A look back at 2012 highlights

Time sure flies! We’re coming up on another year end and, with that, we’d like to take a step back to review our AdSense highlights of 2012.

• With your feedback in mind, we made updates to the AdSense interface including a refresh to the Ad review center and the ability to add multiple users to your account. We also introduced more reporting features, a new look to Performance reports, and enabled you to manage your account and block ads directly from your site with the new Publisher Toolbar.
• You asked for more tips to help increase your revenue, so we showed ways to improve your site by using social tools, going mobile, making user experience changes, and using DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business. Many of you reported revenue uplift (up to 400% for some!) after implementing specific changes recommended through an email or the AdSense interface. 
• We had the opportunity to connect with many of you through our AdSense in Your City events (now called Learn with Google for Publishers), and through our newly created AdSense +page. We’d love to continue these interactions, so be sure to opt in to receive special offers, and follow our AdSense +page for the latest updates and Hangouts. 
• You let us know that you value hearing from other publishers, so we highlighted publisher stories throughout the year, including Philip Martin, who became an artist with the help of AdSense. 
• We made the payments process easier by updating the look of the Payments page in the AdSense interface and by extending payment options in Southeast Asia.
• We introduced changes to ad formats to provide you more options and increase your earning potential.
• You also told us that improved communication around the AdSense policies are important to you. We reviewed policy resources, provided some tips and announced ways we can work better together.

And finally, following our annual tradition, we’re happy to reveal our most visited blog post of the year: the announcement of AdSense availability in Indonesian. Please keep +1’ing our posts to let us know when you like them and also +1 our blog in the upper right-hand corner if you’re a fan.

It was a busy and fulfilling year working with you, our dedicated publishers. Stay tuned for updates on future improvements. Happy New Year, and we’ll see you in 2013!

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

Local success stories: Qué Tiempo grows by 30% by going mobile

The increase in smartphone sales and mobile traffic makes it more important every day for web publishers to build a mobile strategy for their businesses. Nevertheless, only 1 out of 10 AdSense publishers has a mobile-friendly version of their site. To encourage other publishers to go mobile, Ángel Hernández and Manuel Lebrón, owners of Qué Tiempo, shared their experience with us.

Qué Tiempo is a Spanish site that displays the weather forecast globally. Ángel and Manuel became AdSense publishers in 2007 and over the years, thanks to investing in their content, optimizing their ads and growing their traffic, they’ve been able to build a team of more than 20 employees and invest in new ventures.

Back in 2008, they could already see through Google Analytics that the traffic coming from mobile devices was growing, so they decided to develop quetiempo.es/mobile in-house.

Their mobile traffic has successfully grown by 20% over the last two years. New users are arriving to the mobile-friendly version of their site from mobile devices, while the desktop version is experiencing a 10% year over year growth. This shows that mobile traffic is additional, not substitutional, and mobile usage is complementary to desktop.

Thanks to the increase in their mobile traffic, together with a successful implementation of their ads, Qué Tiempo saw their daily earnings grow by 30%. The CTR of their mobile leaderboard 320x50 now doubles the CTR on their desktop ads. In addition, the CPC of their mobile ads is 100% higher than the CPC of the desktop site.

Most of Qué Tiempo’s efforts are now focused on improving their mobile site with features like geotargeting, which makes it possible to deliver accurate location-specific weather forecasts.  

“We encourage other publishers to build a mobile-friendly site, not only because they’ll quickly see their revenue grow thanks to the available Google AdSense mobile formats, but also because the future of your online business depends on your mobile strategy, a market with infinite possibilities.”

Posted by Alicia Escriba - Inside AdSense team

This information is current as of December 18th, 2012.

Coming soon: Learn with Google for Publishers

Two and a half years ago we started the AdSense in Your City program with the goal of meeting publishers face-to-face and providing tips to help you increase your earnings.  From Orlando, Florida to Tokyo, Japan, we’ve visited over 100 cities around the world and talked to thousands of publishers.  We asked you what you’ve liked and what could be improved.  Based on your feedback, we’ve made some changes.

We’re excited to announce that, in 2013, AdSense in Your City events will be evolving into Learn with Google for Publishers.  We understand that many of you are using Google products beyond AdSense to grow your business. Our transition to this Google-wide initiative is part of our effort to help publishers like you make the most from the Web.  Learn with Google for Publishers goes beyond just AdSense optimization tips.  We’ll also cover new topics such as site design, analytics and ad serving.  Below is our North America schedule for the next three months; our international schedule will be posted here on Inside AdSense shortly, so stay tuned!

• New York, NY - January 29, 2013 
• Los Angeles, CA - February 7, 2013
• Toronto, Canada - February 19, 2013 
• Chicago, IL - March 5, 2013

Phillip Martin is one publisher who went to a Google event this year; take a look at his inspiring story in this short video:

If you’d like to attend one of our upcoming events, fill out this form and we’ll send out event confirmation details two weeks before the event. Space is limited, so sign up quickly.
   
Be sure to check out our complementary Learn with Google webinar series.  And, if you’re as excited as we are about Learn with Google for Publishers, let us know on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Ian Cohan-Shapiro - Inside AdSense Team

Updates around usage of 300x600 ad format

Since our recent introduction of the new 300x600 ad format, we’ve been happy to see many publishers testing it out on their pages. After carefully reviewing this ad format, we’d like to let you know about an upcoming update to our policies around use of the 300x600 unit.

Because this new format is larger than all our other ad units, we want to help ensure a balance between content and ads across publisher sites. With this in mind, going forward, publishers will be permitted to place a maximum of one 300x600 ad unit on each page. If you’ve placed more than one 300x600 ad unit per page on your site, we ask that you remove any additional ad units by Jan 10, 2013. We’ll also be sending email notifications shortly to affected publishers, asking them to make this update.

Please note that the limit for AdSense for content ad units still remains at three per page, so it’ll be possible to place one 300x600 ad unit and up to two other sizes on a page. As always, it’s important to consider both the user and advertiser experiences when placing any additional ad units on your pages.

We appreciate your understanding and help as we make this update. Thanks again for all of your feedback and enthusiasm for this new ad format; we’re continuing to work on developing new sizes, and will keep you posted on any new developments. If you’d like more information about AdSense policies, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Charles Huang, Policy Associate

Working better together: Protecting against invalid activity

Publishers are the lifeblood of the Internet, and we’re committed to helping you grow your businesses. Last year alone, we shared $6.5 billion with our AdSense publishers. We also invest immense amounts of time and millions of dollars in systems (including sophisticated algorithms and human reviews) that keep bad ads from appearing on your sites and prevent advertisers from being fraudulently charged for bad clicks. When everything is working well, advertisers trust our network and continue to invest in it, which generates revenue for you the publisher, ultimately funding the free content users love.

But we’ve also heard the stories: publishers finding their accounts suspended or even disabled for “invalid activity” without a clear understanding of why or how to fix it. We know this can be an intensely frustrating, even scary experience. So why does this happen?

While the vast majority of publishers who sign up for AdSense do so in good faith, unfortunately there are some bad actors out there.  As you can imagine, we can’t reveal all the tools we use to keep bad sites and bad traffic out of our network.  But sometimes these tools result in good publishers who become a source of invalid activity having their accounts disabled without much recourse.  We’re making some changes we think will help fix this:

• We are considering tenure more actively when responding to detected invalid activity. For example, some trusted publishers will now have their accounts suspended instead of terminated, and over time we hope to work directly with more publishers to resolve invalid traffic issues without needing to disable the account at all. (As always, we’ll continue to credit advertisers for any invalid activity.)
• We’ve given publishers tools to submit more informative appeals via a new form, which may help resolve issues more quickly.
• We’re providing more details on invalid activity’s causes. If we’ve detected a violation of our policies you’ll receive an email and a notification to your account with further information and instructions. And you can read all about the causes of invalid activity at our Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center, which is now available in most languages supported by AdSense, such as German, French, Polish and Arabic.
• Whether you’re looking for a refresher or just creating your first ad unit, you can review the do’s and don'ts of ad traffic in our expanded AdSense Academy. 
• In order to help publishers avoid common pitfalls, we’re kicking off a video series that explains why some of our policies exist and how you can make sure you’re working with them. Our first looks specifically at invalid traffic.

We want to work with our publisher partners to keep the AdSense network strong -- keeping good publishers’ accounts in good standing, while also protecting advertisers and users from fraudulent activity. This is why we’re making changes, like the ones discussed today, to provide more help when things go wrong. We’ll be making even more changes as the year goes on so look for continued updates on this blog.

Posted by Jonathan Bellack - Product Management Director

We want to hear from you. Let’s continue the conversation -- submit your questions to us about the topics discussed in this post via Google Moderator. We’ll be holding a Google Hangout in January with members of our Product Quality Operations team for the first time to address your questions. Please note that for privacy reasons, we won’t be able to respond to account-specific questions.

Enhancing text ads on the Google Display Network

Text ads have proven to be a great way to help advertisers extend their Google search campaigns to sites in the Google Display Network, enabling publishers like you to earn revenue from your content. This is why we're continuing to work on improving text ads, even as we introduce new ad formats.

One change, rolling out this week, will make the look and feel of text ads more consistent as consumers and advertisers use screens interchangeably, and distinctions between devices fade. You'll notice a new clickable arrow icon, as well as slight optimizations to font size, spacing and text layout. These enhancements are among the largest that we have made to text ads, and our experiments indicate an uplift in clicks across publishers on the Google Display Network.

These changes will happen automatically for most text ads on your pages, and the color of the arrow icon will be based on the color palette you’ve selected for your ad units. For instance, if the background of your ad units is white, the icon will be grey; for other background colors, the icons will be a different shade of the background color. Consistent with our program policies, we ask that publishers refrain from mimicking these arrows or placing similar images around their ad units. Below are some example of this new text ad format in the 200x200 and 300x250 ad unit sizes.

200x200 Ad Unit

300x250 Ad Unit

We understand text ads are important to our publishers’ business and we’ll continue to innovate on new formats. Please feel free to share your feedback and suggestions with us on our AdSense +page; we look forward to helping you find new ways to grow your online businesses.

Posted by Johan Land and Stephen Yuan

More flexible controls with site-level blocking

One of the top requests we hear from publishers who manage multiple websites is the ability to block different ads for different sites. For instance, you may want to block a category of ads from appearing on a children’s site you run, but allow those same ads to appear on a separate sports-related site you also manage. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve AdSense to meet your needs and help you earn the most possible from all of your sites, we’re happy to let you know that this level of granular blocking will be available for AdSense for content within the next days.

There are two steps to getting started with these new flexible controls, once they're enabled in your account:

1. Site management:
To allow you to take actions on a site-level basis, you’ll first need to let our system know which domains and subdomains you own. Under your ‘Home’ tab, visit the ‘Account Settings’ page and navigate to the ‘Access and authorization’ section. From here, you can create your Owned sites list which already contains domains from your existing URL channels and manually add further domains or subdomains. Or, claim a site from an automatically populated “Unclaimed” sites list, which shows all sites where your ads are receiving impressions. Note that manually entering subdomains into the list will enable you to block ads from those specific pages while still allowing the ads to appear on the top-level domain.

2. Site-level blocking:
Once you’ve set up your Owned sites list, visit your ‘Allow and block ads’ tab. You’ll notice some updates, including a new navigation bar, new horizontal tabs, and an option for site-level blocking; your Owned sites list will appear under ‘AdSense for content’ in the navigation bar. To block ads from a specific domain or subdomain, just select it from the list in the left-hand navigation and make updates. If you’d like to apply any blocking changes to all of your sites, just select ‘All my sites’ from the left navigation.

With site-level blocking, you can block by URL; if sensitive and general category blocking are available in your language, you’ll be able to apply these options as well. Please keep in mind that there’s a product-wide limit of 500 URLs that can be added to a block list. And as always, we recommend blocking ads with caution, since doing so decreases the potential revenue you can earn.

Ready to get started? Visit our Help Center for detailed instructions on how to manage sites and set up site-level blocking rules. We’d also love to hear your feedback on this new feature -- visit our AdSense +page to leave a comment and discuss your thoughts with other publishers.

Posted by Adomas Paltanavičius - AdSense Engineering

HiPenpal.com makes more than 50% of AdSense revenue through mobile

HiPenpal.com is an international penpal website that facilitates the exchange of messages between people from different countries across all ages. Since its inception in 2006, HiPenpal.com, a Korea based company, has grown its membership base to 180,000 and has gained popularity in the United States and Japan.

Today, we’re going to highlight HiPenpal.com’s mobile journey, which has resulted in more than 50% of their total AdSense revenue coming from their mobile site.

---

You’ve been a publisher with AdSense since 2006. How did you find out about AdSense and what has your experience been to date?

I got to know about AdSense when I was web-surfing through foreign websites. At that time, I managed various websites but because I did not have an ad sales team, I had a hard time with ad orders. However, with the help of AdSense, I no longer had to worry about this. I didn’t have to manage orders and still received good quality ads through AdSense which allowed me to focus on content management. The biggest advantage with AdSense, is that the ads are highly relevant to users, which has resulted in high user engagement and high earnings. All of my businesses depend on Google AdSense for revenue.  I’m very satisfied with the service and revenue that AdSense has been able to provide because it has replaced the need for an expensive sales force.

When did you first build your mobile site and how has this affected traffic and user satisfaction for HiPenpal.com?

In the 2008, I revamped HiPenpal.com and created a mobile site along with it. At that time, since most users had feature phones, the site was not actively used. However, since 2009, with the spread of smartphones, the usage of the mobile site has been steadily increasing. Currently, 40% of our total traffic is accessing our mobile site and the users are extremely satisfied with it.

What things did you consider when building the mobile site and what type of investment was needed to make this happen?

In the 2008, I didn’t know much about mobile web development, so building the initial site took about six months. I wanted to make sure that the site displayed perfectly across all mobile phones and browsers, so I focused heavily on the structure of the site. There are cases when your site displays perfectly on one type of mobile device, but is distorted on another. In order to prevent this, I used a mobile web emulator or browser plug-in to perform quality checks during the development of the mobile site. Before launch, I checked the mobile site on the actual mobile devices. I invested in several devices with different operating systems in order to perform bug fixes and improve quality.

Additionally, I tried to simplify the navigational tree structure, so that people could easily access the desired pages with a simple operation. Most importantly, I was able to attract more mobile traffic by adding mobile-specific content.

How did users respond to ads on your mobile site?

We implemented mobile ads in 2008 and then upgraded to the smartphone-specific ad unit in 2009, when it was first launched. The 300x250 medium rectangle is positioned towards the bottom of the page, so that it will not distract from content engagement. On the other hand, the 320x50 mobile banner is posted on the top of the page, so that it would attract more attention.

Because smartphone ad units are now integrated with general AdSense for content (AFC), AdSense implementation has become more convenient.

We have not received any feedback about the mobile ads on the site, which I’m guessing means that users are not being inconvenienced by this implementation. Our users are very vocal when they find that the ads are distracting to the use of the site.

How does mobile revenue compare to your overall monetization?

Mobile revenue is increasing proportionally to the growth of mobile users. Currently, 40% of of total traffic (over 50% including tablet impressions) is coming from smartphones and resulting in over 50% of total revenue.

The 300x250 medium rectangle is generating the majority of revenue today, due to its high user engagement. Initially, I hesitated in implementing this ad unit, due to its large size, but now highly recommend it to other publishers. Since December 2009, the monthly revenue has increased about 100 times.

What advice do you have for publishers who have concerns about implementing mobile ads?

I believe that publishers who have concerns about mobile ads are actually hesitating about managing a mobile web site. However, mobile is a technology that cannot be ignored, more and more users are accessing the Internet through mobile devices instead of the PC. In my opinion, ignoring mobile is the same as ignoring half of the users. Furthermore, ignoring mobile web ads is the same as throwing out half of your revenue. If you don’t want to miss out on half of your revenue opportunity, do not hesitate. I encourage you to start from today.


Posted by Junho Jung, Publisher Relations Specialist

Search for ads by image in the Ad review center

The Ad review center in your AdSense account is a powerful tool that enables you to control the ads that appear on your site. Earlier this year, we revamped the tool to provide you with even more robust controls, and today, we’re making an improvement that will help you find and review ads more efficiently. Using the technology behind Google Image Search, you’ll now be able to upload an image file from your computer to search for related image ads; you can then review and take action on the returned ads.

For example, you might want to find and block ads that contain the logo of a competitor. After you upload and search for the logo, we’ll return image ads that contain the logo and which are eligible to appear on your pages. Please note that you can upload images with a maximum file size of 2MB and a largest dimension of 1024 pixels. To try this feature, log in to your AdSense account and visit the ‘Allow and block ads’ tab.

As always, we recommend using filters sparingly, and only in cases where you’d prefer not to have the specific ad or advertiser appear on your pages. Please keep in mind that blocking ads isn’t a revenue optimization tool; it can have a negative impact on your potential revenue since it reduces the competition between ads eligible to appear on your pages.

This feature currently only returns image ads, but we’re planning to support more ad formats in the future. We’ll let you know as soon as any additional functionality becomes available -- in the meantime, feel free to share your feedback about this feature on our AdSense +page or visit our Help Center for detailed instructions.

Posted by Marcel Crasmaru -- AdSense Engineering

Larger, brand-friendly ad sizes available in AdSense: 300x600

As screens grow and web content continues to become richer, the format and capabilities of ad units continue to evolve as well. One of the top requests from publishers in the last year has been to add larger ad sizes to our network, and today we’re excited to announce that the popular 300x600 unit will soon be available in your AdSense account.

The 300x600 unit, sometimes referred to as a half page unit, provides a larger space for advertisers to get their message across and can offer users rich engagement. As mentioned in our recently released Display Business Trends, the 300x600 is one of the fastest growing sizes by impressions and is indicative of a trend where publishers are offering more visually impactful ad sizes that are preferred by brand advertisers. Because this unit is new to our network, you’ll currently see a large number of text ads in these placements. Over time we’ll continue to build a wide range of text and display ad inventory eligible to appear in this full slot as well.

As with all ad sizes, it’s important to carefully consider the placement of ad units to ensure both users and advertisers have a great experience with your site. If you’d like more information on the performance of potential placements, check out our heat map in the AdSense Help Center.

If you have feedback about the 300x600 ad unit, feel free to leave a comment on our AdSense +page and discuss your thoughts with other publishers.

Posted by Omer Gimenez Llach - AdSense UI Engineer

Social Fridays: A recap

Over the past weeks, we’ve shown you through our Social Friday series how to get up and running with a Google+ strategy for your site and online business. We hope our posts and recent Hangout On Air have helped you learn more about what’s possible with Google+, and that you now have new ideas for optimizing the performance of your +page. Below is a list of the subjects we’ve covered, in case you’d like to review them.

Help your site stand out with the +1 button
Create a Google+ page to connect with users
Use images to deliver a richer experience
Gain visibility by verifying your Google+ page
See how your content was shared on Google+
Track and measure the performance of your +page
The New York Times uses Hangouts on Air to cover breaking news
Temptalia discovers the beauty of Google+
Using Google+, Brazilian news portal Estadão merges news with discussion
Google+ proves a recipe for success for Epicurious.com

Before we draw our series to a close, we’d like to encourage you to register for our upcoming social-focused webinar entitled ‘Grow and engage your audience with Google+’. This webinar will take place Tuesday, November 13th at 12pm PT (8pm GMT), and will discuss how social media is impacting online publishers . If you’re not able to attend the webinar, the recording will be posted to this site.

Thanks for following along with Social Fridays -- we’ll continue to post Google+ updates and tips for publishers here and on our AdSense +page, so stay tuned. Have a great weekend!

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Announcing the Learn with Google webinar series for publishers

As we’re nearing the end of 2012, we’ve all got business goals to meet. Some of you might even be prepping for your busiest season. Today we’re excited to announce the launch of the Learn with Google series to help our publishers make the most from the web.  We’ll be hosting two upcoming webinars as part of our Learn with Google program:  

Google+ for publishers: Grow and engage your audience with Google+
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 12:00pm PT / 3:00pm ET

Join us for a discussion on how social media is impacting online publishers and how Google thinks about social. We'll also cover how you can grow and engage your audience on the web and mobile with Google+ using Google+ pages, the +1 button, Hangouts, and Authorship.

Register Here

Navigating Google's Mobile Ads Ecosystem
Wednesday, November 28, at 12:30pm PT / 3:30pm ET

Ever wonder who the buyers are in Google's mobile ads ecosystem and how their ads reach your inventory? Join us to learn the inner workings of Google's mobile ads ecosystem, including an overview of Google demand sources and the different channels advertisers can use buy your mobile inventory.

Register Here

Visit the webinar page for more information on these two events and to register. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by adding the Learn with Google webinar calendar to your own Google calendar.

We look forward to hosting many more Learn with Google webinars for our publishers.

Posted by Faith Rosen, Product Marketing Manager

Updates to the application process for host partner sites

We’ll soon be updating the application process for new publishers who apply for an AdSense account via a host partner site like Blogger or Hubpages. As you may know, host partner sites allow publishers to create and monetize their content, which is hosted on the partner site rather than the publisher’s own domain. New publishers approved for AdSense accounts via a host partner site will be able to place ads on and earn from policy-compliant content they’ve created on any host partner site. If they then decide to show ads on their own domain, from today onwards they’ll need to complete an extra approval step similar to the application process at www.google.com/adsense. Please note that publishers who were approved for AdSense accounts before today won't be affected by these changes.

Here’s an example to explain the process -- let’s say Sue runs a blog using Blogger. She applies for a hosted AdSense account within Blogger, and once approved, she begins to monetize her blog. If she then launches a second blog on Blogger, she’ll be able to show ads on that second blog and earn from both sites.

Next, let’s imagine Sue decides to purchase her own domain, example.com, and wants to earn from the content she creates there. Before she can do so, she’ll need to complete a form in her account to request a site review. After submitting the form, she’ll need to generate ad code and implement it on a live page of example.com that receives traffic. The implemented ad unit will remain blank until the domain has been reviewed by the AdSense team.

If the request is approved, Sue can proceed with placing additional ad units on the site. If the request is denied, she’ll be unable to show ads on her new domain, but there’ll be no impact to her two existing blogs; she can continue to earn from them, and can also work to resolve the issues with her new domain and resubmit her site for review.

These changes will help ensure a consistent, seamless sign up experience for publishers, whichever application process they follow, while also allowing publishers and host partner sites to continue working together as they have been. We remain committed to building a high-quality network that also provides strong business results for our advertiser partners and a positive experience for users.

Posted by Sophia Lin, Product Manager

Social Fridays: Google+ proves a recipe for success for Epicurious.com

Every Friday, we’re posting Google+ tips to help publishers make the most of all of the features and resources available. Be sure to check back each week for the latest in our educational Social Fridays series!

A Condé Nast site, Epicurious.com publishes original content from its own editors and leading food authorities from around the world every day. It incorporates more than 30,000 professionally tested and created recipes from celebrity chefs, premier food journalists and renowned cookbook authors, as well as 200,000 member-submitted recipes. Epicurious launched its Google+ page only late last year, and has now grown to over 2 million followers. Achieving the impressive milestone is down to a combination of factors: installing social sharing utilities on the Epicurious site, developing content tailored specifically to both the Google+ interface and to its audience, and embracing the features that are unique to the platform.

“We started projecting growth based on similar growth with new networks,” says Jennifer Gaonach, Digital Consumer Marketing Director, Condé Nast, about their early days on the platform. “But we’ve exceeded the expected growth by many times. It’s great to see; by far it’s our largest network. It’s really taken off.”

A number of slick design features at Epicurious.com help visitors share content and easily interact with the Google+ page. There’s a social sharing sidekick on the site that floats in the left margin alongside most content, as well as a ‘Connect with Epicurious’ module featuring social networks that sits on the top of the ad rail. These social networks also appear in the Epicurious email templates.

Epicurious continues to refine its content strategy to best suit Google+ followers. “We really want to understand how we can engage these users and give them a great experience, and then when it makes sense, drive them back to Epicurious.com,” explains Jennifer. “As our audience has been growing, our editors have increased the frequency of our posts so that anyone who’s following us can know the latest article that’s being posted.” The team usually adds between three and five posts a day, and have found that visual content on Google+ performs particularly well.

Social Reports in Google Analytics reveal that users coming to Epicurious from Google+ are more engaged than visitors from other social media platforms. Google+ is in the top 10 social referrers to the Epicurious pages, and the average visit duration from Google+ is 12% longer than it is from other social media platforms. The number of pages viewed per visit from these users is among the highest of all platforms too.

What’s next? The Epicurious team plans to use Hangouts – high-quality videoconference functionality on Google+ – to create even deeper experiences for followers, including cook-alongs and exclusive chef chats.

Hungry for more? Read the full case study on Epicurious.com’s use of Google+, and feel free to leave a comment on our AdSense +page about this story.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Uncover trends and AdSense insights with Analytics

Knowledge is power: Insightful data on account performance and user behavior can help you optimize your AdSense implementations. By linking your AdSense account to a new or existing Analytics account, you’ll gain access to additional information that can help you identify opportunities to monetize your content more effectively.

Here are just some of the questions you’ll be able to answer when combining AdSense data with reports in Analytics:

• How are my users interacting with my site? With In-page Analytics, you’ll have access to a visual assessment of how users interact with your web pages. This can help you determine the most strategic locations in which to place ads.

• Where and why are visitors leaving my site? Identify pages with high bounce rates to determine the percentage of visitors who only see one page during a visit to your site. Users might behave in this way for a variety of reasons, but you can work to provide the best user experience possible by optimizing the content and ad implementation on these pages. 

• Which traffic sources and URLs help me earn the most? Determine which pages generate the highest AdSense revenue, and then replicate those successful implementations on other parts of your site. You can also set up custom channels for pages that perform well to create attractive placements for advertisers to specifically target. In addition, try content experiments and test different page layouts to compare the performance of key metrics.

To gain these types of insights and more, be sure to link your AdSense and Analytics accounts. Based on publisher feedback, we’ve just improved the linking process to make it more straightforward. Keep in mind that you can only link one AdSense account to one Analytics account, and that the AdSense login must be an ‘Administrator’ on the Analytics account. To get started, visit the ‘Access and Authorization’ section of the Account settings page in your AdSense account and follow the instructions. For more details, please refer to the AdSense Help Center.

To help you get started with your AdSense data in Analytics and show you some relevant information at a glance, we’ve created this easy-to-use dashboard. Select one of your profiles to import, and you’ll be able to quickly see and customize the reports which matter most to you. You can access this dashboard at any time from the relevant profile by clicking the ‘Home’ tab.

Do you have feedback about using Analytics reports or the dashboard? Feel free to leave a comment on our AdSense +page and discuss your thoughts with other publishers.

Posted by Esteban Talavera - Software Engineer, AdSense Reporting

Upcoming international AdSense in Your City workshops

This November, our international teams will be hitting the road to host more AdSense in Your City workshops around the globe. During these workshops, we’ll provide product updates, offer individual optimizations to help boost revenue, and share tips for getting started with solutions like DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business. Also, these workshops offer attendees networking opportunities and the chance to meet with local publishers.

Here are the cities we’ll be visiting in the next few weeks -- please take note of the language of the sessions:

• Week of November 5: 
• Salvador, Brazil (sessions in Portuguese)
• Fortaleza, Brazil (sessions in Portuguese)

• Week of November 12: 
• Manchester, UK (sessions in English)
• Edinburgh, Scotland (sessions in English)
• Bogotá, Colombia (sessions in Spanish)
• Budapest, Hungary (sessions in Hungarian)

• Week of November 19: 
• Montevideo, Uruguay (sessions in Spanish)
• Stockholm, Sweden (sessions in Swedish)
• Madrid, Spain (sessions in Spanish)

• Week of November 26: 
• Tokyo, Japan (sessions in Japanese)

Interested in attending one of these upcoming AdSense in Your City workshops? Please fill out our interest form. Space is limited and so we won’t be able to accommodate all requests, but we’ll let you know if we’re able to extend an invitation. We also recommend ensuring you’re opted in to receiving ‘Special Offer’ emails so we can reach you in the future.

We hope to see you at an upcoming AdSense in Your City workshop!

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Social Fridays: Using Google+, Brazilian news portal Estadão merges news with discussion

Every Friday, we’re posting Google+ tips to help publishers make the most of all of the features and resources available. Be sure to check back each week for the latest in our educational Social Fridays series!

While the world of communications has changed quite a bit since the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de São Paulo was founded in 1875, sharing high-quality news, analysis and reporting has remained its constant goal. In order to provide information in real time, the influential paper launched the portal Estadao.com.br in March 2000. And with social media a growing priority, Estadão launched its +Estadão page on Google+ in the second half of 2011.

According to Digital Content Director Claudia Belfort, an early discovery was that Google+ offered a slightly different opportunity from other social media channels already in use by Estadão. “I realized that the comments on Google+ were more elaborate. Our followers are very interested in contributing to a discussion so we decided to invest more, always with this focus.”

Over time, Estadão has built Google+ into its content strategy as a result of the platform’s unique ability to stimulate conversation and discussion. Cláudia believes that Estadão’s audience is interested in a network that’s not just social, but also enables knowledge exchange. With this in mind, the team publishes content specifically relevant to Google+ followers, rather than replicating the same content across all of the social media outlets that Estadão uses. They’ve found that the network responds particularly well to serious themes, so posts cover topics like economics, politics and current affairs, often with an informal tone.

But it’s not only the exchange of ideas through the written word that Google+ facilitates for the newspaper. Estadão takes advantage of the visual strengths of the platform by posting full images, captivating video content and stimulating face-to-face discussion through frequent Hangouts, the free, high-quality video chat feature unique to Google+. Plenty of creative channel-specific initiatives are underway: a daily video of economic analysis, a nightly podcast summarizing the main news of the day and a weekly trailer previewing new cinema releases.

Estadão uses Google Analytics to understand visitor behavior, and it’s clear that Google+ is having a positive effect on traffic to the portal. Over a five-month period, Analytics showed that visitors to the Estadão site from the Google+ page increased 540%. At the same time, this traffic generated an uplift in page views per visit of 18%. Currently, the Estadão Google+ page has over 500,000 followers.

Want to replicate the brand’s success? Read all about it in the full case study, and feel free to share your experiences with us on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

Mobile revenue from AdSense enables Ultimoprezzo to invest in growth

Italian site Ultimoprezzo.com provides a unique service to online consumers. It supplies information on stores and their opening hours, as well as their best prices for smartphones, TVs, tablets, laptops and other consumer electronics products.

As a supplier of free services, Ultimoprezzo needs to be savvy about its strategy for generating revenue. AdSense provides a straightforward solution.

“The Google AdSense program is the ideal way for us to monetize our publishing efforts,” explains founder and CEO Alberto Giacobone. He says Google AdSense not only provides Ultimoprezzo’s users with relevant and interesting advertising information, but also provides its advertisers cost-effective ad placements since Ultimoprezzo doesn’t need to maintain a sales network.

Globally, smartphone usage is on the rise. In Italy alone, 69% of smartphone owners never leave the house without carrying their device and 82% use their smartphone to perform research on a product or service. “Certainly, the numbers speak for themselves,” Alberto affirms. “In Italy and abroad, we are increasingly in a ‘post- PC’ era where smartphones and tablets accompany us at all times and everywhere, often even while we are doing other things.”

Very early on in Ultimoprezzo’s development, Alberto’s team perceived an opportunity in the mobile space. An internal team developed Ultimoprezzo’s mobile-optimized website, while a special agency developed applications for iOS and Android.

So has the company seen an uplift in mobile traffic? “The trend is clear,” says Alberto. “Mobile traffic is growing and is now already more than 15% of our total traffic. And this is not only down to the growing popularity of smartphones which cost less than $100; what we notice is that the users are getting better at exploiting the technological tool at their disposal more and more frequently.” With Ultimoprezzo’s non-mobile traffic volumes booming as well, by the end of 2012 Alberto estimates mobile will account for one-third of the company’s total traffic.

AdSense provides a way for Ultimoprezzo to monetize its content across devices. As new digital platforms emerge, AdSense makes new revenue streams available. “The AdSense program has allowed us to invest in the growth – both in terms of quantity and quality – of the services to our visitors, so we can keep them free always. ”

This information is current as of October 23rd, 2012.

Posted by Cristina Miscimarra - Inside AdSense Team

Social Fridays: Your Google+ questions answered, via Hangout

Every Friday, we’re posting Google+ tips to help publishers make the most of all of the features and resources available. Be sure to check back each week for the latest in our educational Social Fridays series!

We've shared quite a bit of information on using Google+ for your business in the past few weeks, and so we'd now like to pause for a moment to hear from you. After reading our Social Fridays posts, do you have specific questions about developing a Google+ strategy for your site? Are you interested in hearing more about a certain topic like using Ripples or avoiding common pitfalls?

To address your Google+-related questions and experiences, we’ll be hosting a Hangout On Air on Tuesday, October 30th at 10:00am PT with a Google+ specialist from the AdSense team. Visit our AdSense +page to RSVP to the event, and feel free to post your Google+ questions there. Anyone will be able to watch the live Hangout On Air, and if you miss it, we’ll post the recording to our YouTube channel so you can watch at a later time.

We hope to see you in our upcoming Hangout! We’ll be back next week with another Google+ publisher success story.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

PubTalk: Voitek Klimczyk shares how AdSense saved his business and his health

You’ve met Todd Sarouhan of GoVisitCostaRica.com and Katie and Gene Hamilton of diyornot.com from our recent Google+ Hangout. You’ve also heard them and other publishers discuss tips about ad sizes and placements, additional ad units, and ad colors, all of which contributes to growing their AdSense revenue.

Watch this video to meet Voitek Klimczyk, the creator of simplyadditions.com. AdSense let him take his business online and keeps him healthy.



Tell us your AdSense story to get featured in future posts. Complete the sentence "Because of Google AdSense..." and send it to pubstories@google.com along with a photograph of what Google AdSense has given you. Be sure to include your publisher ID and main website URL. Please note we won't be able to respond to all submissions. We’re looking forward to reading your responses!

This post is part of the PubTalk series of conversations with Publishers

Posted by Julia Eckstein - Inside AdSense Team

A makeover for Performance reports

Your performance reports are the key to understanding your AdSense account activity and earnings. This is where you can get vital information about your account, quickly and easily. We’re constantly working to enhance performance reports, and so today, we’re introducing some changes that improve the usability of the reports and make them more visually compelling.

When you visit your “Performance reports” tab, you’ll notice changes like these:

• The graph area covers a wider area of the screen.
• The list of metrics has been moved from the right hand side to the top in an interactive scorecard.
• There are new buttons for day, week and month for the usual timeline graph to allow for more control over granularity when analyzing activity over longer time periods. 
• You can choose “Events” on a timeline report graph or select the “Events” report from the left navigation to see how specific account changes are related to account performance.
• There are new graph types available, such as pie or bar charts, to visualize the data you’re looking at. In addition, the “Countries” report shows you where your users are located on a world map: 

We hope you enjoy these changes -- stay tuned for more updates. For additional information visit our Help Center and feel free to leave comments and feedback on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Daniel White - Software Engineer, AdSense Reporting

Key Consideration for Website Designing

Web design packages have made it easy for the average person to design their own website. However, while many of these websites work well, they are rather simplistic in appearance; if you are searching for a professionally designed website, then the only course of action, really, is to consult a specialist web design company. These businesses make bespoke websites that cater exactly to the needs of their clients. Here we take a closer look at some of the key principles involved in web design so that you can have a clearer idea of the reasons behind our advocacy in using a web design company over web design packages.
Aesthetics
The first principle to consider when building a website is aesthetics: how the website will look. There are many factors to consider here.
• You must ensure that the colour scheme works, that there are no clashing colours. Many people have little idea concerning colour schemes, and because of this tend to create websites that either looks too busy, too sparse, or incongruent. Choosing a colour scheme, however, is relatively easy, you need to take a look at an artist's colour wheel and choose colours that are adjacent to each other. Colours located opposite on the colour wheel clash.
• Contrast is also something worth considering. By using contrasting colours, or contrasting fonts or letter sizing, you can draw people's eyes to various locations on the website. For instance, you may have an online retail store, and want to draw people's attention to the 'Sales' section. You can use contrast for this purpose.
Layout
The spacing between the various areas of your website is paramount to good design. This ties in somewhat with aesthetics, but needs to be considered on its own terms as it forms such an important aspect of good web design.
A professional site has writing that is easy to see, that is well spaced, and is minimal - too much writing and people will soon tire of the site. The internet has made us somewhat lazy, and people want summaries and key points only.
Make sure that there is plenty of background space to avoid clutter, which most people will find unappealing.
Usability
Usability, or navigation, is the most important feature on any website. You need to make sure that you direct people around the site logically, and in a way that they expect and need. This means having menus and sub menus which hyperlink to other pages. Make these links as easy to find as possible and give them precedence on the front page. There is nothing more annoying than arriving on a website and having to spend minutes working out how to get to where you want to go. It is essential that all of your links work and that they are logically presented.
Sizing and Font
Most websites run at between 700-900 x 300-400 pixels, and this is rather universal. Make sure that you use a standard number of pixels or some browsers will either find it difficult to open the page, or once open, the page will look cheap and old fashioned.
Most people tend to use standard fonts, too, such as Calibri or Tahoma.

Ways To Obtain a Free Website Advertising

Marketing to expand your potential customer base and advertising can be one of the greatest expenses when starting a business. For people who are new to businesses on the Internet, this expense can become quickly overwhelming especially if they are trying to start a business on a tight advertising budget. There is no reason for it to be this way. There are many different ways to obtain free website advertising. Here are some of those ways.
One way to obtain free website advertising is to write a how to article about your select subject. You should make your language conversational in tone. You should write your how to article as if you were explaining the answer to a friend's problem. Then you should find websites that are interested in your article and write the editor of the website and ask if they would to reprint the article for free, in exchange for a short biography about yourself and a live link to your business' website at the end of your article. Also you can submit your article to article directories to allow other publishers to access and reprint your article in exchange for the same live link to your business' website and short biography about yourself. Your business on the Internet will also receive additional traffic from search engines by adding new articles every week.
There are many business websites on the Internet that also have the same problem of not enough money for advertising. Another way to obtain free website advertising is to offer an exchange of advertising to help both you and other business' website owners. Of course, you should want to select a competitor that sells the same goods or services that your business offers.
You can also join in conversations and answer questions on forums on the Internet. You need to sign below your name after every post that has a one line description of what you do and a link to your business' website. With your signature on the signature line, people will quickly begin to recognize you as being an expert who can be very helpful and will visit your business' website on the Internet to determine what your business has to offer. You don't want to actively promote your business on the internet inside your message because the majority of forums have rules against the promotion of your own business' website. You can email the people who ask you about it off list. However, lines for your signature are nearly always allowed. Also, you could network with some associates or make some friends in the subject area that you enjoy.
Although there are many others those are some of the ways to obtain free website advertising. You can have a steady stream of free traffic of potential customers with a little effort.

Employed IPhones Purchasing Ideas

Prolonged before you decide to set your funds right into a made use of apple iphone for sale; make certain the provider on the Cellular phone has a good return policy, and just one that preferably materials you that has a cash back selection. Upon the receipt with the utilised apple iphone, examine the product cautiously for exterior injury and inside water harm, and after that examination the product to produce convinced it works.
If this is your incredibly to begin with time purchasing an iphone, familiarize yourself using the different options that accompany the iphone; this manner, once you see the many provides to choose from, you're going to be ready to know precisely what it is actually you're gaining for the cash. In the event you usually are not new to your iphone purchasing expertise and you also have an interest in upgrading your aged Apple iphone 4gb unit of any other iphone for a thing with far more characteristics and options, all over again familiarity with Apple apple iphone offerings is necessary.
According to the Federal Conversation Commission each individual mobile unit will need to be GPS enabled. In the event your iphone doesn't have the GPS functionality, really don't acquire it. The Federal Conversation Commission has applied a regulation whereby all cell phone devices will need to be GPS enabled. The main reason for such a regulation is straightforward; when an emergency arises and the cell cell phone person dials 911 help, in the event the machine is GPS enabled the individual putting the emergency simply call can be situated.
Whenever an utilized apple iphone seller states in an apple iphone description the product is in great issue, but then later on tells the possible purchaser which the employed iphone is for sale in its existing problem, "as is," this is certainly a seller's secret code for "the buyer will get the utilized iphone, warts and all, with no returns or ensures." This implies that the seller possibly suspects or entirely recognizes that there is certainly a difficulty aided by the cellular phone in question, or the seller suspects that a little something will go erroneous with the telephone in the in close proximity to future. Fairly than addressing returns, guarantees, exchanges and refunds, the seller works by using the phrases "as is" to safeguard him or herself.
Yet, countless utilized apple iphone consumers usually are not absolutely mindful of the things they are entering into whenever they area their order. It is rather important to keep in mind that photographs can be deceiving, that each one pics aren't essentially an exact picture of your item becoming marketed, and that the finer specifics are provided through products descriptions. If the description one gets about an utilised apple iphone is terse or limited, then it truly is time and energy to question the seller questions prior to buying.
Should you are acquiring an iphone then it will need to be suitable along with your cell mobile phone supplier. Not all iPhones do the job with every single solitary carrier and this is probably one of the greatest explanations for having to return these phones back again to the sellers. The buyer of an utilized iphone must find out a quality cell phone that's totally compatible with all the consumer's favored cell mobile phone supplier.
When ever you choose to purchase an utilized apple iphone make certain that the supplier includes a first rate return plan. You should have a very cash back option. Whenever you acquire an utilised iphone make sure you verify it extensively. Examine it externally for virtually any damages or scratches.
When you are electing to purchase employed iPhones from an internet auction, you will find that it can be much easier to identify a top quality vendor than you might initial think about. When trying to get an auction vendor of a 4gb made use of iphone, an 8gb utilized apple iphone or possibly a 16gb applied apple iphone ensure you take a pair of minutes to look at the comments supplied by other buyers.

Low Priced China Wifi Mobile Phones

Wifi has emerged as one of the most sought after feature in the mobile phone. As 2G connection is too slow and 3G too costly, data usage over WiFi is the best option for fast and cost effective internet access.The market is flooded with phones that have this feature, but there are only a few in the affordable segments. Here is our pick of budget friendly yet good phones that will not just offer you WiFi but also a host of other features.
Wi-fi compatibility is really a contemporary technique, intentionally growing your own office or home outdoors the actual range associated with VoIP marketing communications. Web entry, high-speed Web browsing abilities as well as autonomy is actually main in order to a few of the tone of voice calling perform, you are able to in the present high-end Wi-fi compatibility technologies. Within the most recent cellular telephone technologies enables you to perform not really supply home elevators using wires associated with various methodologies even if a person journey. Actually, Wi-fi compatibility (cellular faithfulness) is really a nearby region system, that utilizes the actual tranny as well as wedding reception associated with information through countless ft higher rate of recurrence stereo indicators.
The latest cell phones from china have started to come with the characteristic of net surfing via Wi-Fi. The mobile phones now boast the feature of acquiring connected with all the wi-fi routers and serve the exact same connectivity speed because the laptop or maybe a pc could do. The mobile phones come equipped with all the Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n version of WLAN. This aids the mobile phone to have converted in to a mini laptop. The consumer does not must compromise on the connectivity or the speed part although surfing net from the mobile phone as a result of WLAN.
Wholesalers also have membership pages where one signs up for updates that notifies one when offers arise. Every purchaser of low priced china best wifi phones from wholesale shops should sign up to this to be able to save on moneywhen making purchases which could mean a nice gain to him or her on the other side after marketing at normal retail price ranges. To conclude obtaining cheap china wifi phones from wholesale retailers one can see one keeping in advance of competitors due to advanced level of quality and technology from china producers and for that reason consistently have a large share of the market. Want to know more about wifi phones or want to buy best wifi phones at lowest price?

How To Successfully Promote Yourself Using Facebook

Do you know exactly what the principal reason of the social networking internet site is? For anyone who is an avid world wide web user, you probably do. Social networking websites are on-line communities that allow it to be less complicated for net people to satisfy and communicate with each other. If you're a web consumer who enjoys employing the online market place to satisfy new men and women, you can find a good likelihood that you just previously belong to a social networking web page. What about an online web site? Would you have considered one of them? Should you do, are you aware you could use your social networking site to market your blog site?
Increase your blogging site? Why would you need to try this? Honestly, if you have to check with your self that problem you almost certainly shouldn't even have a person. The whole function of the blog is to document your views, views, and opinions on a certain topic, challenge, or theme. What superior will your blogging site do if no one reads it. Moreover to sharing your feelings along with the rest with the entire world, were you aware you could also make money from a website? It is possible to signup for affiliate packages or other applications like Google Adsense. When you are applying your weblog to help make revenue then you will defiantly want to boost it.
When it comes to selling weblogs, there are many weblog homeowners who decide to allow the online search engine do the perform for them. Serps, this kind of as Google, Yahoo, and MSN use distinctive techniques that reads the written content in your web-site. That material is then used to rank your site with certain key phrases. This implies you run a weblog on graduating from higher college in Big apple, you can find an excellent likelihood that your blog will appear in queries performed on The big apple high schools. Although many blogs are productively rated in search engines, not all are. Which is why you happen to be encouraged against relying solely on search engines, in regards to marketing your blogging site.
As earlier described, if you appreciate meeting with or talking to people on line, there's an excellent chance that you belong into a social networking web-site or neighborhood. The men and women that you just speak with which are inside your group are likely the folks that you wish to focus on. Because most social networking web sites get the job done to connect net people that have a similar objectives and common passions, there exists a fantastic opportunity that your on line pals will delight in reading through your blog site. But, previously they can read through your website, you've got to allow them understand that it exists.
In terms of promoting your blog on social networking websites, you may have numerous distinctive choices. Your 1st alternative would be to include a weblink for your blogging site in the local community profile or account webpage. This could allow other group members to checkout your web site, provided that they wish to undertake so. Another way will be to inform your on the net pals of your respective website by way of private messages. At the time you sign up for a social networking web page and create or sign up for a network of good friends, you need to simply have the ability to speak with people mates. Sending every of one's close friends a non-public concept with info as well as an url for your blog site tends to be much more useful than just placing a link in your account or on your own account web page.
While there may be a very good chance that you are now a member of a preferred social networking internet site, you may not be. When you are not now a member, but would really like to be one, you will have to locate a social networking web-site to join. This will very easily be done by using a common internet look for. In your look, you'll probably locate a variety of popular community sites, this sort of as MySpace, Facebook, FriendFinder, Yahoo! 360, and Orkut. Prior to getting a community member at one among these networking sites, you might want to 1st study the web site to make sure that it's every little thing that you simply want it to be.
When you can very easily see, there are a variety of different ways in which it is possible to go about advertising and marketing your blog site on on-line social networking sites. You in no way identified, but, furthermore to endorsing your blog, you may also make new good friends along the way.

Features that IPhone 5 Needs

The iPhone 5 will sell well, but if Apple really wants to delight consumers, the device will feature these five things at the very least.

4G LTE

The first feature that the iPhone 5 absolutely needs to have on board is 4G LTE. For those unfamiliar with 4G LTE, its the next generation cellular network that carriers are currently rolling out to customers in the United States.
4G LTE offers data speeds that can reach up to 10 times faster than those found on 3G
Android devices have, since March of 2011, had access to 4G LTE speeds. In October, Apple released the iPhone 4S but the device is limited to the 3G networks on AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. AT&T’s model does get ’4G’ service but that ’4G’ indicator stands for HSDPA which is only slightly better than 4G LTE.
4G LTE is the true ’4G’ and it’s something that iPhone users have desperately been craving. Fortunately, the iPhone 5 will likely feature LTE data speeds. How do we know this?
AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, the three big carriers of the iPhone here in the United States, all have 4G LTE networks in place. Throw in the fact that the new iPad, which Apple released earlier this year boasts 4G LTE and it’s clear that the iPhone 5 is likely going to come with LTE.
One of the knocks on 4G LTE devices is the poor battery life that often comes with them. Improvements have been made since the HTC ThunderBolt, the first 4G LTE smartphone, launched in March of last year but there is still a lot to be desired in the battery life department.
Should Apple decide to include 4G LTE on board, it will need to offer amazing battery life to customers. My cries about the terrible battery life on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus may have fallen on deaf ears but terrible battery life on an iPhone would not go so quietly.
iPhone users have been accustomed to best-in-class battery life over the years and Apple needs to keep up this standard to not only keep sales on the up-and-up but to keep customers happy as well.
Luckily, we believe that this was one of the reasons why Apple initially held off on releasing a 4G LTE iPhone. It wanted to ensure that its smartphone had amazing battery life, even with 4G LTE.

Larger Screen

There is still quite the debate out there about whether or not the iPhone 5 will feature a larger screen. Right now, smart money is on the iPhone 5 boasting a 4-inch display, should Apple decide to bump the device’s screen size up from the usual 3.5-inches.
With the way that the mobile industry is right now, this is something that Apple needs to do.
It’s clear that larger screen phones are something that consumers want. The best selling Android devices are the devices that feature larger screens. By offering an iPhone 5 with a larger screen, Apple essentially kills two birds with one stone. One, it pleases customers who want an iPhone with a bigger screen (there are a lot of them) and it also takes away that advantage from its competitors.

Have you ever watched a movie or a video on the iPhone’s tiny display? It’s not a pleasant experience. Bumping up the screen size just a little would allow for better viewing and better gaming, two things that are important to smartphone users these days. This would work out especially well with a 4G LTE iPhone which will allow users to stream content faster than ever while on-the-go.
A larger screen would also allow for things like a larger keyboard and more information on the screen.
And if Apple can accomplish this without making the phone wider or thicker like many believe, Apple will be able to change the screen size without drastically changing up the device that millions have become comfortable with over the past give years.

New Look

Both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S have been great successes with their mix of thinness, metal and glass. However, Apple needs to change it up much like it did when it introduced the iPhone 4′s design after sticking with similar designs for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS.
That new design was a huge reason why these phones were both huge successes. However, there are many that want something different from the iPhone 5. Whether it’s because they feel like the current design is stale or because they don’t like the glass backing on the iPhone, many past, present and future iPhone users want to see Apple do something different.
Maybe it’s that tear drop design we saw back before the iPhone 4S launched, maybe it’s something completely different.  But Apple has a chance to raise the bar of smartphone design again with the iPhone 5 and it needs to with the competition as fierce as it is.

Better Front-Facing Camera

Believe it or not, the iPhone 5 needs a better front-facing camera.
One, the front-facing camera on the current iPhone is terrible. It doesn’t perform well in places were lighting isn’t perfect. Read: just about everywhere. That has deterred users from using services like FaceTime, Skype and more with their iPhone.
With iOS 6, Apple is going to be introducing FaceTime over 3G and presumably, 4G LTE as well. In order for that feature to matter, Apple will need to outfit its next iPhone with an above average front-facing camera.
I know I’d use video chat services if it did and I’m sure others would be more inclined to as well.