I’m a huge fan of the Google AdWords learning center that has plenty of Breeze Demos.

AdSense has 4 demos that I’ve found, as they’ve just added a payment Demo. I’m not a huge AdSense publisher, but as I’m an AdWords advertiser I like to keep up with what’s going on the in contextual world.

Here are the Breeze demo’s I’ve found so far:
Getting Started with AdSense Demo
Payment Demo
Ad Code Demo
AdSense Optimization

The AdSense blog has details on how engineeringtalk.com improved it’s AdSense performance.

Interesting that the AdSense blog also talks about how link units helped them out. I’ve not heard too much talk about the CTR and profitability of the link unit program; however, I often see it integrated quite well into the site navigation.

The overall goal seems to be, if a user can’t tell it’s not part of the site, then maybe they’ll click on it and the publisher will make some money. Whatever happened to people enjoying ’site sponsored by’ and supporting sites and advertisers in a disclosure type environment?

There have been quite a few discussions on the web recently about Smart Pricing.

A quick overview of AdSense / AdWords smart pricing:

Because contextually targeted ads on our content network sometimes return lower conversion numbers than ads on Google.com search results pages, clicks from the content network use “smart pricing” adjustments. Google’s smart pricing technology automatically lowers the cost of content clicks based on the referring site, to maximize the return on investment for advertisers.

Source: AdWords Learning Center

Google Launches Contextual Network - June 2003

Starting today, AdWords ads will also appear on sites that are accepted into our ad network through our new Google AdSense program. These websites are reviewed and monitored according to the same rigorous standards as our current network sites. And your AdWords ads will continue to appear only in relevant places that make sense to web users. The only difference is that now your ads will be targeted to more content web pages, bringing you even more customers.

Source: AdWords News Archives

Google Launches Improved Smart Pricing - April 2004

We’re introducing automatic price adjustments for certain clicks you get from the Google Network. Google’s smart pricing model has always provided better placement for better performing ads, and reduced the cost of a click to the least amount possible to stay above your competitor’s ad. And now, with no change in how you bid, Google may reduce the cost for a click if that better reflects the value it brings to advertisers like you.

Source: April 04 Google AdWords Newsletter announces Improved Smart Pricing.

Google Defends Smart Pricing - October 05

The blog entry lists a few reasons on how smart pricing is determined, however, as an advertiser, the last line is my favorite:

The best way to ensure you benefit from AdSense is to create compelling content for interested users. This also means driving targeted traffic to your site — advertisers don’t gain as much ROI when paying for generic clicks as they do for quality clicks that come from interest in your content. Good content usually equals a good experience for user plus advertiser, which can be much more valuable than CTR.

Source: Inside AdSense

AOL recently purchased Weblogs, Inc for a reported $25 million.

A number that many analysts saw as very steep, but others thought it was for the technology behind the scenes.

Google recently released a case study about Weblogs, Inc and their AdSense earnings.

Case study.

Phaedo has been doing some interesting things in the RSS world lately, it’s a site to keep an eye on.

There is currently a great article on buying RSS advertising on their blog.

Article Link.

New ‘trouble wizard shooting tool from the AdSense Team. Seem very useful, several ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions to find the root of the problem.

The new trouble shooter wizards:
I pasted the AdSense code into my site, but no ads appeared.
I’m seeing Public Service Ads (PSAs) on my site.
I want to improve the relevancy of AdSense ads appearing on my site.
I want to filter my competitors from advertising on my site.

FAQs Here.

Jen reports on a way to monotize visitors who have java disabled.

I must admit, I regulary surf with java and flash turned off.

I don’t mind being served ads, but flash ads have become too intrusive. I find it odd that most sites don’t do a flash check before serving a flash ad, I often see huge blank spaces on websites that could be monotized with a static banner.

I often surf with java off because there are too many poorly written java apps that just slow down my system if they don’t load properly. Anyway, this simple little trick is incredibly useful for serving ads for those with java off.

It goes like this:

Pretty simple. Reported by incrediBILL on SEW forums.

Source: JenSense Article

Jen is doing her usual great job of keeping up with new the YPN (Yahoo Publishing Network) features.

YPN has never had the ability to publish a backup ad if a PSA (public service ad) appeared. Now, YPN is showing RON (run of network) ads instead.

In my advertising experience, often RON ads aren’t great ROI, and because we allow another publisher to put them wherever we want, we paid very little CPM on these types of ads.

I don’t know where these RON ads are being bought on the Yahoo network (i.e. PPC, exclusive deals, etc), but it’s something for advertisers to look into for some general branding, network targeting, and special offers with wide range appeal.

Full story here.

The AdSense blog has posted some tips on how forums can get the highest CTR possible.

The article contains another AdSense heat map, which are much easier to read than actual maps.

Anyway, if you run a forum with AdSense, read the article.

You can also read Jen’s review here.

In AdWords it’s called ’site targeting’; the ability to pay CPM to appear on a publisher site.

To a publisher it’s called AdSense CPM and how am I getting paid for this.

Jen has found a few good tidbits and expounded upon them on her blog for how a publisher is being paid.

I always find it interesting to see what I’m paying Google, and what a publisher finally ends up with.

Jen’s Post Here.