSense code and describe how to
paste that code into your page, you might get the impression that you may
use only one code sample. Far from it! You may use variously altered versions
of the basic code throughout your site — a different layout and different
colors on each page, if you like.
Choosing an ad layout and color palette
You start creating your ads in the Settings portion of the AdSense account,
as shown in Figure 12-1. Two sections of the Settings tab help create ads that
conform to your site’s design scheme: the Ad Layout Code section and the
Ad Colors section. Actually, both sections deal with ad colors. The Ad Layout
Code section offers preset color palettes; the Ad Colors section lets you modify
those presets and save them. Here, I look at the Ad Layout Code section, but
you can head straight for the Ad Colors page if you want to play with more
advanced color controls.
To get to the Ad Layout Code page, simply log on to your AdSense account
and click the Settings tab. The screen shown in Figure 12-1 appears. Scroll
down to see the page’s interactive controls, shown in Figure 12-2.
Figure 12-1:
Select an
ad configuration
and
choose a
preset color
palette.
212 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
Then follow these steps:
1. In the Select Palettes list, choose a color palette.
Use the scroll bar to see the full selection of palettes. Click once on a
selection to see an ad example on the right. Compare up to four palettes,
as shown in Figure 12-2, by making multiple selections. To make contiguous
selections, hold down the Shift key and click any two selections. To
make noncontiguous selections from the list, click while pressing the
Ctrl key.
2. Choose an ad layout by clicking a radio button next to a banner,
button, tower, or inline rectangle.
Click the View examples link to see what these ad layouts look like. (See
Figure 12-3.) Chapter 13 discusses style and effectiveness considerations
when choosing an ad layout.
3. Scroll down to the Copy-and-Paste box, and select the code.
With the mouse cursor inside the box, press Ctrl+A to select the entire
code snippet. It’s important to clip the whole thing; if you drag with the
mouse, you can accidentally leave out a top or bottom line.
4. Press Ctrl+C to copy the code.
5. Paste the code into your Web page document.
Figure 12-2:
The
interactive
color and
layout
controls.
Chapter 12: Starting an AdSense Account and Publishing Ads 213
You may place the AdSense ad unit wherever you want on the page. Those
accustomed to working with raw HTML should have no problem positioning
the ad unit. Most WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) page-building programs
recognize Google’s code as javascript. Therefore, these programs represent
the Google code on the graphical layout page like any other javascript
element, allowing you to move it around the page until it’s displayed correctly.
Depending on the program, you might need to upload the page and
view it in a browser to see how the ads appear in a live display. Some programs
make live calls to specified servers in their WYSIWYG display mode,
allowing you to display AdSense ads while rearranging their placement,
before uploading the page to the server.
When pasting code in my HTML documents, I find it useful to separate the
code, making future color alterations easier. (Chapter 13 discusses such onthe-
fly alterations.) Such a separation doesn’t affect the page’s performance.
Figure 12-4 shows a page’s source document with Google’s code set apart
from the surrounding code.
AdSense ad units are not HTML tables, though they resemble tables. But as
far as placement on the page is concerned, you can embed ad units into
HTML table cells as if they were child tables. Simply place the AdSense code
in the appropriate or tags. Figure 12-5 illustrates a site that plainly
embeds the ad unit in a table cell.
Figure 12-3:
Google
offers
examples of
all ad
layouts.
214 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
Figure 12-5:
Embedding
an ad unit in
an HTML
table cell.
Figure 12-4:
Make your
AdSense
code easy
to locate by
separating it
from the
surrounding
code.
Chapter 12: Starting an AdSense Account and Publishing Ads 215
Making a custom color palette
Google appreciates that the limited set of preset color palettes (described in
the preceding section) might not float your boat. Each ad unit consists of five
elements whose colors can be changed:
 Border. The thin bar at the bottom of each ad, which continues around
the entire ad unit.
 Background. The shaded area behind the ad’s text.
 Title. The first line of text; the ad’s headline.
 Text. The one or two lines of ad copy in the middle of each ad.
 URL. The visible URL below the ad text, which might and might not be
the destination URL.
The Ad Colors page makes it easy to assign a distinct color value to each of
these five elements, thereby creating your own preset color palette. You can
name and save your custom palettes, after which they appear on both the Ad
Colors page (in a drop-down list of Custom and Built-in palettes) and the Ad
Layout Code page (in the scrolling list of palettes).
The interactive palette tool on the Ad Colors page doesn’t offer all possible
colors, by a long stretch. Specifically, the page provides 222 colors. See
Chapter 13 for ways to expand this palette.
For now, follow these steps to use Google’s colors in making custom palettes
for your ad units:
1. Go to the Ad Colors page of the Settings tab, shown in Figure 12-6.
2. Use the drop-down menu to select a starting color palette.
3. Click the radio button next to any of the five ad unit elements.
4. Click any color in the color chart.
Note that the example ad changes interactively.
5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 for each ad unit element.
6. In the Palette name box, type a name for your new palette.
7. Click the Save button.
Your palette’s name appears in the Custom Palettes box and in the dropdown
list higher on the page. It appears also in the Select Palettes list on
the Ad Layout Code page.
216 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
To get rid of a saved custom palette, click the Delete button below the
Custom Palettes box. The deleted palette disappears from that box, from the
Choose a Palette drop-down menu higher on the page, and from the Select
Palettes list on the Ad Layout Code page.
Inserting your custom palettes into your AdSense code is simple. Here’s how:
1. After saving one or more custom palettes, go to the Ad Layout Code
page on the Settings tab.
2. In the Select Palettes box, choose one of your custom palettes.
3. Using a radio button, select an ad layout.
4. Scroll down to the Copy-and-Paste window, and select the entire code
sample.
5. Copy the code sample and paste it into your HTML page.
Note: The Alternate Ads box and the URL Filter page make their appearance
in Chapter 13. There, I explain how to (in the first case) substitute non-Google
ads for AdSense ads, and (in the second case) block certain AdWords ads
from appearing in your ad units.
Figure 12-6:
Use this
page to
create new
color
palettes for
your ad
units.
Chapter 12: Starting an AdSense Account and Publishing Ads 217
Viewing AdSense Reports
The Reports tab of the AdSense account is where you track earnings and
related statistics. Google summarizes information daily but compiles it continuously
throughout the day. Statistics are reported quickly but not in real
time. As in AdWords, it can take a few hours for clickthroughs to appear in
your report.
The AdSense account provides two ways of viewing your clickthrough data:
 Aggregate data. Clickthrough information is lumped together from all
your pages and sites and presented as an integrated set.
 Channel data. Clickthrough information is separated by pages, sites,
and even specific ad units, as determined by you.
Before Google introduced AdSense channels in March, 2004, AdSense publishers
couldn’t see where their clickthroughs were coming from. If you were a
publisher operating two sites, both filled with ad units and making good revenue
overall, you wouldn’t know whether most clickthroughs came from one
site and the effort of putting AdSense code in the other site was largely wasted.
With channels, you can determine which sites, pages, types of ad unit, or specific
ad units are earning for you.
Viewing aggregate data
The AdSense account defaults to the aggregate view. Even if you leave the
account in channel view, it reverts to aggregate view when you next log in.
Figure 12-7 shows the report screen. Google’s terms of service for AdSense
prohibit disclosing report statistics, so Figure 12-7 extends down just to the
top of the reporting columns, and not to the numbers in those columns.
Google furnishes five columns of information:
 Date. Reporting data is summarized daily.
 Page impressions. The total number of times your ad units have been
displayed to visitors of your site. Each displayed ad unit on any page
counts as a single impression, so do not divide page impressions by the
number of ads in your ad units. (Trying to count impressions of individual
ads would not be feasible because you might be using multiple ad layouts,
each of which contains a different number of ads.) Google doesn’t
separate impressions by site, so the Page impressions column reports
total displays across all your sites and all their pages.
218 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
 Clicks. The daily number of clickthroughs across all your Web sites and
pages running AdSense ads.
 Clickthrough rate. Calculated by dividing daily clicks by daily page
impressions.
 Your earnings. A daily accounting of money credited to your account,
paid monthly when it totals more than $100.
The performance chart can give you some idea of the cost-per-click (CPC)
you’re earning from your ads. Divide the daily earnings summary by the
number of clicks to get an average CPC for that day.
Remember that you’re sharing revenue with Google, but the revenue split is
not disclosed by Google. I’ve never heard anyone complain about the phantom
split amount — which is to say, people grumble that the percentage is
undisclosed but seem satisfied with the amount of money coming in per
click. There can be wide disparity in what clicks are worth to you, especially
if you operate diverse sites or pages that pull diverse ads. For example, a
non-profit site keyed to developmental disabilities is likely to pull ads with
lower clickthrough value than a site about digital music.
Figure 12-7:
Five
information
columns
summarize
daily
impressions,
clicks, and
earnings.
Chapter 12: Starting an AdSense Account and Publishing Ads 219
Totals for impressions, clicks, clickthrough rate (CTR), and earnings are tabulated
at the bottom of the performance chart. New accounts can extrapolate
annual earnings by counting the number of days summarized, dividing that
number into 365, and then multiplying the result by total earnings so far. Using
the date-constraining feature described next, you can also wait for a calendar
month to pass, and then multiply that month’s total earnings by 12. No matter
how you extrapolate, remember that CTR often goes down over time if your
ad placement is left unattended. Chapter 13 describes strategies for keeping
your ad performance fresh over many months of AdSense publishing.
Immediately above the performance table are a series of drop-down menus
that invite you to capture reported statistics by time period. The upper menu
contains six preset date constraints: today, yesterday, last 7 days, this month,
last month, and all time. The default setting, which appears every time you
log into the account, no matter which setting was selected when you logged
out, is “today.” Simply click any item in that menu, and then click the Display
Report button.
To fine-tune a date range, click the lower Date Range radio button and use its
set of drop-down menus to select a reporting period. Then click the Display
Report button. Here, too, Google forgets your setting when you log out. The
next time you view your account, the performance report displays statistics
for the current day.
Viewing channel data
The second way to view the clickthrough data in your AdSense account is as
channel data. AdSense channels are optional; I explain how to set them up in
the next section.
You view channel data on the same account screen as aggregate data, but not
at the same time. You need to make four clicks to switch from aggregate data
to channel data:
1. Click the Channel data radio button (see Figure 12-8).
2. In the list, select which channels to view.
To select multiple channels, hold the Ctrl key while clicking channels.
3. Click the Date, Channel, or Both radio button to select how the display
is sorted.
4. Click the Display Report button.
220 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
The statistical column headings are the same in channel view as in aggregate
view. The Show Data By group of radio buttons makes the following adjustments
to the data display:
 If you select the Date radio button, Google aggregates the information
just as in the aggregate view, but only for the channels you selected in
Step 2.
 The Channel radio button divides the data by channel and displays it
without a breakdown of individual days.
 The Both radio button combines these two features, displaying data for
each channel and for every day of the time period you selected with the
Date Range menus.
Setting Up AdSense Channels
Using channels is a great way (well, the only way) to discover which portions
of your AdSense effort are making money. Before Google introduced channels,
AdSense publishers were collecting revenue with no idea of where,
Figure 12-8:
The
AdSense
performance
screen set
to display
channel
statistics.
Chapter 12: Starting an AdSense Account and Publishing Ads 221
exactly, it came from. The pre-channel version of AdSense wasn’t a bad deal,
by any means, but there was a growing clamor for more precise reporting.
AdSense channels bring the program to an important level of maturity, and I
urge every publisher to use them.
Understanding channels
Google could have simply instituted per-domain reporting, which would have
helped publishers running AdSense on two or more sites. That would have
been an important improvement, but the channels system takes AdSense to
a higher level by being user-configurable. You decide how the channels are
assigned and how your AdSense data is broken down on the report page.
AdSense channels are groupings of pages, sites, or ad units. You may use up
to 20 channels at once, and you decide what goes into a channel.
Google assigns a number to each channel you create. A line of code containing
the channel number is inserted into your AdSense code (by Google or you)
and placed in your HTML (by you). That extra line of code tracks impressions,
clicks, and earnings for that ad unit, and compiles the information as belonging
to that channel. You might have many ad units or just one contributing
information to that channel. The ad units assigned to that channel might exist
on many sites or just one. The configuration of the channels is up to you.
Following are some common channel uses:
 Per-site reporting. Assign every ad unit on each domain to a separate
channel.
 Per-page reporting. If you display one ad unit per page, make each one
report to a different channel. If you run two or more ad units on a page,
make each page’s units report to the same channel. This strategy works
only if you operate 20 or fewer pages on your site. (Of course, if you
have more than 20 pages, you could select just 20 of them.)
 Per-page-cluster reporting. Assign groups of pages to the same channel.
This tactic is useful when multiple pages perform the same function in
your site and are similarly trafficked.
 Per-format reporting. If you use multiple AdSense formats and wonder
whether one style is more effective than another style, put all skyscrapers
in one channel and all horizontal units in another channel. This idea
works best when the varied formats are placed on pages that function
similarly in your site and are fairly equally trafficked.
Although you can’t receive reporting of more than 20 channels, you may
create more channels. You select which to activate and deactivate (I get to
this in just a bit). Deactivated channels continue to hold their accumulated
data; when you activate them, they pick up where they left off.
222 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
You can get around the limitation of only 20 active channels. To do so, create
additional channels and rotate their activation. This way, you can get fully
precise recording of your AdSense performance — just not all at once. Because
high-volume sites don’t require much time to accumulate meaningful data, a
week or so rotation through channel activation could provide a complete picture
of AdSense clickthroughs.
Creating channels
You create AdSense channels in a special section of the AdSense account.
Follow these steps:
1. Click the Settings tab.
2. Click the Channels link.
3. Click the Create new channel radio button, and type the name of your
channel.
See Figure 12-9. Name the channel descriptively, so you can recognize it
on the report page.
Figure 12-9:
Create as
many
channels as
you want.
Up to 20 can
be active at
any time.
Chapter 12: Starting an AdSense Account and Publishing Ads 223
4. Click the Edit/Activate Channel button.
Your channel moves to the Active Channels list. Newly created channels
are active by default but can be immediately deactivated.
5. After creating as many channels as you want for now, click the
Continue to Ad Layout button.
You may return to this page at any time to create channels, deactivate
active channels, and activate inactive channels.
6. On the Ad Layout Code page, make the same format and color selections
you used when setting up your first version of AdSense code.
This can be tricky. In this step and the next, you’re modifying your previous
AdSense code by inserting a line that defines which channel the ad
unit belongs to. You don’t want to change anything else about the display
of your ad unit, so you must make the same selections now as you
did when first creating the code (see the “Creating Your AdSense Code”
section, earlier in this chapter). I describe another way of inserting the
channel information after these steps, and that method is easier for
anyone comfortable with manually changing simple code.
7. Pull down the Channel menu and select one of your channels.
See Figure 12-10. The AdSense code is instantly updated to include the
google_ad_channel line.
8. Copy the entire code snippet and paste it into the page(s) containing
the ad units that you want to be part of this channel.
If you run many ad units, I have a much easier way of altering your many
instances of AdSense code and inserting the channel information. In Figure
12-10, note the code snippet, which is the google_ad_channel line. The
number in that line is a unique identifier that associates the ad unit with a
channel in your account. That single line is the only modification necessary
to the AdSense code. Knowing that fact, it’s a simple matter to insert that
single line in the code of all ad units that you want to belong to that channel.
This is what I do:
1. Create your channels.
2. On the Ad Layout Code page, use the pull-down menu (shown in
Figure 12-10) to select the first channel in the list.
3. Highlight and copy (using Ctrl+C) the google_ad_channel line in the
AdSense code.
Copy only that single line.
224 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
4. Paste the line into a text file using WordPad, Notepad, or any text
processor.
Type the channel name above or below the line of code. You may jot
down the channel name and line of code on a piece of paper if you
prefer. You’re going to repeat this process with each of your channels, so
making a text file is probably the best way to establish this record.
5. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 for each of your channels.
You end up with a list of channel names and their lines of code.
6. Insert the appropriate line of code into each of your AdSense code
snippets.
Place the line in the same location that Google places it on the Ad
Layout Code page: between the google_ad_format line and the
google_ad_border line. That portion of the AdSense code should end
up looking something like this:
google_ad_format = “728x90_as”;
google_ad_channel =”4855956454”;
google_color_border = “B4D0DC”;
Figure 12-10:
When you
select a
channel on
the Ad
Layout Code
page, the
AdSense
code
instantly
updates.
Chapter 12: Starting an AdSense Account and Publishing Ads 225
Following this method saves you the trouble of remembering your AdSense
code values and replicating them on the Ad Layout Code page. Many publishers
run several formats and color schemes; recreating them all on the Ad
Layout Code page would be a nightmare. If you saved custom color palettes
on the Ad Layout Code page, you don’t have a problem, and you might prefer
clipping and pasting the entire snippet of AdSense code. But any publisher
who has created custom palettes by inserting hex color codes in the AdSense
snippet, as I describe in Chapter 13, will prefer the preceding method when
altering code for AdSense channels.
Activating a channel doesn’t flip a switch that affects your reports. You need
to insert the modified code in your AdSense pages. Activation and deactivation
affect which channels compile information and place it on the report
page. But you must complete the arduous chore of inserting the modified
code in all AdSense pages you want to group into channels before your activations
and deactivations have any meaning.
Adding New Pages and Sites
AdSense is limitlessly expandable because you can add AdSense to new pages
and sites anytime. Simply paste your preferred code into any new pages developed
for your site. If you use a consistent template across your site, simply
putting the AdSense code in the template assures that ads will appear on new
live pages. Leave the rest to Google — in time, according to your site’s crawl
schedule, relevant ads will appear on the new pages. If there’s a gap between
the time you launch a page and Google crawling it for content, the AdSense
program places public service ads on the page.
You may submit new pages to Google’s Web index if you like, though it’s probably
unnecessary (see Chapter 2). If your site is in the Web index, Google
usually finds new pages during its deep crawl, which occurs approximately
monthly. The best reason for not submitting new pages is that the AdSense
index is different from the Web index. In both cases, the best bet is to post
the page and wait.
Somewhat surprisingly, considering its stringent approval requirements,
Google allows AdSense publishers to paste code into entirely new sites
located at new domains. No application is necessary. After you’re in, you’re
in, and you have unlimited use of the AdSense code. Keep in mind, however,
that Google does send a human to every new site that makes a call for
AdSense ads to examine it for appropriateness. At that time, or very near that
time, Google crawls the new AdSense site for content.
226 Part III: Creating Site Revenue with AdSense
Removing Ads and Stopping
Your Ad Publishing
Just as adding new pages and sites is hassle-free, Google puts up no barriers
to exiting the AdSense program or reducing your involvement with it.
AdSense is entirely configurable on this point; you may publish ads on one
page of a large site, all pages, some pages, or across as many domains as you
deem productive.
Simply remove the AdSense code from any page you want to be ad-free.
Removing a page from the program doesn’t penalize other pages or change
the quality of ads delivered to your pages. To stop your involvement with
AdSense altogether, dump all the code. There’s no way to close your AdSense
account, nor is there any need to. It remains there, in case you decide to publish
ads again in the future.
When you remove AdSense code, remember to adjust your page code to fill
the hole you’ve just ripped in it. If you created a table cell to hold your ad
unit, for example, eliminate the cell or put something else in it.