Google Data

Users are consuming more and more web content across screens. Given this shift, we’re updating the design of our text ads to strengthen their performance and make them more consistent and easy to read across devices.

Our new text ads have been designed with better readability in mind, regardless of what device they’re being viewed from. We’ve introduced a new default color palette of blue and grey, making the ads easier to read for the user. We’ve also updated our default font to Roboto, designed for easier readability on mobile devices as well as desktop. With this change, we’ve aligned our text ad font with the web font we use on our Android OS.

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We’ve also made improvements to the ad call-to-action button by making the tap target size and position more user-friendly across devices.

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Look out for our new text ads and tell us what you think of this redesign over on our AdSense+ page.

Posted by Clyde Li – AdSense Software Engineer
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Mobile empowers users to access your site at anytime and from anywhere. Is your site ready for them? Your mobile site should allow users to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for without sacrificing richness of content. While there are a lot of expert opinions about how to do this, very few are based on actual data and research. So we partnered with AnswerLab to study more than 100 mobile users as they completed conversion-focused tasks across a diverse group of sites. From this research, we developed 25 principles of mobile site design to help you develop a mobile site that both delights your users and drives engagement.

Let’s take a closer look at three findings from the research:

Primacy of site search
Study participants with a specific need, especially those visiting retail sites, turned to site search to find what they were looking for. Participants were quick to abandon sites that returned irrelevant search results or a large set of results that they were unable to narrow.

Key takeaway: Ensure site search is visible on the homepage via an open text field, returns relevant results, and is equipped with advanced features, like auto-complete and filters, to get users what they want quickly.

Mobile site misconceptions
If presented a choice, study participants would often tap on the link to visit the “full site” due to a perception that they’d be missing out on something by staying on the mobile site. Choosing the “mobile site” implied to them that they were not getting the “full” experience, when in reality, the mobile site offered most, if not all of the functionality in an easier-to-view format.

Key takeaway: If your mobile site provides the same content and functionality as your desktop site in an easier-to-use format, then there is no need to provide a link to the desktop site. If you do decide to provide users with a link to the desktop site, then use terms like “desktop site” instead of “full site” to be clear that both sites offer a complete experience.

Sites with a mix of mobile optimized and desktop pages provide a poor user experience
Unsurprisingly, it was easier for participants to navigate mobile-optimized sites on their mobile devices than desktop sites on their mobile devices. However, sites that included a mix of desktop and mobile-optimized pages were actually harder for participants to use than sites with all-desktop pages.

Key takeaway: To improve user experience, task completion and conversion rates, go all in and optimize your entire site for mobile. If launching in phases, then make sure users don’t have to traverse between desktop pages and mobile optimized pages to complete their tasks.

To review our complete findings, download the Principles of Mobile Site Design from Think Multi-Screen. Use the principles to review the effectiveness of your existing site or to guide the creation of your first mobile-optimized site.

Posted by Jenny Gove, User Experience Researcher, Google

Having the right information on the ads displayed on your site and being able to control them, is a big ask we hear from publishers. Many of you are already using the Ad review center to review and control these ads. From today, enjoy more choice with new updates designed to save you time and give you more control in the review process.

Save time by not having to review the same ad twice. Now you can see which ads you’ve already reviewed by selecting the ‘Show reviewed ads’ checkbox in the top right corner of the Ad review center.

Show reviewed ads feature

 You’ll also have more choice when reviewing ads with our new ad size widget. Using the widget, you can review ads according to their size. If you want to review only the banner ads on your page for example, they’ll be quick and easy to find. We’re still fine-tuning this feature meaning it’s possible that not every single ad of a particular size will be captured right away, but it will capture the majority of them.

New ad size widget

You’ll now also have more control with new enhancements to our related ads feature. Over the next few days, related ads will start to identify ads containing the same logo. It’ll then group together different ads containing that logo and give you the option to allow or block them running on your site. This feature will also cover ads containing the same video.

Finally, we’ve given the Ad review center a new look with a brand new user interface designed for quick and simple navigation. Try out these new features today. We’re continuously looking for new ways to make this a valuable tool for you – please tell us what else you’d like to see over on our AdSense+ page.

Posted by Fiona Herring – AdSense Product Manager
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Time sure does fly – we’ve now reached the end of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series. Thanks for following the series and for sharing your own stories. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher and check back soon for more publisher stories.

Total Race was created by five friends and racing enthusiasts. Covering Formula 1, stock car racing and IndyCar, the site receives 135,000 monthly visitors and employs a team of 15 editors and reporters.

Total Race partners, Ivan and Erick, were already familiar with Google AdSense and using it as a monetization solution for their other web projects. The decision to also choose it for totalrace.com.br was an easy one says Erick and today “AdSense earnings represent around 70% of our total advertising income”.

(Don’t forget to enable english captions using the Captions button under the YouTube video)

The team also partnered with DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business to manage their advertising and save them time. Erick is pleased with this decision stating “the process from start to finish is very fast and easy to use. I’d highly recommend this tool for publishers seeking more detail and control of their advertising campaigns”.

According to Erick, these products have been fundamental in the growth of the site. With the structure they bring, he’s ready to focus further on taking his passion for racing to an even wider audience.

Posted by Barbara Sarti – Inside AdSense Team
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We’re always looking to hear your thoughts on how we’re doing and your suggestions on  how we can make Google AdSense and other Google publisher products as useful and impactful as possible for you. Your feedback is important to us and helps shape the future direction of our publisher solutions. Our semi-annual publisher survey will launch on April 23rd and we hope to hear from all of you.

Every six months, the feedback collected from this survey is closely reviewed to help determine our product roadmap. Based on your feedback and asks last time round, we’ve launched a number of new features to grow your earnings. These include custom ads sizes, easier A/B testing and to get the most from your ad units and the new AdSense homepage giving you quick access to the insights you value most.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll send the survey by email to a sample of publishers. To participate, please take the following steps as soon as possible:

• Ensure your contact details are updated.
• Ensure your email preferences are updated to receive ‘occasional survey’ messages.

Whether you’ve completed this survey before or you’re providing feedback for the first time, we’d like to thank you for taking the time to tell us how we’re doing. We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Posted by Adriana Satmarean – AdSense Publisher Happiness Team
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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Raffaele Brogna is the creator of Ioleggoletichetta.it. Meaning ‘I read the label’ in english, the site is dedicated to consumer awareness and protection offering advice on how to get the right information from product labels and tips on saving money when shopping. As a social crowdsourcing project, the site has a large community following who regularly contribute and report on their own experiences and findings as consumers.

Alongside his wife, Raffaele looks after the day-to day operations as well as the broader strategy for the site. They decided to use AdSense at the outset to help cover running costs and considered the prompt payments offered by AdSense as a key influencer in their decision. They were quickly pleased with the results, in particular with the relevance of the ads displayed.

As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Quehoroscopo.com, a leading Spanish horoscope and astrology site, was set up by Hugo Conde in 2007. Hugo is based out of Madrid and works with a team of tarot professionals, editors and designers to provide daily content to their many users.

Soon after launching, Hugo started looking for a simple and easy-to-use solution to generate income from his site that would allow him to continue focusing on creating new content and a positive user experience. Fast forward to today and AdSense represents 90% of total advertising revenue for Quehoroscopo.com.

To make sure Quehoroscopo.com is performing to its full potential, Hugo has tested a number of ad formats to find the best fit for his page. He also uses Google Analytics to understand what content performs best on the site.

Looking ahead, Hugo plans to grow his audience with new platforms including mobile.

Read the full story.

Posted by Suzy Headon – Inside AdSense Team
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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Cape Town-based site memeburn.com is focused on technology and innovation coming out of emerging markets. The site receives over 350,000 unique visits each month and together with a number of sister-sites (including Gearburn, Ventureburn and Memejobs) employs a team of 28.

As the site’s revenue comes from many different online advertising streams, memeburn began using DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business to manages each source through one accessible tool. They also monetize their non-guaranteed inventory with AdSense, which is integrated with DFP. Owner Matthew Buckland tells us that this integration “provides a constant, reliable revenue stream”, with approximately 93% of the company’s ad impressions being served through DFP at any given time.

Given memeburn’s readers are broadly dispersed across the world, the dynamic allocation feature in DFP also helps them ensure the ads on their site are relevant to each local market. In addition to using DFP with AdSense for their desktop site, memeburn is partnering with Google in the expansion of their mobile presence, using AdSense exclusively on their mobile site.

Memeburn continues to focus on their existing sites as well as looking to expand their platforms with further sites in the future. They plan to continue partnering with DFP and AdSense to fuel future success. Matthew concludes that “in an era where there is so much digital noise, AdSense provides useful, relevant, quality content. You can’t put a price on that.”

Read the full story.

Posted by Suzy Headon - Inside AdSense Team
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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Tecamachalco.net, a news portal and business directory, was founded in 2004 by Jorge Eustaquio. The site covers news, history, sports and culture from Tecamachalco, a city in the south-east of Mexico. Today, the site employs two people in addition to Jorge.

Jorge read about AdSense in a blog and decided to test the monetization solution. “I liked the idea of not only having local advertisers from Tecamachalco, but also from other regions in Mexico as well as internationally,” he says. The revenue generated since beginning with AdSense has played a key part in enabling him to invest in similar projects for other towns in Mexico.

Using combined AdSense and Google Analytics reports, Jorge was surprised to learn that almost 40% of his audience currently come from users located in other countries. He plans to continue with AdSense, as his earnings have allowed him “to invest in new projects and take on more staff when necessary.”

Read the full story.

Posted by Barbara Sarti – Inside AdSense Team
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Over the past five weeks of the Google Analytics insights blog post series we’ve looked at how to use Google Analytics to grow your business, optimize your mobile presence, increase user loyalty with Google and improve your overall user experience. We’ve also collected all of your questions to create a video covering the most frequently asked questions.

(Turn on English captions by using the captions button at the bottom of the YouTube video)

The video starts by exploring how integrating your AdSense account with Analytics gives you data that’ll help you optimize content, improve user experience and ultimately, increase your revenue. We then give you a demo so that you can get started straight away. If you’re interested in getting a better understanding of how visitors interact with your online content then you’ll enjoy the section about Universal Analytics and Demographic and Interest reporting. Don’t forget to check out our help resources for additional information on each topic covered in this video:

• Why integrate your AdSense Account with Analytics?
• How do I link my AdSense Account with Analytics?
• What new data can I see by linking my AdSense account to Analytics?
• How do I use Analytics to improve my AdSense performance?
• Why might there be discrepancies between my AdSense and Analytics data?
• What is Universal Analytics, and what are the benefits of it?
• What are the Demographics & Interests reports in Google Analytics?
• How can I share data with an account specialist to get optimization tips?

We hope you’ve found the series to be useful. Many thanks for all of your comments and questions over the past five weeks.

Posted by Cemal Buyukgokcesu – Google Analytics Specialist
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