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AdSense For Video, the closed pilot program that Google launched back in May, has now been made into a regular program that any publisher can take part in. Introducing video units from Google’s Inside AdSense blog has more about the program, which allows publishers to carry video from YouTube and earn from ads shown within the player. From the post:

Simply embed a snippet of code and have relevant YouTube partner content streamed to your site. You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your site content. Companion and text overlay ads are relevant and non-intrusive.

More can be found from Google in these new help pages, and existing AdSense publishers should see an AdSense For Video option via the AdSense Setup tab shortly (at the moment, I don’t see it showing myself, but it should come soon). Google also sent this message out to the press:

As media becomes more and more fragmented, content providers and advertisers are looking for new ways to distribute their messages to the right audiences at scale. To better connect content providers with consumers and to give publishers new ways to further engage their audiences, Google today announced the availability of video units, the first offering for content distribution on AdSense(TM). Video units enable AdSense publishers to display relevant, targeted video content within a customized, embedded player that’s ad-supported. Google is working with select YouTube content partners including TV Guide Broadband, Expert Village, Mondo Media, lonelygirl15, Extreme Elements, and Ford Models to supply the video content. The video units are user-initiated and will play only after a user has clicked to play the video.

The ads within the video unit are targeted based on a combination of the video content and the publisher’s site content. Advertisers are charged on a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression basis. Ads appear as a companion banner ad at the top of the video unit and as a text ad on the bottom portion of the video once the video begins playing. AdSense publishers and YouTube content partners will receive a share of the ad revenue.

Content distribution on AdSense improves the overall web experience by connecting consumers with more relevant information and entertainment on the sites they visit. This new program is a scalable and cost-effective way to distribute content online, creates a new revenue opportunity for publishers and content owners, and helps advertisers reach their target audiences in new and innovative ways. It will also allow AdSense publishers a unique way to enhance their sites with fresh, dynamic content.

Video units are now available in the U.S. for English language websites. Over the coming months, we will expand the program to include other types of content to bring these benefits to content owners no matter their medium of choice.

Also see discussion on Techmeme here.

Postscript from Greg: What’s interesting is how Google is taking AdSense distribution and turning into a syndication mechanism for content. The videos themselves that will be distributed as part of the program are not ads but content that can be selected by the publisher. Publishers have varying degrees of choice in the program; they can choose to allow Google to match video content with their sites, choose a “channel” (type of video content) or an individual video producer. And, as mentioned, video is simply the first content type of many that could come later: audio, text, games, and so on.

Two types of ads exist: one that sits on top of or within the player (below) and a “text overlay” that appears 10 seconds into the stream. These are conventional AdSense ads and don’t require any separate creative or action on the part of advertisers. Below is a screenshot of the player and an ad, which has the quality of a sponsorship placement:

There are two major changes to AdSense: (1) Google now requires AdSense publishers to comply with “the spirit� of the AdWords Page Quality Guidelines. (2) You can place up to three link units on a page. Number one might hold a few valuable clues about how to make more money out of Adsense, as Google continues to clamp down on junk content.

Well, some of them.

It’s been reported that Google have been closing numerous Adsense accounts, and some people have been speculating it’s due to a new crackdown on arbitrage tactics. Without a copy of the email, it’s difficult to know for sure.

From WebmasterWorld:

� know of two associates who were doing arbitrage and yes they got the same email on the 15th…..their accounts will be disabled June 1st. These guys were sending adwords traffic to their landing pages. From what I saw their landing pages had good content but were a MFA site with two blocks of adsense code at the top and one at the bottom. No other external links on the page�.

Somehow, I doubt it’s due to arbitrage. It’s more likely due to non-performance, from the advertisers point-of-view.

Arbitrage can provide value - there are examples all over the web, and offline. Advertising buys, local search, affiliate, e-bay stores, and, yes - major search engines - all use arbitrage, to a degree. Arbitrage is a given in any inefficient marketplace - which is all of them.

As far as Adsense goes, it will come down to how the arbitrage is implemented. If there is no value provided to the advertiser, expect to get canned by Google eventually, arbitrage or otherwise. Google have made no secret of the fact that their philosophy orients around providing utility to the end-user, and that includes PPC advertisers. Many made-for-adsense sites provide no utility whatsoever.

So, less to do with arbitrage. More to do with publishing page-after-page of nothing but Adsense, methinks.

Nick Carr makes some good points about Google’s strengths, and their weaknesses.

“To competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo, Google must seem like a greased pig. You can see the damned thing running amok in your garden, but you can’t figure out a good way to get hold of it“

The beauty of Adwords, in terms of defensibility, is that Adwords uses an auction model. It can’t be underpriced.

“Schmidt: Another example of Sergey [Brin]’s observations is that our advertising network is very powerful because it’s quite resistant to certain competitive attacks.

Vogelstein: Such as?

Schmidt: Because it’s an auction market you cannot under-price it. This point is lost on many, many people.“

However, Carr identifies an area where Google might be vulnerable: Adsense payouts.

�Introduce a free version of AdSense. By free, I mean that you tell publishers that if they run your ads on their sites, they get to keep all the advertising revenues. 100 percent. You won’t take any cut. Immediately, you put a lot of pricing pressure on an important source of revenues and profits for Google.“

This is certainly an initiative many publishers could get on board with. Google would be forced to compete on payouts.

However, Yahoo and MSN would also need the volume of advertisers. And they’d need to get off their behinds and actually provide an international distributed ad network . Adsense was rolled out internationally - when? 2003?

It’s now 2007.

Where is MSN? Where are Yahoo (internationally)?

These days even though my traffic has increased my Adsense Click Through Rate (CTR) remains low. I tried many things to increase my CTR like putting images next to my Ads, implementing Section targetting, blended Ads, placing Ads near content, choosing best Ad format, etc but I did not succeed in increasing my CTR much.

A few days back, while chatting with LiewCF, I asked him for some suggestions to increase my CTR. He quickly gave me some tips which I had not thought of before. I tried some of them and I already noticed my CTR improve. What were those tips?

Below I have listed the tips that Liew suggested to me along with my comments. But please do note that these tips are meant for my site. They may or may not work for you.

• remove the date icon, it steals the visitor’s attention from the AdsHere Liew talks about the Date Stamp next to my title. According to him, the Date stamp distracts my visitors from the AdSense Ads.

  I will be removing them in my next theme redesign.

• remove ‘categories’ and ‘tags’ after post titleAccording to Liew, the “categoriesâ€? and “tagsâ€? near my title are some of the other things that distract my visitors from the Adsense Ads. I took a look at how “categoriesâ€? were shown on Liew’s blog and found that the main difference was that his ‘Categories’ had no images next to them like mine.

  So I just removed it’s images instead of removing or placing them at the end of the post.

• use line instead of shadow for the image next to Ad or flip the shadow to other sideI just used Adsense Beautifier which uses a vertical line to separate the images from the Ad.
• move out the blogging, tweaks, etc on topI am not sure I want to do this.
• swap the left and right sidebarI will be doing this on my next theme redesign
• use smaller icon imageLiew says that the big images of floppies and DVDs next to my AdSense Ads tempted him to click the images instead of the Ads. I felt he was right, so I enabled AdSense Beautifier which shows smaller images by default.
• use same color for the adsense text and urlI had earlier experimented with same color for the link and url, but not for text and url. Anyways I tried this too.
• don’t put the image at top and bottom, try somewhere in the middleI enabled Adsense Beautifer, which uses 4 images for the large rectangle format.
• try darker link color, it will make your Ads stand out from the blue linksThis is a good tip that all of us should try out.

So how much did my CTR increase? The answer is…’not much’, but it did improve and I would like to thank Liew for that.

I hope atleast some of these tips were useful to you. What other tips would you add

What is Competitive Ads Filter

Competitive Ads Filter is a function in Google Adsense that enables you to lock specific ads, such as competitors’ ads from appearing on your pages. Google allows you to enter up to 200 URLs.

Why Competitive Ads Filter

Most webmaster and bloggers doesn’t realize that by not setting that, they are actually losing a lot of their earnings to MFA (Make for Adsense) sites and Arbitragers. This means you can actually earn more, but a fat percent of your potential earnings has gone to MFA & Arbitrages.

What exactly are MFA (Make for Adsense) sites and Arbitragers?

Print screens below shows sample of a MFA.

These websites basically have no content. Their pages are full with Adsense begging pathetically to be clicked. Their existence is only for one reason – to make money from Google Adsense, usually by taking advantage of visitors that click on your website.

How MFA (Make for Adsense) sites and Arbitragers suck my income?

MFA sites bids the minimum amount on a keyword and with the relevant keyword of your content, these MFA ads be will showed in your Adsense text ads.

Your readers clicks on these MFA text ads, you make few cents (probably 1 to 3 cents or so). Your readers are then brought to the MFA sites, filled with real Adsense Text ads. Your readers click and MFA make $1 or more. Not all will click on the ads on MFA, but it’s definitely enough for them to break-even and make 50% to 500% return.

This whole process is called the PPC Arbitrage. PPC Arbitrage not only affects your Adsense income but also the experience of using your site. Readers expect something informative, but their click leads them to more confusing ads.

Now that you’ve totally understand what a MFA sites and Arbitragers are, you will probably be asking? Why hasn’t Google done something about this? Simple. Google make their profits out of it no matter what and it did not violate any terms and condition set by Google Adsense.

How to use Competitive Ads Filter

To keep these MFA sites away, you need to insert their URL into Google Adsense Competitive Ads Filter. This will then filter their low CPC ads out and Google will then give you higher pay ads on your site.

Log in to your Google Adsense account, click on Adsense Setup and look for Competitive Ad Filter.

Start putting in list of these MFA sites, save them and Google will take about 12 hours to start blocking these ads out of your ads.

To add list to Competitive Ad Filter, you should check out Ads Black List. Ads Black List generate you a list of 50 MFA sites for you to filter. If you are a member of Ads Black List, they will generate you 200, which is also the limit of the Google Competitive Ad Filter.

As a web site publisher you have the ability to earn quite a tidy sum if you have a niche web site, at least 1000 uniques a day and the ability to change and test results daily.

Creating a profitable AdSense site isn’t difficult either, all you have to do is have a Google AdSense account (which is free), a website or a blog (which is also free), and some articles written by you about the niche (theme of your site) of your site. Now before you panic about having to write your own articles, don’t panic, they are very easy to write. Having a Google AdSense sites is a fantastic way to make money. Thousands of web designers, work at home mums and dads run web sites that are supported by Google Adsense.

Making Money with Google Adsense
There is an increasing realization that Adsense has the potential to make a great deal of money for bloggers and other publishers to the extent of creating an increasing number of millionaires, especially amongst those who are willing to implement critical tips and secrets to maximize their earnings.

Basically what happens is that you place a small piece of Google Adsense script in the html of your web page, Google then spiders that page and delivers small ads that match the content of that page. And when a visitor comes to your Adsense page, reads your article and clicks on an advertisement, Google pays you a share of what the advertiser paid for the click. If you are in a market which is over supplied with advertisers, you could expect to earn 1 cent to 10 cents per click, but if your website is in a market like finance, law our web site marketing, which has high paying advertisers you could expect clicks between 20 cents to over $5.

Traps and Pitfalls
Good quality content is the difference between fortune and failure. Don’t do what most webmasters do and go to an article directory and plainly copy and paste the article directly onto your web page. Make the content unique first. Add a summary at the start of each article. Add sub headers after each 2nd paragraph, then sub header after the authors bio at the bottom of the article.

Do not produce made for Adsense web sites. Google has come down hard on these recently and even though you may have generated 1000’s of dollars that month using this technique, if Google bans you, they will not pay you and it’s almost impossible to get your Google Adsense account back.

Produce web sites with your visitors needs in mind, give them what they want and they will come back again and again. And Google will think you are great too and reward you with higher rankings and heaps more traffic.
When I first started in this business I was hungry for advice and ideas to make my sites earn more, I bought ebook after ebook from Adsense gurus all over the world. Out of the dozen or so ebook I bought during those early months, it was only two that gave me some tips I could utilize straight away and make money from. I will tell you what ones in a later article. But for now be warned, read up on all the marketers that are offering this get rich ebooks. Ask yourself would you share all your secrets about making money with Adsense if you were actually making money?

Best Kind of Content for Google Adsense
Content is not just king when it comes to Adsense revenue, it is everything and it matters like crazy. The most vital, top Adsense make money tips have to be based on the content that you carry on your Adsense web site or blog site. Good quality, keyword rich content is by far the best formula. Having pages and pages of it with Adsense embedded in it is the secret of making the mega bucks with Google Adsense. It works like this. You write an article about home loans. You keyword optimize it so that it has a keyword density of around 4%. Place a keyword in the headline, then more keywords in all the sub headlines. Place your keyword in the title of your page and submit that page to the search engines. Google, yahoo and MSN will send their spiders through your site, index the page you have just optimized and place it within the top 10 for the keywords search term. The search engines then send hundreds of visitors to your site, which in turn click the Google Adsense ads on the page. repeat this process for all the pages of your site and you will make a fortune with Google Adsense.

Google Adsense publishers are masters of testing. test, test and test again until you have a winning formula. I tested position, color and size for over a year on one of my sites before I found a winning system that took my ctr from 3% to over 17% and a click average of 56 cents.

If you decide to become an Adsense publisher, be prepared for many sleepless nights, disappointments when you income goes from $500 a day to $10 a day in a matter of days and continuous brainstorming trying to find the perfect Adsense formula for your web site.

I’ve been limbering up for the start of the weekly ‘Pimp My Blog‘ series which starts on Monday (click here to submit your site), and trying to remember all the tricks and tweaks I’ve used over the last 18 months. Here are ten ways in which you can improve your adsense CPMs and CTRs.

1. Use Section Targeting: Adding section targetting had the biggest single impact on increasing my CTR, increasing mine by nearly 50% overnight. Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you’d like Google to emphasise or downplay when matching ads to your site’s content
2. Work on your keyword density: Getting a good mix between keyword density and readability is crucial. Not only will increasing your keyword density improve your search engine listings, but it will make it easier for Adsense to decide what ads to serve e.g. if you want ads about ‘Playstations’ displayed, then make sure you repeat the word Playstation as many times as possible
3. Make Your Ads Look Like Normal Content: I’m amazed by how many sites use different colours, shading, borders, fonts etc for their ads. Adsense gives a lot of controls over colours and you should use them. Make sure your ads look like the rest of your site e.g. if the rest of your site has a white background, then so should your banners etc.
4. Make Sure Your Best Unit Loads First: Adsense loads the ads with the highest CPM first. A common mistake of many sites is to have an ad unit in the header, which isn’t usually the best unit for clicks. This means that ads nearer the content which tend to have higher CTRs get ads served with lower CPMs. The net effect is that you lose money. To maximise your cash make sure that your best performing unit loads first on your pages
5. Embed Your Banners In Or Near Your Content: Your users are normally focussing on the post they have chosen to read, so ads near your post content will always have the best CTRs. Huge skyscraper ads in your sidebar or header may look impressive, but taking up lots of space isn’t the best way to get users to click on ads

I have seen lots of sites that have implemented this incorrectly in my view by putting their ads directly above their post content. I think this is a mistake as all it does in my view is encourage the user to scroll past their ads, rather than read the ads first, which I think is the desired objective.

6. Think About Where Your Hotspots Are: Try and position your secondary ads where you think your users may be lingering on your page, e.g. at the end of your posts, before and after your comments etc. For instance my link ad unit above my related posts below does very well, even though it is way below the fold. Read this post for more ideas of places to try your ads
7. Reduce The Noise Around Your Units: Try to keep any unnecessary links, badges, logos etc away from your best units, so that nothing, and I mean nothing, gets in the way of users seeing your ads. Look at the ad I have in my hotspot at the top on the left. I have removed anything that obscures the ad e.g. post details, categories, tags, author etc - all I have is the post title, the content and the ad.This is also one of the reasons I have my sidebar on the right, even though it would be more effective on the left, as positioning this ad unit is the number priority for my site design as it delivers 75% of my adsense income
8. Use The Competitive Ad Filter: The purpose of the Competitive Ad Filter is to enable you to block specific ads. If you don’t use the Competitive ad filter you run the risk of low ‘Made For Adsense’ ads being displayed. Read more
   
9. Don’t Be Afraid To Put Your Ads Below The Fold: This goes against conventional wisdom, but it can work. For instance I found that my Skyscraper adsense ad on the right performs better below the fold than it does above the fold. This is because it is placed near the end of my average length posts, i.e. near a ‘hotspot’
10. Use Channels And Experiement: You will only find the right positions and units for your ads by experimenting. But, to see if any of your changes are making an impact you need to use Adsense Channels. Create a seperate channel for each ad unit that you use and start a spreadsheet where you keep notes of what changes you made, and what the impact was on your CTR and eCPM rates

Yes, Money can be made from your website with a little hard work, affiliate knowledge and a true vision. Adsense from Google will be a big part of your plan.

Washington State - 12/23/2005 - Google Adsense Success, Tips and Resources.

The internet is a amazing and confusing place for a newcomer who wants to make money from their website, but with a lot of hard work and knowledge, a person can really make measurable money. Affiliate accounts and using Google Adsense can be a great combination to prosper from the internet.

Here are a few tools needed:

- Find a affordable hosting company to host several websites. - Find websites that will assist you with keywords and popular subject on the internet. - Find a affordable place to by your domains. - Purchase simple software like FrontPage and a Graphics software.

Ideas to help you move forward:

- Setup a Adsense account and a Adzoogle account for affiliate linking. - Start with a website of your interest, insure it have full content. - Submit the site to the search engines, Ezines and link with other websites.

It is critical for you to read articles and Ebook’s to help you with your ideas. There is a large amount of shared knowledge for you. You will save time and money by purchasing books and software. In a few short weeks, you can have great income and traffic coming to your site. Good content and basic website design is the key. Make sure you create a site that your visitors will benefit from and come back to.

A site has been provided for you to understand Adsense and web affiliate linking at www.adsenseonlinefind.com. A complete site full of great knowledge and understanding to making profits from the internet.