But.. Initially few terms like placements and slots would be confusing!!! And there are lot many options that other ad products do not provide for FREE!!
How many monthly impressions did you put down when you signed up? I put less than a mill, but realistically we'll be much higher than that once marketing kicks in... hopefully.
I had got my Google AdManager account about 2 weeks ago, but I have yet to fully engage it. I am still using OpenX (formerly OpenAds, formerly PHPAdsNew) and for the most part I am happily satisfied with OpenX, but intrigued to know more about Google Admanager that's why I signed up for an invitation. I do plan to implement Google Admanager on a new site once I build it, but not sure if I will use it faithfully as I do OpenX. My only concern is Google knowing about all my websites activity, not that I have anything to hide, but they will have data about every ad sale and ad published -- and thensome. With Google Adsense installed, Google Analytics installed, and Google AdManager installed Google will know everything about you and your web business(es) -- they actually will probably know your business better than you! This concerns me a little, but I'll see how it all plays out. I just see a monopoly, because right now your web business can be built off of Google alone: Google Page Creator - Create your web pages Google Adwords - Advertise your website and web pages Google Adsense - Publish paid ads and make money from your web pages Google Analytics - Track your website and web pages Google AdManager - Manage and track website advertisements Google Storage & Hosting (Release Date is TBD) - Host your web pages I think what Google is doing is great, but the power 1 company has is astounding. I guess its hard to call it monopolizing since you are not forced or locked in to use their products -- they make great, useful, and FREE products which is why they get a bulk of the share. I just always have a concern for a major corporation knowing my every move! But if you see the list above, its becoming more and more avoidable to disguise yourself from the prying eyes of Google. And they are now tracking your visitors after they leave your website -- so says the latest Adsense publisher agreement update. Admanager will just take this behavior tracking to the next level.
I'm waiting to be accepted into the beta..but I was wondering... Is there any type of geo-targetting included? Kinda a big part of what I do, and I'll bet G has an amazing DB that'll get everyone targetted correctly.
never mind, answered my own question... https://www.google.com/admanager/login/en_US/features.html#targeting has all of the features it does do geotargetting
I just started using Google Ad Manager today, but for any ad slot, I believe you can opt to fill remnant inventory with AdSense. Of course, if you have nothing but AdSense to run, you probably don't need the Ad Manager. You can also put any kind of campaign in to fill remnant inventory. I believe these campaigns will run indefinitely, and fill in the gaps after CPM campaigns have finished, or fill in the gaps over the life of the campaign.
The one thing that is confusing me a bit, is the methodology of creating hundreds of Ad Slots, then a smaller number of Placements, and then individual Orders out of Placements. I am currently converting a site over from 24/7 Real Media Open AdStream (OAS) to the Google Ad Manager platform. In OAS, we have 17 categories for advertising: Restaurants and Bars, Automotive, Hotel and Travel, Real Estate, Spa and Beauty, etc. The various pages on our site are each tagged with one of these categories, and this is how our advertising is segmented. Our CMS reads the tag, and applies ads from the proper category to the page automatically. In order to do this in Google Ad Manager, I have to create hundreds of Ad Slots - one for each of the five ad sizes we run in each category. That is 85 different Ad Slots. It seems kind of redundant to be creating these Ad Slots: Restaurants_and_Bars_160x600 Restaurants_and_Bars_120x600 Restaurants_and_Bars_768x90 Restaurants_and_Bars_300x250 Restaurants_and_Bars_468x60 Spa_and_Beauty_160x600 Spa_and_Beauty_120x600 Spa_and_Beauty_768x90 Spa_and_Beauty_300x250 Spa_and_Beauty_468x60 Why not just have the ability to create five ad sizes, and tag them, to quickly create a large variety? Well, I discovered that I can sort of do this using Targeting. What I did was to create the five Ad Slots, then I created one Placement that contains all five Slots. Then, under Targeting, I created a Target called, "Category". In this Target I put the array of 17 categories we use. Then, I wrote a script on our site to automatically create the needed Google Ad Manager Javascript to call the proper ads based on what tags are applied to the page. These tags correspond to the Category Target I defined above. All of this makes the administration a bit easier, and I don't have to mess around with tons of Ad Slots, and it fits a bit better with the way our site is already managed. However, I feel like I am using the Targeting feature in a way that was not intended, and I am going a bit against the grain of the Ad Manager. I can't see a down side to this method yet, but I am worried that I may regret this approach later, because there is something I am overlooking. Anyone else have a similar reaction to this?
Just received the welcome email a few minutes ago and i will test it fully in a new site: Adsense + CJ + something else... Hope i can get it working in a few days.
Admanager (correct me if I am wrong) is free for the publishers. Say if you make a sale for 1,000,000 impressions and they run out. The 1,000,001th ad impression will be a google adsense ad (which you will make money on still). They did this as a move to increase their volume. Pretty damn good if you ask me.