Got an app? Increase revenue by building a website too

At some point most app developers will be faced with the question: ‘What’s the best way to monetize my app?’. There are many business models, but many don’t think about the additional opportunities to earn revenue from content they’ve already created. Izumi Artisan is a Japanese developer who’s been successful in earning money from his app, then using the content to create a website to earn additional income. We will explore his strategy in this post.

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[Goal]

• Maximize revenue from the web
• Improve user experience
• Expand business overseas

[Approach]

• Monetize both website and app
• Create an environment where the users can help each other to finish the game

[Results]

• 40% of the total revenue came from the website 
•  Improved profitability and usability with low overhead

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‘Old Offender was the very first app that we made’

At the time of building our first app, my brother and I didn’t have engineering skills. So I went to a local book store and bought "Java for the First Time", and taught myself how to make a mobile app. I chose to make escape games because the programming needed to build one was relatively simple. Also, there were not many other similar apps for smartphones in that category. So we worked together and published ‘Old Offender: Escape from Prison’ as our first gaming app.

‘Ads are better than a paid business model’

When considering the monetization method, we chose ads. At that time, paid apps were not that popular in Japan. Now, we’re using multiple ad networks using a mediation tool, and for foreign countries we’re only using AdMob.

‘We saw a 60% revenue increase by using Google AdSense’

After we launched the app we had feedback from users asking for hint-and-tips, so I immediately decided to take action. We chose to make a bulletin board website where users can interact with each other to find the answer to a challenge in the game. My brother designed the website and had it ready within a week. We also signed up for Google Adsense to post ads on the website. Signing up and implementing AdSense did not take more than 2 days and we were able to stat monetize our website with the least resource but high impact. Furthermore, we saw a 60% revenue increase by using Google AdSense and the web business is now 40% of the sales of the company.

Posted by Yuya Sumida - Account Manager
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Introducing the Google AdSense Certified Partner Program

Since 2003, AdSense has helped publishers from around the world earn from their content and grow their businesses. Over time, we’ve also seen growth in the number of consultants and service providers who have built their own businesses around helping publishers succeed with AdSense. With this in mind, we’ve created the Google AdSense Certified Partner Program to work more closely with these service providers and recognize the expertise they’ve developed.

If you use AdWords or Analytics, you may be familiar with the similar Certified Partner programs we offer for those products -- qualified companies can become certified to help you manage your account, should you require additional support for your business. Just like in these other programs, AdSense Certified Partners are carefully vetted by Google, and meet rigorous qualification standards. AdSense Certified Partners can assist with dedicated services ranging from setting up AdSense ad code on your pages to running ongoing optimization tests for you.

For service providers interested in this new program, we’ve put together comprehensive training and testing resources that cover all aspects of AdSense. Once a company has passed our qualification exam and met additional criteria to become a Certified Partner, they’ll be added to our official program website and receive a program logo for their own site. Certified Partners will also have access to marketing resources and tools to help them manage client accounts, and will join a group of accredited companies. We currently have 13 active Certified Partners, and will be adding more to the list throughout the year.

If you’re a prospective Certified Partner or a publisher interested in the services offered by these Certified Partners, you can visit our program website or Help Center for more information. We look forward to working with this group of partners and continuing to expand the range of options available to publishers in the AdSense program.

Posted by Catherine Downes - AdSense Certified Partner Team

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Redesigned Text Ads on the Google Display Network

Web design is evolving at a rapid pace. With that in mind, today we’re beginning to give our text ads a modern look designed to enhance their performance and the overall user experience.

Our new design puts a strong emphasis on readability. We've introduced larger and clearer titles, more generous white space, and a flat circular button design, which complements the colors of other elements in the ad.

We’ve also updated how we show multiple ads within a single ad unit. Our design, illustrated below, only expands a full view of other ads when a user interacts with an ad unit either by a mouse hover or touch.

Keep an eye out for the redesign and don’t forget to try our recently launched new fonts. Let us know what you think of this new look over on our AdSense + page.

Posted by Adnan Virk - Ad Formats Designer
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Achievement Unlocked: monetizing online games with TrueView and AdSense

With every new plot planted and zombie zapped to bits, the online games industry is changing the way we interact with entertainment. Online games publishers work with us to grow their gaming empires across all screens, from distribution and downloads through to in-game advertising. We’ve also recognized a growing advertiser demand to reach highly engaged games audiences. So we were especially excited to announce at Europe’s Game Developer Conference: we’re launching the TrueView video ad format across our games monetization platforms.

TrueView creates a better ad experience for gamers, and higher monetization for publishers

We all know how important it is to create a gamer-friendly ad experience, which is why we’re bringing one of our most successful ad formats to games: the skippable video ad. TrueView Instream skippable video ads drive a lot of advertiser demand on YouTube, the Ad Exchange, and AdSense for video. Following on Susan Wojcicki’s beta announcement earlier this year, we’re now making TrueView video ads available to all games publishers on AdX, AdSense for games, and select mobile publishers on AdMob. During the beta, we found that in general TrueView video ads contributed to lower abandonment rates and greater monetization compared to normal instream video ads.

The rise of gamer-friendly ad formats like TrueView can drive even better monetization for games - which is great news for game publishers, but perhaps not for the zombies.

Posted by Rebecca Illowsky and Allen Huang - Product Managers, Games Monetization
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Introducing favicons to our text ads

We’re constantly thinking about how we can make our ad formats better for you, your users and the advertisers appearing on your pages. Today we’re happy to share the introduction of favicons to our text ads. A favicon is a small graphic that an advertiser can use to brand their website, such as their company logo.

We regularly experiment with small changes to the look of our text ads, measuring the potential impact on user experience and publisher earnings. Our experiments show that adding these favicons to the ads makes advertisers more recognizable to your users, which benefits both you and the advertisers whose ads appear on your sites.

We’d love to hear your thoughts -- feel free to share your feedback about this new look for text ads on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Mohamad Ayyash - AdSense Software Engineer
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Changes in rankings of smartphone results

As the number of smartphone users continues to surge globally, many of you are responding quickly with mobile-friendly sites. Regardless of the device a user views your site on, their experience should be rich and consistent. With this in mind, the Google Webmaster Team is making some changes to the way they rank search results on smartphones. In particular, these changes will address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users. Read the original post and learn more about common configuration mistakes as well as recommendations from the Webmaster Team on building your mobile-optimized website.

Posted by Suzanne Headon - Inside AdSense team
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AdSense now speaks Vietnamese

The Google AdSense team is pleased to announce the official launch of Vietnamese language support for AdSense for content.

Why Vietnamese language is important to Google
Vietnam is one of the fastest growing online markets in the world, with huge potential ahead. The online landscape has evolved rapidly in the last few years, becoming as vibrant and colorful as the streets of Hanoi.

We hope that introducing Vietnamese language support will help fuel even more great quality content creation, while helping advertisers reach out to a booming online user base through display ads.

How to get started

1. Please start by familiarizing yourself with the AdSense program policies. Need a refresher? Update your understanding of the policies by taking this AdSense policy quiz.
     
2. Sign up for an Adsense account by enrolling your Vietnamese language website.
     
3. Once your AdSense account has been approved, congratulations, simply add the AdSense code to your site to start displaying relevant, contextually targeted ads.

Chào mừng đến với chương trình adsense!

Posted by Emanuele Brandi - Product Sales Lead
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Increase user engagement with link unit ad previews

To increase performance for our publishers, we recently launched an update to link units in select countries and site verticals. When users click on a link unit keyword, the resulting page now shows thumbnails of the advertisers' landing page. We ran extensive experiments on this change and found that users were more likely to click on the results with thumbnail images, leading to increased publisher revenue and more conversions for advertisers.

This change will happen automatically for publishers using link units in the affected countries and site verticals, so no action is required if you’re an existing user of the format.  For publishers not using link units, we’d recommend trying them out!

• Link units are an efficient way of monetizing smaller areas of your website.
• Link units are a non-intrusive way to monetize, as the simple layout doesn’t distract from your content.

As a reminder, our program policies state you may have three link unit ad formats in addition to the three standard units.

We encourage you to test out the link unit format.  For more information visit our Help Center.

Posted By Kwanho Lee - Software Engineer
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Coming soon: Updates to our Terms and Conditions

In order to keep pace with changes in our products, we regularly review our Terms and Conditions to make sure they're up to date and in line with those of other Google products. As a result of our recent review, we’ll be making some updates to our Terms, starting April 23rd. If you're based in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, or North America, you'll see a notification in your account when you log in after this date. It will present you with the updated Terms and prompt you to accept them. For publishers based in the Asia-Pacific region, the change to our Terms will happen slightly later as we’re rolling the changes out gradually across all regions. 

You'll have 30 days to fully review the new terms in detail before action is required. Before the updated Terms appear in your account, we'd like to give you an idea of what's changing:

• With this new version of the Terms and Conditions, our goal has been to make them as clear and transparent as possible. As a result of this, we hope that it’ll be even easier to navigate and find what you’re looking for.
• With mobile being one of the big trends in 2013 and beyond, we’re expanding our Terms to cover mobile properties more specifically. We’ve also incorporated guidelines for using the AdMob SDK and other publisher products.

The updates outlined above are the main areas that will be affected by the change. However, we’ve made smaller changes throughout, so please be sure to review the Terms as a whole before accepting them.

Posted by Matt Goodridge - AdSense Product Manager

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The brand revolution is underway

(cross posted from the Inside AdWords blog)

As we’ve said before, we’ve entered the next wave of digital marketing, as major brands like L’Oreal, Audi and Kay Jewelers embrace digital media and make it a core part of their marketing strategy.  We’ve seen a 65 percent increase in the last quarter alone in the number of brand advertisers using our brand formats and buying tools.

This influx of brand investment is translating into meaningful results for digital publishers.

• We looked at the 50 top publishers that enable brand-friendly ad formats on their sites.  Over the past three months we found that, on average, they experienced a CPM increase of 2x or more when running these engagement-driven ads, such as our Lightbox ad, which expands to a full page only after a user has deliberately engaged with the ad. “We've seen CPM increases of more than 3X, and our advertisers love the large canvas and pay for engagement model," says Rich Dredge, Answers.com's Chief Revenue Officer.

• We’ve seen an overall increase in higher CPMs across our exchange -- in the U.S., CPMs over $5 have increased 24% year-over-year while those over $10 have increased 23% year-over-year. Brand spend is a critical piece of these increases.

Fueling brand adoption
To continue this momentum, we’ve been investing in a suite of brand solutions over the past year to help these advertisers make the most of what digital marketing has to offer:

• New Ways to Buy -- Last year, we introduced Active View, offering for the first time the ability to not only measure whether ads are viewable, but actually buy based on it. Brands are able to “reserve” a guaranteed number of impressions on brand-friendly sites across the web -- and they pay only for impressions that are viewed. 

• Over the past year, the number of advertisers using the reserve option has increased fourfold.
• Nearly two-thirds of those are Ad Age top 100 brands.

• New Ways to Engage -- Last year, we introduced a new family of brand-friendly, engagement-focused ad formats. Engagement formats are already showing terrific early returns.  For example, L’ORÉAL PARiS was one of the first brands to run a campaign using engagement ads. They ran an expandable ad in Germany as part of their “Beauty Minute” campaign and found that 30% of those who expanded the ad watched the entire 30-second embedded video.

• New Ways to Measure -- We’re committed to providing meaningful metrics for brands, measurement that goes beyond just clicks and conversions. Earlier this week, we introduced Brand Lift in AdWords, which will enable marketers to run surveys along with their ad campaigns, to determine how their ads helped their marketing objectives (i.e., whether their ads helped build awareness, increased favorability towards their brand, etc.). Brand Lift complements our other investments in brand measurement, like Active View and Active GRP.

Digital media represents an amazing opportunity for both brands and publishers, bringing together sight, sound, motion, interactivity and measurement in ways we’ve never seen before.

Over the coming year, we’ll be continuing to invest in our products and systems that will help brands thrive in the digital space, as well as help publishers capitalize on the shift...so stay tuned for more to come.

-- Posted by Neal Mohan
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Simplified contact resources and consultations for select accounts

AdSense provides access to a number of resources to resolve issues and answer your questions. Many of these resources are available in the Help Center, including the Fix a Problem troubleshooting section, the AdSense Academy learning modules, and answers to common (and not so common) questions.

Today, we’re excited to announce a recent addition to our Help Center: a simplified, personalized contact options page. This page serves as a single source for many commonly used troubleshooters that can help you resolve your issue in minutes. In some cases, these troubleshooters lead to issue-specific contact forms that generate emails to our team. We’ve developed automated tools, closely monitored by our support specialists, to help fix issues you’ve identified and process these incoming emails, making it possible for us to typically answer your questions in only a few hours.

The new contact options page, troubleshooters, and specialized contact forms are available to all publishers with an approved AdSense account.

For those publishers generally earning more than $25 per week, we’re now offering consultations with members of our team via email in 33 languages. We’re happy helping you manage your AdSense account or discussing strategies to grow your business. If your account qualifies, you’ll see an alert notifying you on the contact options page. We aim to reply to all consults within two business days, though turnaround may be longer during certain holiday periods.

We understand publishers want even simpler ways to answer questions and more intuitive contact options, so we’re working on a number of additional initiatives to help you resolve your issues. Keep up to date with new features and opportunities by subscribing to this blog, adding our Google+ page to your circles, and opting in to receiving email.

Posted by Chris Sater - Support and Operations Specialist

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Review your contact information to ensure delivery of important AdSense messages

Throughout your journey as a publisher, we occasionally get in touch to provide information related to your participation in AdSense, such as account and product updates. Our goal is to ensure that this type of information, in addition to other types of messages you can enable like optimization tips, reaches you in a timely fashion so that you can review it and take action. However, sometimes we’re not able to reach you because we have incorrect contact information.

We’ve all been there - we receive too many pieces of information, so we provide a different, less frequently checked email address for an online site we’re signing up for. Or we move, change email addresses, and forget to update contact details for different services. It’s a common occurrence, so we wanted to take this opportunity to ask you to review your contact information in your AdSense account to ensure we have your preferred information. We use the contact details entered in your account to reach you, so it’s important that they’re accurate. As always, Google will only collect and use the information that you provide in accordance with its Privacy Policy. 

To update your contact information, log in to your account and visit the Account settings page under the Home tab. Under Personal settings, click “edit” and enter the desired data in the contact name, contact email and contact phone fields, then press “Save”. If you have multiple users for your account, we encourage each user to check their contact information.

	Review contact information now

Thanks for helping us continue our partnership with you.

Posted by Jamie Firkus - Inside AdSense Team

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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