Google Chrome changes how Yahoo Publisher Network ads are displayed

September 4, 2008

When Google Chrome was released earlier this week, I spent some time checking out how my various websites displayed in Google Chrome, which it seemed to pass with flying colors… that is until I noticed Google Chrome is somehow changing how Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads are displayed.  Instead of the usual format, it is underlining all the text in the entire YPN ad unit, including the title, description and URL.

 First, here is how YPN on one of my websites look when viewed with IE7 & Firefox.

Pretty normal looking.

And here is how it looks when viewed with Google Chrome…

Not too attractive, and definitely not something many surfers would click on when seeing it on a page!  And it made this particular ad unit style very difficult to read with the grey text and blue underlining.

And on another ad unit style, first the normal version:

And the Google Chrome version:

This one is easier to read with the underlining than the first example, but still not an ideal way to display YPN ad units and hope for any kind of decent CTR. 

This was seen on an out-of-the-box non-customized Google Chrome install, it just happened that I rotate YPN on one of my sites so I noticed it right away. But for whatever reason, Google is underlining the ad unit links in blue. But when I first thought maybe it was just automatically underlining links in blue for usability, there are a couple things to consider. First, the ad units are being treated differently, even though YPN and AdSense javascripts have a lot of similarities. Second, the “Ads by Yahoo!” on the ad units are not underlined. Third, I thought perhaps it might be a coding issue on Yahoo’s end, but it seems odd that it renders properly in both IE & Firefox (and as far as I know, all other browsers too) but differently in the Google Chrome browser.

Google Chrome does have some browser options, albiet very limited when compared to IE’s options, but nothing there seemed to have anything that could possibly affect the display of YPN ads.  And I checked it on two different computers, just incase my desktop was being tempermental, but the YPN ads still displayed the underlines on both computers.

 It seems all ad unit sizes were affected, as I checked some other sizes as well, and they all have the underlining in them.

I also checked some Microsoft ContentAds and they are appearing normally, without the added underlining.

Now, just to be clear, I am not jumping on an anti-Google or anti-Chrome conspiracy theory bandwagon.  And I realize Google Chrome is still very much in beta, and like any beta, there are going to be some bugs to fix and tweaks to make.  But I would have thought that someone on the Chrome team would have surely checked to see how YPN looked when doing usability browser testing, as I am fairly certain they would have checked to see how AdSense looked.  Microsoft ContentAds appear to display normally on content sites I have seen. 

 Want to know more about Google Chrome as a browser?  Google’s Matt Cutts has been a blogging binge this week and has done a ton of Chrome related posts, including answers to common Google Chrome objections that is worth a read.

If I hear an update on a fix or if I notice the ads displaying normally, I will post an update and also tweet it on Twitter, if you follow me there.

Update: The problem appears to be Chrome’s use of the Apple Webkit engine, as the issue is apparent when viewing YPN with Safari (for the Mac).  Here is what it looks like, and thank you Netmeg for the screenshot.

Posted in Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network 10 Comments »

Wondering why your AdSense stats are low today?

August 23, 2008

If you logged in this evening and discovered you only had about 1/10th of the revenue you were expecting, have no fear.  Google AdSense was doing some maintenance today, although their maintenance did run 2-3 hours passed their expected maintenance time.

 From the Inside AdSense blog:

This Saturday, August 23rd, our engineers will be performing site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. You’ll be unable to log in during these hours, but we’ll continue to track your earnings and serve ads to your pages.

PDT is also known as Googleplex time

But maintenance ran well past 4:00 PDT however, so the scheduled maintenance turned out to be a bit longer than expected, although Google AdWords customers were informed that their downtime would be until 4:00.

And don’t worry, AdSense did specifically state that ads were continuing to run throughout this time, and I checked, they were

 Stats are slowly updating, and they should be showing the true amount late tonight or early tomorrow, usually about the time you begin to show stats for the next day, the previous day’s stats should be complete.  You may also notice really skewed data (ie. 100% CTR etc) since sometimes the different metrics can update at different times after an upgrade.

So bottom line, your AdSense bottom line will not be affected by this downtime.

If anything changes, I will post a message on Twitter, so you can follow me @jenstar on Twitter.

Posted in Google AdSense 2 Comments »

AdSense going through major compliancy checking of publisher sites

June 24, 2008

Plenty of AdSense publishers over the last few months have been getting compliancy warnings for how they are running AdSense on their sites, judging from the number of people contacting me who have been hit with these new warnings.  And now, instead of a written email warning for the problem to be fixed within the next 3 days, as they used to do, now they are stopping ad serving from the entire domain instead, and it can take several weeks for a compliance checker to re-check the site to make sure all the problems are fixed.

What are they looking for?  Things people have been getting warnings for including having adult or other “site may not include” content anywhere on the site, even if the page is not running AdSense (this seems to be the most common reason).  Other issues are placements that could confuse the visitor (such as making navigation or directory listings resemble AdSense ad units) and having anything that pops overtop of ad units, such as expanding navigation or slide-in pop-overs/ups.  A few warnings  have also been to those with arbitrage sites where the visitor doesn’t see anything on the initial page view (ie. what you would see before scrolling down) but AdSense ad units.

It seems to have kicked in over the last few months, and is a definite trend to clean up publisher sites.

I talked about it in length with Shoemoney on last week’s video show, which you can watch here:
Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

We discussed it towards the end of the video show.

We might touch on it again today when we do the show today at 1pm PST / 4pm EST on UStream.tv, so come watch us live.  You do need to register to chat in the online chat component of the show, but we take questions during part of the show, so bring your burning AdSense questions

Posted in Google AdSense 6 Comments »

Radio show on my thoughts on the Yahoo/Google ad deal

June 13, 2008

I will be posting my comments on the whole Yahoo & Google advertising deal that was announced, but Shoemoney & I did a live webcast video show today, and my thoughts on what this means for publishers was one of the topics we discussed today (among other things, such as boothbabes, Google buying Digg and the AdReady ad program).

 You can watch it here, including all the comments made in the chat room while the show was airing.

We will have another show next Tuesday, if you want to join us live!

Posted in Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network 4 Comments »

Massive delay updating AdSense stats today

May 6, 2008

Before you start panicking when you login to your trusty AdSense account only to discover you have about 2% of the earnings you would expect for this time of day, Google seems to be experiencing a massive delay in updating their stats.  So when you see $2.87 when you would should be seeing something like $130, this is why.  Google AdSense stats have not been updated for about 8 hours or so, since about 1am PST (AKA Google AdSense stats time).

It is affecting all the stats - impressions, clicks and earnings.  While sometimes we have seen delays with either impressions or clicks, this is definitely affecting everything, as if the AdSense account has been frozen at 1am.

There hasn’t been any word from Google yet on why the stats are so delayed, but this seems to be across the board in all counties.  Ads to appear to be serving normally, but it is always disconcerting when there is such a massive delay in stats… especially since stats haven’t had any delay issues for years.

 That said, there could be something new and shiny to play with when they do start updating. 

I will post updates as I hear more, so be sure to subscribe to the feed if you haven’t already and my Twitter feed, if you want the latest :)  I am trying to find out why there is such a delay.   And if you are a little bit nervous about the lack of updates, you can read up on Supplementing AdSense with Affiliate Ads while you wait.

 Update: Stats are also affected on the AdWords site of things, with advertisers not seeing any updates for the same period of time.  Google AdWords has confirmed that the ads are continuing to be served properly, that they are aware there is an issue, and it is being worked on by engineers right now. 

Yes - some advertisers are seeing a delay in their stats today. The engineering teams are aware of this and, as you might imagine, are working to resolve it as a priority.

Please know that ads have continued to run as normal. This issue revolves around the reporting of statistics only, and does not impact ad delivery.

I’ll post again when I have anything of substance to add - and, in the meantime, my apology for the inconvenience this is causing you.

AWA

Still no official word from the AdSense site of things though.

Update 2 @ 11:35 am PST:

Google AdSense has finally responded over on Google Groups:

Hi everyone,

I’ve escalated your reports to our engineers, and they’re currently
investigating the issue. I’ll be sure to update this thread as soon as
I have any more info — thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Stephanie

So no real new information, but they are working on it :)  I will continue to update on this post and tweet as more information is available.

Update 3 @ 11:50 am PST

Clicks are very slowly starting to come in, but still at only a small percentage of totals of what it should be at this time of day.  Either they are updating stats since the time they discovered the problem earlier this morning, or the stats from 1am PST are starting to roll in.

Update 4 @ 1:45pm PST

Stats are still very much behind but slowly updating.  And another update from Google:

Hi again everyone,

I’ve just received an update from our engineers: they’re still working
on resolving the issue, but they have confirmed that no statistics or
data have been lost from your accounts. I’ll let you know when I have
more info about when you might expect to see updated stats. Again, we
appreciate your patience.

Stephanie

So no update on when it will be resolved, but the confirmation that stats and earnings are not lost permanently, which should cause some to breathe a sigh of relief!

Update 5 @ 4:20pm PST

No further word from Google, but stats are still creeping up - about 1/2 to 2/3 of where they should be at this time.  If you have raw logs, you can do a guestimate of how much your have updated at this time.

Update 6 @ 5:17pm PST

They have now updated the AdSense blog with:

A number of you have informed us that your reports are substantially lower than usual today, or aren’t being updated. Our engineers are currently investigating the issue and working to resolve it as quickly as possible. Please be assured that your account data has still been tracked, so this issue will not affect your earnings or payments. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for being patient.

 They also point to a new Known Issues page.  I wish they would timestamp the updates though, so we know when it is current to.  Knowing this issue was updated just on “May 6, 2008″ doesn’t really do much good for those of us wondering if it was updated this morning when it was first noticed or just 15 minutes ago as a current status update.

Screenshot (click for full-sized)

Update 7 @ 5:22pm PST

After I posted the above and double checked the known issues link, the report about the AdSense stats not being updated has now been removed.  This might mean it is resolved, although no confirmation as of yet.  I wonder why they don’t change it to a status of resolved for 24 hours for those of us checking the page for details, rather than deleting it from the page entirely.  I added the screen shot from the known issue page in the update above.  (And a few minutes after I added this, it was back again on the known issues page, maybe someone was trigger-happy and thinking it was resolved; Or maybe not, it is gone once again).

Posted in Google AdSense 26 Comments »

So how are your AdSense link units performing?

April 16, 2008

If you wanted to see how your link units were performing on a site or a page, you used to have to tag them with a seperate channel, but the results were skewed because there were impressions on the site and impressions once the actual page of link units was displayed.

Google has just updated their control panel and you can now run reports just on link units.  And, it will show the page impressions, clicks, then the number of link clicks, and the Page eCPM.  This makes it much easier to identify how link units are performing versus regular ad units or referral ads on the page. 

 Want to try out some link units and haven’t yet?  Read Using AdSense Link Units in the footer & navigation to give you a good placement to start with.

Read more on the AdSense blog, along with a screenshot that ironically shows no link unit data, just where you change to show the link unit data.  Do note that data is only available back to May 2007.  But if you run a report trying to pull data including dates previous to that, it will end up showing no data at all due to a bug that the AdSense team is working on.

Posted in Google AdSense 3 Comments »

How to set up an alternate ad for AdSense

March 31, 2008

AdSense Optimization Boot Camp Tip #11

I have had a few people comment and email about how to set up an alternate ad for AdSense when I talked about Supplementing your AdSense income with affiliate ads, the instructions Google provides aren’t completely clear.  So here is how to set up your own alternate ad for AdSense, so that you can show an advertisement that will earn you money, rather than a Google PSA (Public Service Ad) which will not earn you any revenue… except maybe earn you a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart thinking that one of your visitors might donate to the current cause or charity that Google is promoting in return.

Here is how to set up your own alternate ad… you can use an affiliate ad, an advertisement for something on your own site you want to promote (such as your own ad sales, a newsletter or your blog), or even an ad creative for a charity you wish to donate your unused ad space to.  Then select an image ad that is the same size as the AdSense ad unit it could be replacing.  So if your ad unit is 468×60, then you want to select an ad that is also 468×60.  If you use something larger, it will only display the top left 468×60 of the image, it will not auto-resize the ad space to accomodate the new one.

Then you want to create a new webpage.  It will be a blank webpage, there is no need for adding a title or header.  Just paste the ad code from the affiliate program, or create an image ad linked to a webpage, if you are creating your own.  Then save it with a file name that you will remember - in the example I am using youraltadpage.html but you should be a bit more descriptive, such as 46860altad.html if you need to create multiple ad units for various sizes, or something like categorynamealtad.html if you need to create different ads for different sections within your website.  Then upload it to your site, noting the full path of the page, such as http://www.example.com/youraltadpage.html  You can robots.txt the page so that search engines do not index it if you wish, or simply add a noindex meta tag to the page.

In your AdSense javascript, add this line:

google_alternate_ad_url = “http://www.example.com/youraltadpage.html”;

Or if you are using the new style of hosted AdSense units, you can go into your Manage Ads tab in the AdSense set up and edit your code to include your alternate ad URL.  Select the “Show non-Google ads from another URL” radio button under the “Alternate ads or colors” section.  Then paste your URL into the text box that pops up.

 Then you are done :)  As an added bonus, you can check your logs to see how often the webpage is shown to a visitor, which can help identify any potential PSA issues your site may be having.  You can learn more about this in Do you have a problem with your site showing PSAs, which highlights the whole PSA issue and what can be done about it.

You can also switch around your alternate ad as you do testing, so you can show whichever ad has the highest ROI for you.  This is especially important if your site is showing a higher percentage of PSAs than usual.  But setting up an alternate ad is a smart way to increase your revenue when AdSense is unable to show advertisements for any reason.

Posted in Affiliate Programs, Google AdSense, Optimization Boot Camp, Tips & Techniques 5 Comments »

Using Clickbooth as an AdSense alternative

March 31, 2008

This is the second affiliate program I am having a look at as part of the Supplementing AdSense with Affiliate Ads article I wrote.  Up on deck today is Clickbooth, which has been getting a lot of buzz recently in the blogosphere.  I first heard about them a while back, and a couple people recommended them as a good compliment for AdSense, when I did my shoutout for affiliate programs.

My first look at Clickbooth was a little overwhelming when compared to how CJ is set up and what they offer.  Clickbooth offers a lot of alternative affiliate advertising other than simply on-page ads which AdSense publishers know and love.  They do contextual/popunder (note: this is not the same kind of contextual that AdSense publishers are familiar with, which might confuse some publishers), network, on-site placement, opt-in email marketing, path and search/contextual keywords.  So for AdSense publishers looking for a good alternative ad or to supplement on-page advertising, you will want to filter your results to only show “on-site placement” advertisements

They do offer some tools for affiliates, such as the ability to use their ad server to rotate various banners for you, if you do not have your own ad server.  The code Clickbooth provides seems to be workable for using as an Adsense alternative ad.

For types of ads, there are a lot of the usual ones that people expect to see in an affiliate program, such as financial services, plenty of business opportunity companies, dating sites, and various weight loss programs.  And there is the ever-present Vistaprint… is there an affiliate network they aren’t in? 

Most of the ads are compliant with the AdSense terms/policies, although there are some ones to download things like cursors, which could be iffy depending if anything else is downloaded along with them :)  There are a lot of programs in Clickbooth with geographic restrictions, so be sure you are using ones that are available to the country(ies) where the majority of your traffic is from.  Otherwise, you can use your own geotargeting so that your chosen ads only show to people located in the country it is available to, so you can show those outside those countries a different ad.

There are some restrictions in the terms before signing up, such as a minimum of 1000 unique page views per month, a top level domain, and have content.. none of which should be a problem for AdSense publishers.  They have a list of “site may not include” restrictions are pretty similar to AdSense, so again, it shouldn’t be an issue if you are in AdSense and compliant.  The one issue that some publishers could find is that the site must be in English only, understandable since the ads I all saw are in English. 

For payments, you have your choice of payment by check or PayPal.  There is a current payment threshold of $50.  Payments are made 15 days after the month’s end… meaning if you earned $100 in March, payment would be made about Apri 15th.

I do find it a bit disconcerting to see my account manager - or affiliate strategist as they are called at Clickbooth - staring at me with the photo avatar on the top of my screen… and I can’t help but wonder if perhaps guys get a hot chick looking at them to encourage them to contact their account managers!  I know many guys have said they can’t help but click when its a hot chick in the avatar.

You can find Clickbooth here (that is not an affiliate link).   They also have a Twitter @clickbooth but it doesn’t appear to be active aside from the first tweet (hint, hint, Clickbooth, you will get a lot more followers if you start tweeting :) )

Not sure how to use an affiliate program with AdSense?  Read Supplementing AdSense with affiliate ads.  I have also had a couple questions about how to use alternate ads properly, so that is on deck for later today! 

Posted in Affiliate Programs 7 Comments »

Using Pepperjam Network with Google Adsense

March 29, 2008

Looking at affiliate programs that you can easily use to supplement your AdSense income, Pepperjam Network  is one of the newer affiliate networks on the block, although Pepperjam has been around the search industry for quite some time.   And if you frequent the many search engine conferences, you have probably seen Kris Jones speak before, along with many of the Pepperjam team members who are oftn in the expo hall or the networking parties.

Pepperjam Network offers the usual affiliate ads and product feeds that you would expect from any affiliate network, with a diverse number of programs.  I did a quick runthrough of their entire affiliate program list, all the programs they offer fall well within the AdSense terms, so you should be able to select any of their ads without running afoul with Google content policies, with the possible exception of a couple of lingerie programs including the Playboy store… but in those cases, it would be dependent on the creative chosen.

I think the part of their affiliate program that AdSense publishers will be most interested in is their lookalike AdSense ad units.  They are called pepperjamADS, which are styled very closely to Google AdSense in format, but allows you to use multiple affiliate ads in a single ad unit, the same way multiple advertisers appear in an AdSense ad unit.  Once you are approved for some affiliate programs, you can then go and generate pepperjamADS for your site (they won’t show up in the pepperjamADS tab until they are approved, unless you have added one of the many programs with automatic approval).  Do note that Google doesn’t allow you to run ads on the same site that mimic AdSense ad units, so the easiest way around this is to use a border if you have blended ad units.  If your AdSense already has a border, use pepperjamADS as blended with the border and background of the ad unit matching the background on the page.  Otherwise, change the color scheme dramatically. 

Here is an example of the ad unit.

You can easily use this as an alternate ad as they have formats available in all the standard IAB ad unit sizes or use it as a secondary placement.

For those with blogs in the internet industry, I found programs for both Search Engine Strategies (although many of the banners still say SES NYC) and WebmasterRadio.fm, as well as seomoz, Text Link Ads and Pepperjam Network.  They seem to have a fair representation across a variety of industries, and there is a list of “Featured Advertisers” on the site.

For the real important stuff - payments - you can chose between check, direct deposit or PayPal.  Payments are sent out twice per month (around the 1st and 15th).

You can find the pepperjamNETWORK here.  They do have an affiliate program, although that is not an affiliate link :)  I just discovered their affiliate program and it is pending approval (Update: That is an affiliate link now, you can visit with non-aff link here).  They also have a PJN blog where they announce new affiliate programs, so it could be useful to subscribe if you want to keep an eye on their new programs without having to login frequently… yes, I know many of you love the “add it and forget about it” nature of AdSense and affiliate ads!  They also have a main company blog.  And if you want to follow them on Twitter, join their Facebook pages, or any of their other social sites, you can find them all here.  They are definitely more on top of the whole social thing than all the other affiliate networks I looked at combined!

Not sure how to use an affiliate program with AdSense?  Read Supplementing AdSense with affiliate ads.  I have also had a couple questions about how to use alternate ads properly, so that will be the next blog post

Posted in Affiliate Programs, Tips & Techniques 2 Comments »

Supplementing AdSense with affiliate ads

March 26, 2008

AdSense Optimization Boot Camp Tip #10 

It doesn’t cease to amaze me how many publishers are so concerned about their AdSense revenue - especially when it is the most significant portion, if not all, of their income - that they don’t dare use anything else on the page in case “Google gets mad”.  Well, fortunately for publishers, as long as you are within the AdSense terms, you are welcome to supplement your AdSense advertisements with other advertising.

The most popular option that publishers seem to take is to either rotate affiliate ads with AdSense or use on the same page as AdSense are various affiliate ads.  Done correctly, affiliate ads running in conjunction with AdSense ads can increase a publishers per-page revenue.  You can also use an affiliate ad as an alternate ad, in case AdSense would show a public service ad (PSA) otherwise. 

If you are new to affiliate marketing, and AdSense is your first foray into placing advertising on your site, there are some things to do to supplement your AdSense revenue with affiliate ads.

How can you get the most affiliate revenue?  First and foremost, chose programs targeted to your audience.  Too often people look for whatever pays out the most and pops it on the page.  But if it is not targeted, you aren’t going to convert.  It is better to look for the best targeted ads for your audience and select from those… or better yet, rotate those best targeted affiliate ads and then select the one with the best ROI to run exclusively after that. 

 Don’t forget, a program that only pays out $3 a conversion can actually earn you a lot more money than a program worth $30 a conversion if that $3 conversion program converts a lot more.  True, you need 10 $3 sales to equal a single $30 sale, but you might find that if you give each program an equal number of ad views that you could end up with 100 conversions on the $3 one but only 4 on the $30 one… and it is a no brainer to see that the $3 is actually more profitable for you.

If you find a highly converting affiliate program for a site or even just for select pages within a site, you can actually make more money with that affiliate program than with AdSense.  If you don’t want the page to seem ad heavy, do a 50/50 rotation test running both AdSense and the affiliate program, and see what earns you the most at the end of a week.

Don’t forget that your non-AdSense advertisements also need to follow the AdSense terms/policies.  So showcasing a casino site or pushing phentermine would make your site non-compliant with the AdSense terms and policies.  As would pushing a program that installs adware/spyware.  So chose the affiliate programs  you promote carefully so it doesn’t cause any issues with your AdSense account.

You should also consider affiliate networks beyond the usual Commission Junction that is the well-known standby, and which was also one of the few available to publishers and affiliates for quite some time.  There are plenty of new and niche networks out there that have some smaller or more specific programs that might be better targeted to your site and audience than the ones CJ offers. 

What affiliate programs are you finding work best for supplementing with AdSense?  Thank you all the Twitterers who responded to this question earlier!  Feel free to comment on your personal favorites (whether networks or specific programs) or if you Twitter, send it as an @jenstar message :)  I am amassing a list of affiliate network options that are AdSense-friendly and/or work well in conjunction with AdSense, and will blog about some individual ones that are a good alternative to AdSense.  And yep, some are contextual, which means you will have less work to do when placing them on your site

Updated: Here are the affiliate programs I have looked at so far:

• Pepperjam Network

I will continue to update this list as I look at each one.

Posted in Affiliate Programs, Google AdSense, Optimization Boot Camp, Tips & Techniques 9 Comments »