I'm not sure if you have heard but new features of Adsense for the close of 2006 beginning in 2007. "Google AdSenseâ„¢ Google Holiday Logo The Latest from Google AdSense - December 2006 * Note From The Editors * New and Improved AdSense Features o Wanted: 300x250 medium rectangles for display of video ads o Multiple channels, maximum tracking o New optimization tips for Referrals o AdSense payments, demystified o EFT expanded to 4 new countries o New success stories from publishers like you o Extra! Extra! AdSense tests offline newspaper advertising * Publisher Education o Tailor your users' search experience with a Google Custom Search Engine o Make your site more Google-friendly with our Webmaster Tools o Understand your audience with Analytics o Promote & enhance your website using Gadgets o Embed a searchable Google Map without writing any code o Collaborate on your site content with Google Docs & Spreadsheets o Communicate better with others with Google Apps For Your Domain * AdSense Resources Note From The Editors Hi, As 2006 comes to a close, we wanted to end the year by making sure all of you are updated on the latest developments in the AdSense world. In the past few months we've launched some exciting new features for AdSense, as well as several new Google products that AdSense publishers like you may find useful. To all of our publishers, we wish you a safe holiday season and a happy new year. See you in 2007! Christine & Julie, on behalf of the Google AdSense Team New and Improved AdSense Features Wanted: 300x250 medium rectangles for display of video ads Earlier this year, we launched click-to-play video ads, a new form of relevant and engaging advertising. Paid on either a CPC or CPM basis, video ads present an improved revenue opportunity for you because they compete with other text and image ads for placement on sites, making the ad auction more competitive. For best results, we recommend the following: * Use a 300 x 250 medium rectangle format that's enabled to show video ads * Position the rectangle in above-the-fold, prime locations on your pages This implementation is especially popular with advertisers looking for sites to target both their image and video ads. To see examples of good placement, check out these demos created by our friends over in AdWords. If the medium rectangle is not a fit for your pages, video ads are also supported in three other ad formats. Multiple channels, maximum tracking For greater flexibility and more granular tracking, we now allow you to add up to five custom channels to any ad unit. This increased tracking freedom will come in handy whenever you want to track one ad unit across a variety of different metrics, such as location or format. For example, you could now track an Open Air leaderboard ad unit at the top of the page using three custom channels: Open Air, Leaderboard, and Top. New optimization tips for Referrals Looking to increase your referrals earnings? Check out the new referrals optimization tips page! Here you'll find suggestions on which products may work best for your site and how to determine the optimal placement for your referral buttons. AdSense payments, demystified No longer will the arrival of AdSense payments be shrouded in mystery. Introducing the AdSense Payment Schedule demo, here to make it clear when your payments will be processed, sent, and received, whether on your doorstep or in your bank account. Our demo also outlines the process of reissuing earnings that have been credited back to your account. EFT expanded to 4 new countries Breaking news for publishers located in the Czech Republic, Finland, Israel, and Slovakia-- we've extended Electronic Funds Transfer payments to these 4 additional countries. Now you can enjoy the benefits of EFT, including faster receipt of payments and fewer bank fees. Haven't yet signed up for EFT? Just follow our easy instructions. New success stories from publishers like you * "It's worth the effort to test and experiment. We've found that our optimization efforts on AdSense have had a substantial positive impact on revenues." -Chris Davis, Neopets.com * "AdSense does the work for us and has allowed us to tap 100 percent of our market, since we can reach both small and large metropolitan areas, versus serving only a few big advertisers. AdSense has made a tremendous difference in our business." -Jeremy Bencken, ApartmentRatings.com One of the most common requests we get from publishers is more examples of publishers like them who've found success with AdSense. On that note, we're excited to introduce you to 4 publishers all with very diverse sites - Neopets.com, Apartment Ratings, TakeABreak, and Swapalease.com. Read about them here. Also, check out a few of our publisher testimonials from the recent Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose. Extra! Extra! AdSense tests offline newspaper advertising We're excited to announce that we're in the early stages of testing AdSense for Newspapers with a select group of newspaper publishers. AdSense for Newspapers gives newspaper publishers a new source of advertising revenue by connecting them with AdWords advertisers who want to place display ads in major papers across the U.S. If you happen to be a newspaper publisher interested in participating in future tests, please check out AdSense for Newspapers and submit your contact information. Publisher Education Tailor your users' search experience with Custom Search Engine Create your own tailored search experience for your users with a Custom Search Engine that reflects your knowledge and expertise. If you're using AdSense for search, you can link your account to your custom search engine and add a new revenue stream from the ads within the custom search engine results. In a few quick steps you can create a search engine that looks and feels like your site. It's easy to use and set up, and you can prioritize search results based on your interests; invite members of your community to participate in growing your search engine content. And just like AdSense for search, you can integrate your custom search engine directly into your site so your users stay on your pages. Keep in mind that while our site is in English only at this time, you can create a custom search engine that searches across content in the following languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. Make your site more Google-friendly with our Webmaster Tools Google's Webmaster Tools provide you with a free and easy way to make your site more Google-friendly. They allow you to get Google's view of your website & diagnose potential problems, see what queries drive traffic to your site and how users find you. The tools can also tell Google about your pages, what is important, and how often they change. The more eyeballs you have on your useful content, the better for your AdSense performance. Understand your audience with Analytics More and more AdSense Publishers are discovering Google Analytics . It's free and as easy to set up as AdSense, and will give you the data you need to back up your AdSense decisions. For example, if you're wondering where to put your AdSense ads, you can look at Google Analytics reports to find out which pages on your site get the most traffic, and where visitors spend the most time. All you need to do is add a couple of lines of code to each page on your site. Sign up for a free account and see results today. Promote & enhance your website using Gadgets You can enhance your own website and promote your website's content, for free, by using Google Gadgets. To enhance your own website, you can add fun or content-rich gadgets by copying and pasting a little HTML you can generate from the directory of gadgets for your webpage. To promote your website's content on the Google homepage and on other sites across the web, you can create and optimize your own Google Gadget. Embed a searchable Google Map without writing any code Let your users search for places on a Google Map without leaving your site. The best part is you don't need to write a single line of JavaScript or HTML. The Map Search Wizard will generate code for you, and all you have to do is copy and paste the code into your page just like AdSense. You can also customize how you want the map to look and the center location. It's easy, fast, and free. And if you're interested in doing more with a dynamic Google search box, check out the AJAX Search API Collaborate on your site content with Docs & Spreadsheets Google Docs & Spreadsheets is our new web-based word processing and spreadsheet program, perfect for managing your site's content and sharing it with others. You can edit and save in HTML to create mockups of your webpages, access your files from any computer via a web browser, easily send them to collaborators to review & edit, and view all past revisions to any document. Docs & Spreadsheets also provides an easy way to distribute content. Your users won't need to download anything from your site; just create your content in Docs & Spreadsheets or upload an existing file, publish it, and then link directly to the file from your website. Google Docs & Spreadsheets is free, secure and easy to try out. Check out the product tour for an overview, or just sign up here. Communicate better with others with Google Apps For Your Domain The more you can focus on your site content, the more successful you can be with AdSense. Now available in 18 different languages, Google Apps for Your Domain allows you to spend less time, energy, and money on one of the biggest distractions for publishers: maintaining IT systems. Now you can offer powerful communication and collaboration tools including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk to everyone with an account on your own domain, people within your organization or members of your community. Best of all, everything is managed on Google's scalable, secure systems, just like AdSense. AdSense Resources * Optimization Tips Page - Find out how to improve your AdSense performance with tried and true tips. * Google Tools for AdSense Publishers - Learn about other Google products you can use to improve and enrich your site. * Inside AdSense Blog - Keep up with the latest news, tips, success stories, and insights direct from members of the AdSense team. To receive posts directly in your inbox, subscribe to the blog. * AdSense Help Forum - Become a part of the AdSense community, where you can learn from other publishers and share your own knowledge and experiences. * AdSense Calendar - Make AdSense dates memorable by subscribing to the AdSense Calendar, which provides our monthly payment schedule, a record of AdSense blog posts, future system maintenance periods, and upcoming events. Until next time... If you have any comments or questions about the tips and features outlined in this email, we'd love to hear from you. Note: This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. If you have any questions, please contact us through the link listed above."
On one of shoe mans blogs. I think its on the offical adsense blog as well http://adsense.blogspot.com/?utm_source=aso&utm_campaign=ww-en_US-et-asfe&medium=link
Jesus - when was that change made??? That's the first I've heard of it but as it's on the official blog I've removed all the images next to my ads... Sort of sucks though... My earnings are going to take a small plunge but I suppose it's better than being banned
Ugh! - I guess I know what I'll be doing for the next few days. And I know my earnings will dip a bit. I'll have to rethink another clever way of integrating the ads now.
The official announced was on 12/18/2006 10:43:00 AM. . If some webmaster have about 10 ~ 30+ of website which have images beside the ads, i think they will be having a busy time.. I read the news here http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/12/ad-and-image-placement-policy.html.
One solution would be to replace the image file with a blank image file. It doesn't look good as you'll have a huge white space but it'll be a good temporary solution while you edit the code.
True. And i wonder, if its against the TOS or not, 1. if the image is put upper of the ads. 2. 1 ad on top the other ad.
Well in their blog they say don't place the image so visitors get confused that it's part of the ad. I think this means placing the 4 little thumbnails in line with the block ad, or placing a thumbnail next to the half banner etc... Placing a picture above an ad (unless the ad is a leaderboard etc...) should be fine I think. That's the problem again - what counts as confusing placement of images? It'll change from person to person... I'm just going to stay well clear of this one and avoid putting any images next to ads for the time being... I've already noticed a drop in CTR though...