Webinar transcript now available

In case you missed our recent webinar called Taking It to the Next Level: Improving Your AdSense Performance, we've posted a recording on our Help Center. Specialists from the Publisher Support team offer tips and suggestions on how to make the most of your AdSense account. You can also find transcripts and presentations from past webinars.

Speedy optimizing - a quick fix

Would you like some tips on maximizing your AdSense ad performance? Check out our recently updated Optimization Demo. In about five minutes, we cover popular topics from optimal ad locations to the best performing ad formats. Once you’ve watched the Optimization Demo, you can start applying these techniques to your ad units immediately. Good luck optimizing!

Getting your forum site to perform well with AdSense

When Amit Kumar co-founded MegaGames Forum in 1998, Google Inc. was being run from a Menlo Park garage and AdSense didn’t even exist yet. Fast-forward 9 years to 2007: Amit still runs MegaGames Forum just as a hobby, but he earns enough revenue through the AdSense program to run a dedicated server and continue growing his site.

Amit wasn't so successful with AdSense right from the start. When he first started using the program in 2005, his earnings were nothing to write home about, and it was largely because he chose his ad placement, formats, and colors at random. After recently optimizing his ads, however, Amit was able to more than double his AdSense revenue and even improve the user experience on his site. Results may vary since every site is unique, but here are some tips that any forum site, large or small, can also try out to increase revenue.

1. The welcome box ad
   Many forums have a message above the fold on their pages welcoming users to the site and encouraging them to register. Placing a large (336x280) or medium (300x250) rectangle next to this message catches users’ attention right when they walk through the door (so to speak). By the way, these are our best performing ad units, and may also increase the number of site-targeted ads on your pages.
   
   
2. The forum post ad
   
   Based on previous testing, integrating ad units into your page content can improve clickthrough rate (CTR). It also provides a better online experience, since your users see relevant ads side by side with normal content. In forums, the highest visibility content is often the first post, so it makes sense to place the ads here. Again, large and medium rectangles are your best bet!
   
   
3. Blending colors and breaking down borders
   
   Colors are important for making an ad visible to the user, but they should still blend with the design of the site. Removing the borders on your ads helps even more with this concept of blending. Don’t worry -- even with a well-blended implementation, the 'Ads by Google' label keeps your users from confusing ads with content.
   

Bonus tip: Improve ad relevance with section targeting

With forums, the first post often contains the most relevant content on the page. By using the section targeting feature to emphasize this content, you can potentially increase CTR with better targeted ads. Visit this 'section targeting' link we mention for instructions.

If you decide to try out these tips, we’d love to hear about your success.

Another look at optimizations

We've given you many optimization tips over the years, and, as you know, it's important to consider how your ad implementations affect not only your click-through rate, but your users' and advertisers' experience as well. To support this, we'd like to remind you of the following two guidelines when optimizing your site.

1. Ads shouldn't be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies that the ads are not ads.
For example, ads shouldn't be placed under titles such as “Dallas Business Opportunities” or “Today's Hot Deals”. Placing ads directly below titles such as these implies to your users that the links in the ads are publisher-created content. The example below shows a placement that does not follow this guideline.


2. Ads should be easily distinguishable from surrounding content.
Similarly, you should not place an ad unit by a group of links that has identical colors and line spacing. Doing so may cause users to think the ad unit is content created by you. In this situation, we recommend using a different color for the ad titles or indenting the ad unit to help distinguish the ads from your own content. This screenshot shows an implementation that does not follow this guideline:

As you can imagine, users who click on ads that they think are publisher-created content may lose trust in your site and decide not to return in the future. It's important to keep their interests in mind, as well as your own.

Also, advertisers can tell which sites have a high conversion rate for them using Placement Performance reports. A conversion occurs when a click on an ad leads directly to user behavior that the advertiser deems valuable, such as a purchase, sign-up, page view, or lead. Advertisers have the option to exclude your site from their campaigns and may do so if it is not leading to conversions.

We believe these guidelines invest in the long-term health of the relationship between AdSense publishers, AdWords advertisers, and your sites' visitors, and that they will help ensure your continued success in the AdSense program.