We're constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate your patience during this transition and here are some alternative options to consider:

• Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/.
  
  
• AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AdSense for content ad units.
  

If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is retired:

• Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your ad space.
  
• Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create and save all reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information.
  

Thank you for your support of AdSense Referrals in the past. If you have any additional questions, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Anuj Srivastava - AdSense Product Marketing

"I want to improve my AdSense performance, but I don't know how to get started!"

We hear you. The myriad of optimisation tools and options AdSense offers can be a bit overwhelming. Colors, placements, channels, ad sizes -- there are more options to choose from than you can poke a mouse cursor at! Ideally, we wish you could just click a button and have a fully optimised webpage published to the Internet. But until that magical day comes, we have a solution for you.

The Australian AdSense team has put together a short video that takes the confusion out of optimising. The video goes through a step by step guide to optimising AdSense performance - from analysing your page type, to choosing the right ad sizes and colors, and tracking your results. We also cover our most popular tips to increase eCPM, without adversely affecting your community's experience on your page.



So if it's been a while since you've refreshed your AdSense ad units, or if you're confused on how to use channels to optimise, invest ten minutes into the video. It's the closest thing you'll get to that magic button.

Posted by Mel Ann Chan - AdSense Australia Optimisation Team

Back in 1995, Gary Rosenzweig published some of the world's first web-based games. Some of his early games as well as more than 100 created by CleverMedia, the company he later founded, are available at GameScene.com.

"Even in those early days, it was clear to us that web advertising was the best way to earn money from our content," says Gary. Revenue from ads offered him creative and financial freedom to be both a game developer and publisher. But the early ad banner market was volatile and fluctuated constantly. It wasn't until he joined the AdSense program in August 2003 that Gary was able to get consistent high-level performance from advertising.

"AdSense not only performs better than banner ads, but is also much better for site visitors," Gary notes. "The text ads and high-quality display ads used by Google were a far better experience than the pop-ups, pop-unders and interstitial ads still used today by our competitors."

At GameScene.com, CleverMedia uses 160x600 wide skyscrapers next to the games, and 300x250 medium rectangles on instructions pages. Gary encourages other publishers to test different ad formats and placements on their own sites, especially as their users grow and change. Having non-obtrusive but relevant advertising on high-traffic pages provides the revenue CleverMedia needs to keep making innovative web games.

Have your own success story to share? We'd love to hear from you.

Posted by Sunil Subhedar - AdSense Publisher Support

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. That's why our publishers know how important it is to make their sites sticky to keep users on their pages longer. If you're a savvy coder, love to build cool apps and mashups, and wonder what more you can do to enhance your website with video and increase the stickiness, then we'd like to cordially invite you to attend Powered By YouTube on Thursday, July 10!

Powered By YouTube is our first-ever developer gathering focused on bringing together a wide range of developers to learn more about YouTube's APIs and Tools. You'll spend the day at YouTube's headquarters and learn how to bring YouTube to your website, share best practices, and get hands-on with the APIs. You'll also meet fellow YouTube API developers across a wide range of companies, YouTube engineers and product managers, and hopefully leave inspired to enhance your user experience with the YouTube APIs.

Some important details about the event below:

Powered By YouTube
Thursday, July 10, 2008
10:30am - 5:00pm
YouTube headquarters at 901 Cherry Ave. San Bruno, CA 94066
Cost: Free!

Registration is extremely limited, so we encourage you to register now if you're interested.

Hope to see you there! And if you're interested in staying up-to-date on what's going on in the world of YouTube APIs and syndication, check out our blog.

Posted by Christine Tsai - YouTube APIs & Tools Team

By now, our longtime publishers are likely well-versed in our regular maintenance -- so sing along if you know the words: Our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance tomorrow, June 7th, from 10am to 2pm PDT. During these four hours, you won't be able to log in to your account. However, ad serving will not be affected, and your reports will continue to track your earnings as usual.

We've noticed from past comments that many of you are concerned about public service ads (PSAs) or no ads appearing on your sites during the maintenance period. Please be assured that the maintenance does not affect the targeting or delivery of your ads. If you're experiencing difficulty with your ads, we recommend reviewing our Help Center for more information about PSAs, ad relevancy, and why ads may not appear.

If you're not located in the PDT time zone, here's the maintenance start time for a few other cities:

London - 6pm Saturday
Bucharest - 8pm Saturday
New Delhi - 10:30pm Saturday
Manila - 1am Sunday
Sydney - 3am Sunday

Have a great weekend :)

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

As we've mentioned on the blog before, your AdSense login is your ticket to accessing your account and receiving specific account information about your payments. But we know it can be difficult to keep track of all of those email addresses and online usernames -- whether they're for online banking, social networking, a retirement fund, or AdSense.

If you do happen to forget which email address you used as your AdSense login, we can help look the information up for you -- just fill out our Help Center form. If your information matches our records, we'll send you an email with details on how to access your account.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

We're happy to announce that publishers located in Hungary and Hong Kong can now sign up to receive payments by Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). With EFT, your earnings will be directly deposited into your bank account so won't need to wait for checks to arrive in the mail and clear at the bank. Signing-up for EFT is a simple process, and just involves entering your bank account information, then verifying a small test deposit. Please keep in mind that all EFT payments will be made in your local currency, and the exchange rate is determined at the time of payment.

While EFT is currently only available in a limited number of countries, we're working on expanding our payment options and will announce any updates right here on the blog.

UPDATED for accuracy

Posted by Elodie Bodet - AdSense Publisher Support

As you may remember, we started asking publishers to update your AdSense accounts to Google Accounts last May. When you do that, you can manage all of your Google products using one login and password, and also take advantage of new features like Site Authentication and the recently improved AdSense for search.

In the next few weeks, we'll soon be requiring all publishers to update to a Google Account. If you haven't yet updated your account, we recommend doing so as soon as possible to avoid any issues with account access later. Just sign in and follow the instructions in the wizard that will automatically appear. If you don't see the wizard, it means that your info has already moved to Google Accounts.

In messages to us and in the Help Forum, we've heard a number of concerns about moving to Google Accounts. We'd like to take a moment to address them.

I don't want to update my AdSense account to the Google Account I use for all of my other products. I'd prefer to keep them separate.

That's okay -- you can maintain multiple Google Accounts, so you're welcome to migrate your AdSense account to a different Google Account than the one you use for other products. For example, you could maintain your 'publisher@gmail.com' account for services like Gmail and Webmaster Tools, but create a new Google Account associated with 'publisher@yoursite.com' just to use for your AdSense account. When prompted to pick the radio button that best describes you, select 'I have an email address and password (Google Account) I already use with Google services like Gmail, Orkut, or the personalized home page.', and then 'I'd like to choose a new login name and password just for AdSense'.


Is this secure? I already gave AdWords with my credit card information and AdSense with my bank account info. I don't trust this.

Please be assured that we take the security of AdSense accounts very seriously, and your AdSense information will never be shared across products. We don't have access to your AdWords credit card from our end, and AdWords doesn't have access to your bank account information (if you've set up EFT). Again, if you'd prefer to keep your two accounts separate, just follow the instructions above.

I tried to update my account in the past, but I saw this error message: 'The Google Account you've selected is associated with another user.' What do I do?

It means that the email address you chose had previously been used to apply for an AdSense account (which may or may not have been approved). However, we've just clarified the messaging in our wizard to help you understand which situation applies to you. In most cases, we've found that publishers are attempting to update their login to an email address associated with an unapproved application. We've just made it possible to continue with the update process from within the wizard in this situation. If you're attempting to update to an email address being used for a different approved AdSense account, you'll receive further options and instructions.

What happens if I don't update?

If you choose not to update your account after the requirement change, you'll no longer be able to sign in to your account. As a result, we encourage you to begin updating your accounts as soon as possible.

Finally, we recommend looking through our Help Center for more information about updating your account to Google Accounts.

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Publisher Support

The Google content network now accepts display ads served from qualified third-party vendors. Third-party ad serving has been a longstanding request from top brand AdWords advertisers who use third parties to create and manage their online campaigns. Initially, we will be only accepting third-party ads in English, but we hope to expand to other languages soon.

Making the Google content network more accessible to large brand advertisers also benefits AdSense publishers and end users. Third-party ad serving will introduce a greater variety of advertising into the Google content network, increase the inventory of quality display ads competing to show on AdSense publisher sites, and offer more engaging ads for end users. In the long run, we believe the increased inventory and ad competition will result in increased revenue for many AdSense publishers.

Rest assured that ad quality on the content network will remain one of our highest priorities. Only advertisers with whom we have proven relationships and who've clearly demonstrated commitments to our quality standards may participate in this program. And our policies governing ad content and formatting are unchanged.

How to control third-party ads shown on your site
The same ad management features for Google ads also apply to third-party ads. You can use the Ad Review Center to filter specific placement-targeted ads from appearing on your site. To block contextually-targeted ads from a given advertiser, you can use the Competitive Ad Filter. (The Ad Review Center currently only shows placement-targeted ads, not contextually-targeted ads.)

Optimizing your site to allow third-party ads
To allow third-party ads on your site:

1. Opt into image ads - Currently, third-party ads are only available in image or Flash, so they won't appear in text-only ad units.
   
   
2. Enable advertisers to target your AdSense channels - Most advertisers who use third-party ads are brand-conscious. They prefer to specify websites where their ads will appear in order to optimize the targeting and effectiveness of their campaigns.
   
   
3. Opt into placement targeting - Placement targeting will allow advertisers to target their ads specifically to your site.
   

Following these steps will enable your site to accept third-party ads. However, we can't guarantee where or when third-party ads will appear on your site.

Want to learn more about third-party ads? Visit our FAQ.

Posted by Courtney Chin - AdSense Publisher Support

Have you ever wanted to poll your website visitors on their interests or ask them for feedback on your site content? Now, using a Google Docs spreadsheet, you can create a simple form, collect responses from your visitors in an online spreadsheet, and publish the results on your website -- in a few easy steps. All of the data will be kept in your secure, password-protected spreadsheet.


Here's how it works:

Create a new spreadsheet, build your survey form, and invite users to fill out the form. You can send out an email to people you'd like to fill out the survey (maybe to a mailing list you have), or generate some HTML code that allows you to embed the survey directly on your web page.


Your visitors won't need to sign in to Google Docs to fill out the form. Responses are automatically added to your spreadsheet, and you can receive notifications by email when submissions occur. You can even keep a closer eye on responses by adding the Google Docs forms gadget to your iGoogle homepage.

Finally, in your spreadsheet, you can create graphs and charts showing the results, and then publish those charts back on your site as gadgets. As the responses trickle in, the published charts will update automatically.


Check out the Google Docs Help Center for more detailed instructions on how to create your own live survey. I hope you'll be better able to get feedback from visitors to your site using this tool.

Posted by Andrew Chang - Google Docs Marketing Manager