So I got this email from google yesterday regarding one of the sites I have on my list. i dont know if i should disregard it as standard propaganda or whether I should go with it Your thoughts? (please let me know if I am breaching any TOC of Google by posting this) Dear Publisher, After a recent review of your site, we would like to include <mysite> in our custom placement packs program. Custom placement packs are selections of individually-reviewed sites designed for our largest brand advertisers. We would like to feature your site more frequently in these advertiser packages, but to do so, we need you to place more image and text-enabled medium rectangle ad units (300x250) on your site. Visit https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats to see a sample of the medium rectangle unit. The medium rectangle is the most demanded size among our brand advertisers that utilize these packages for both text and image ads. These advertisers want to ensure they reach visitors on high quality sites like yours, and are willing to bid more for ads prominently displayed on these sites. They require that the units be placed "above the fold" on a page so that the ads are immediately visible to your site's visitors without scrolling down. If you decide to add medium rectangle units to your site, please notify us by replying to this email so that we can begin featuring your site in more of our advertiser packages. We also recommend you use the newly launched ad placements feature to define your ad slots to advertisers so they can bid on specific placements on your site. For instructions on how to create ad placements, please visit https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=50691 . Sincerely, Geoff Vitt AdSense Support
Sounds a bit strange...surely Google can just send the advertisers to your site automatically. Whether the ads are "above the fold" or not is irrelevant as the advertisers would only have to pay if it got clicked. Anyone else received this? kumiko xo
I had this as well. There has been talk that Google is starting to pitch multi-media ads directly to the agencies - so they need a portfolio of premium publishers to sell ad space on. It is all good news for us
This has been mentioned on a very prominent blog. I think it was Philipp Lensson's but can't be sure exactly where I read it. Yes, it is legitimate!
I also received this email and I have never considered myself a premium publisher! As suggested by the google team I added some medium rectangle units above the fold to a few of my more popular pages and almost immediately my earnings went down. I know it could be just coincidence as I read on another thread that a lot of people's earnings have gone down in the last week.