Want More AdSense Income? Use Placement Targeting!

Did you know that you can increase your AdSense income by letting advertisers know more about your business via placement targeting? Read on.

I’ve been contacted by a friendly lady from AdSense Team offering a (rare) opportunity for having one of my sites’ AdSense placements optimized for better income. It didn’t take me 5 minutes to say yes. What else could I expect for more – getting optimization tips from the ad network itself!

I was recommended 2 things: First, adding more ads on strategic location (typical suggestion); Second, adding placement targeting (now this is interesting!)

What is placement targeting? Why is it important? Read on…

Placement targeting 101

First thing first: Create custom channel

Are you using channels for your AdSense ads? If you haven’t, you should… no… you HAVE to! Channels help you to track impressions, clicks, CTR, ad revenue and so on from a particular set of ad units. Typically, channels are used to identify where you place the ad.

For instance, if you place an AdSense ad unit on sidebar top-right section of your website, you might want to create a channel for that.

Where to create a channel: Inside your AdSense account dashboard, choose “My Ads” > “Custom Channels” > click on “New Custom Channel”. Then you can add existing ad units or link units into the channel to group-track your ads.

You can also create a channel when you create a new ad unit (“My Ads” > “Ad Units” > “New Ad Unit”) – inside, you can setup your ad dimension and color, as well as choosing/adding channel to track the ad unit.

Custom channel is not enough: Add placement targeting to your channel!

You understand what your channel is all about. But do the advertisers know exactly where their ads will be displayed? Do the advertisers know whether their ads will perform on that channel or not?

Remember, when the right ads served on your Ad units, that directly mean more clicks and revenue for you! Placement targeting help advertisers decide whether their ads will be the best fit for your website and audience.

Here’s how things work for your advertisers:

You DO know that your AdSense ad units are serving your advertisers’ ads placed via AdWords, don’t you? Advertisers will search for websites they want to show their ads on via the AdWords interface. If you haven’t set placement targeting, your advertiser will see nothing but your URL. This is not adequate in helping them decide whether your site is for them or not.

When you set placement targeting, your advertisers will learn more about your website and ad space – this is, by far, more appealing to them, and attracting them to place their ads DIRECTLY to your website!

Learn more about placement targeting »

Now, how to create placement targeting to your channel?

It’s pretty straightforward: Inside your AdSense account, go to “My Ads” > “Custom Channels”, choose your channel (or create a new one) and find the “Targetable” column: Set “Yes.”

IMPORTANT STEP: Enter the following details:

• Ads appear on: Note where ads in this placement appear on your site – i.e. on the homepage, or on other specific pages you want.
• Ad location: Select the location on the page where ads in this placement appear – i.e. ads displayed on top-right sidebar of your pages.
• Description: Describe your custom channel in details – what is your site about, who is your audience, where will the ad displayed (e.g. This site is about XYZ, Ad space size is XYZ, audience is interested in XYZ and age group is 18-34 women, we have approximately XYZ pageviews/month…)
• Site language: The primary language of your site content.

Don’t forget to hit “Save”!

Now, your ad locations stand out above the rest – why? I believe that 80% AdSense publishers haven’t done targeting; most of them don’t use custom channels, either. What will happen if your ad spaces stand out? Advertisers will choose your ad spaces and chances are, you will get more payment per click/thousand-impression.

Here’s the official guide on placement targeting from Google »

Is it working?

I’ve implement it for 3 days or so, and all I can say is the ads displayed on my website is WAY MORE RELEVANT than before. My click through rate (CTR) is improving, so does my revenue! Perhaps it’s too early to verdict on anything, but this is definitely a good sign!

I suggest you to give it a shot – it just takes a little effort on your side and I don’t see any negative side effect of implementing this.

So – will you try it?

Ivan Widjaya
Owner/Editor AsepOnde.com
photo credit: quickonlinetips via photopin cc