I've just started using Google Ad Manager, with Wordpress. Have you tried this yet? It's quite challenging setting it up, but I am persevering. At the moment I am using the well-known "Poke and Hope" method of ad placement: ie crawling around the Wordpress theme armed with the placement code in my clipboard I am pasting it where I hope it will come out where I want, then viewing it, then removing it if it's wrong and sticking it somewhere else. So far I've managed to place three ad units in one site ... let's just say that's about 8 hours of learning/setup and poke/hoping. Getting faster, documenting where in the template ads come out. So far I've used a mix of Adsense, Chitika and AlternateURL, but once the placement code is in place correctly I can mix/match ad networks and ads etc - just focussing on the "where" at the moment, rather than the what. This is challenging because it's involving several aspects: - understanding the individual Wordpress theme behaviours - ensuring I don't break the Adsense T&Cs for 3 ads/page - trying to maximise the alternate url options - trying to not make the whole thing look like a pig's ear. So far I've no data/reports from the Ad Manager itself as this is all new and I've put it on a low traffic site to learn from. But once I've got it all in place on about 5 sites it means I can control and view all my adverts from the one Ad Manager instead of at each site level. So ... any of you using it? Finding it easier than managing ads at a site level?
Just a quick update on what's just happened.... Having got a basic grip of what's going on, I decided to create a post in Wordpress that would include an ad placement area. In that ad placement area I would place 6 creatives of the same size. The idea here is that each time that post loads it should load a different creative, so I can see which performs best and in a year or so (look, it's a low traffic site, right!) I can knock out the lowest performing ones .... so, great idea. It's taken me a total of 75 minutes to achieve that for the first time. But I got a result! The post is in my blog serving 6 different adverts, just like I wanted. The main problem I had was that GAM generates javascript and I couldn't stick the JS directly into my posts. Adsense Manager has been known to work in the past, but for some reason (since I upgraded to v2.7?) it stopped working... so I had to go off and find another solution. Oh well... onto the next ad slot then! I know this is all for the good in the long-term, but right now the sun's shining outside and it's easter weekend ... if there was a better way to earn money I'd be doing it, but there's a recession on and, strangely, I actually enjoy these challenges. Happy Easter!
been using Ad Manager for several weeks now but only to the part that I put the adsense code to my site, I have not tried other functions like targeting etc.. I spend several days how to use this stuff
I've managed to get 12 slots marked out across 3 of my sites. The problem that holds me up is dropping the code into the Wordpress template in a place where it's where I want it but doesn't c0ck up the layout in the theme. It can take me several attempts. Pawing through the .php files, not knowing where the divs end/start or the overall picture of the design layout is a pain in the bum. What is usually a 10 minute "find something, get the code, place the code in my page" exercise is now a 1.5 hour test of endurance. I've dropped the code into widgets too and that works fine. The header.php gets a bit bloated though with the code that has to go in there - and, of course, this gives me a problem if I want to just try another theme out because I have to do all that work again. I think it's going to be worth it though. I have one site that's UK based, but of course traffic will come from anywhere, so I've put some geotargetting on there. I've used a 468x60 banner in that instance and produced a total of 6 banners in that space, 2 each geo-targetted at the UK, US and even AUS. I think the geo-targetting will be of most benefit because I can have one ad space showing different adverts depending on where somebody comes from, which means I can now go through the ad networks grabbing country-specific ads. Also, it's great knowing that I don't have to pick a graphic and hope it's the most appealing. I loaded one ad slot up with 6 creatives and over time I can drop out the worst performers. It's all in a day's tweaks isn't it!
Oh and I had a big "whoops" moment. I decided to tag up my main income generating site, which isn't on Wordpress... it's a DotNetNuke site, hosted on ASP.NET, running from a SQL Server. Well, I created it about 2.5 years ago from an auto script and left it alone since. It would have been a massive learning curve to do anything with it - and the damned thing performed well right from day one, so I never wanted to fiddle with it or break it. This is THE site that brings me in 98% of my income. Well last night, I broke it. I thought I'd tag it up - and placed the GAM Javascript into the header of the page, using the settings boxes... uh-ho... site was unusable. Couldn't log in, couldn't log in to remove the code. So in the end I had to get an ODBC connection, through MS Access, into the database itself and trawl through the tables to find the two instances of the javascript that was knocking everything out. There went 4 hours of my life! And, it had to be done immediately. No sleeping because it was my main site! Won't do that again!
I mostly preferred manual ad placing. So You get the total control handling your adsense code and nothing to fear about ban.
You only get banned if you break the Adsense rules. I am setting slots specifically to be adsense -or- to never be adsense -or- to consider adsense, based on the "3 slots per page" rule. I can see which slots on a page or site are adsense/not and so it is easier to manage how many adsense slots I have. Manual is OK, but I find some ad networks suddenly send you an email saying an advertiser's campaign is terminated with immediate effect. I was finding I was sending quite a lot of traffic to dead links because I had to spot the email and find it on my site and remove the code. I also had to keep notes on where things were. Sometimes I could have one advert on 4 sites and twice in the body. Also, getting the stats on performance meant logging in to many sites and manually working it all out ... needless to say, it never got done. With the Ad Manager I can see which are performing well/better/best/not and remove them. I can also turn off campaigns easily, or add in new competitive products to promote. e.g. If you are advertising a blue widget how do you know that a green one in the same spot wouldn't do better? Ad Manager shows you that because you can load one slot with, say, 3 adverts, then it will serve them all equally and you can see which does best and remove the under-performers. And geo-targetting, I can have one ad slot with 3 ads loaded. It will show the US ONLY advert to people in the US, AUS ONLY advert to those in Australia and UK ONLY advert to people in the UK. So I am not "wasting" impressions. No more having to pick/choose which I show.
I'm planning to implement this on a WP blog. I'm hoping to: Link sidebar ads to content category Geotarget Use alternate ads Be able to change ads globally without having to edit post by post
I'm just wondering how easy it will be to take an advert and place it into a 2nd slot ... not tried that yet. I can never find a theme I like either. At the moment I am aware that next time I try a new one out I've also got to move over the ad slots in the pages and header areas... bit of a buisance.