The beauty of the custom channel is visitors don’t realize it is an animation, rather they think it is the actual Youtube page which has gone interactive. So users watch the whole animation and only later do they realize that the actual Youtube page is below and you need to scroll down.

Of course many miss the “Skip Animation” link which appears after a while on the top right of the animation, which will fast forward you to the end of the animation, but still shows you a promo video of the Ra One Music trailer. You again need to scroll down to see the channel.

Ra.One is an upcoming  Hindi Superhero film starring Shahrukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Arjun Rampal which is expected to release in October end at Diwali and promises to be a blockbuster at Bollywood Box Office. Lets see if becomes available at the Youtube Box Office also.

Its amazing use of Youtube for Ra One Movie promotions. With a high budget advertising campaign, you will see many ads and banners across the Google ad network pointing you to the channel. Did you enjoy the animation?

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See the ad units below and see the first ad is enlarged in all the ad units.

What are your thoughts on this. Well  it will surely get more clicks.

Adsense keeps testing ad variations off an on for better Adsense optimization.  Check out some cool ad variations they tested before - link hover backgrounds,  twitter ad units,  2×2 ads, favicons, no titles,  favicons, checkout icons,  titles in italics, multiple languages, no Ads by Google and interactive keywords.

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Normally Adsense publishers can choose to decide the background of their ads. We have 336×280 ad units on our pages, with a white background set, and a light green background is visible as you hover over the ad. However, the clickable area is still the ad title and link url. The mouse over the title also reveals the destination url overlapping the ad text.

When you hover over to the next link the background of that link changes.

Google adsense routinely tests many new ad variations, which if work, become standard features, else a new variation is tested. Check out some cool ad variations they tested before  twitter ad units,  2×2 ads, favicons, no titles,  favicons, checkout icons,  titles in italics, multiple languages, no Ads by Google and interactive keywords.

What are your thoughts on these new ads? Do you seem them on our site or your site?

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A/B Testing of Google Adsense Ads

You have noticed we run a 336×280 ad unit on every article. Now suppose we want to test different link colors to see which ad format works best – here is how to do it.

1. Create  first ad unit of 336×280 with blue links.
2. Assign it with custom channel, lets say ‘blue links’
3. Create second ad unit of 336×280 with green links.
4. Assign it with custom channel, lets say ‘green links’
5. Use javascript code to rotate the ad unit to display alternate ads with blue and then green links and so on.

<script type="text/javascript">
var random_number = Math.random();
if (random_number < .5){
// first ad unit code
} else {
// second ad unit code
}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>

6. Place the javascript code where you originally had place your ads.

Correct Code Use –  Remember that since the javascript code above already has the script tags, you need not cut paste the whole Adsense code, but only the part between the script tags. So this how the code will look like.

<script type="text/javascript">
var random_number = Math.random();
if (random_number < .5){
 <!--
 google_ad_client = "pub-99999999999999";
 google_ad_slot = "12345";
 google_ad_width = 336;
 google_ad_height = 280;
 //-->
} else {
 <!--
 google_ad_client = "pub-99999999999999";
 google_ad_slot = "123456789";
 google_ad_width = 336;
 google_ad_height = 280; 
 //-->
}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>

This is a very nice trick suggested by Adsense team itself and works very well – which means you need not worry about editing the Adsense code for A/B testing purposes only (which otherwise is not allowed as per Adsense guidelines).

Compare the channel reports in Adsense Reports after a week (it takes time to get useful results!) and see which channel has better CTR and  then use those links. You can modify the code and keep optimizing – change a new parameter now, like text color etc. and keep using this technique for highest CTR possible.

We got a higher CTR by this technique. Tell us you got better results…

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This provides the end user with more choice and more relevant search results, however it makes the results crowded, and thus makes it difficult for an individual listing, whether paid or organic to gain as much traffic as it once did.

More recently, paid search has received an increasing amount of exposure and real estate space on the search results, partially down to increasing frequency of ad placements above the #1 organic search results, but also down to adwords extensions which allows each ad slot to have more prominence in the results pages as demonstrated below.

This creates a unique opportunity for ecommerce websites to gain prominence in search listing using the product and sitelinks adwords extensions.

Product Extensions

The products extension is displayed as a collapsed list, when clicked a gallery of products are displayed from your feeds, as demonstrated above. It’s worth experimenting with this because it costs nothing more to use, although the higher prominence of your ads may increase CTR which results in a better quality score which then may reduce bid price.

Products extension requires the use of Google Merchant account, which you will need to set up using the steps below:

1. Set up an account on http://www.google.com/merchants using the same email address as your adwords account.
2. Fill out all the store settings
3. Create a data feed of your products and upload it to Google merchants, most shopping carts allow you to generate a list of your products some may refer to it using the previous name Google base.

With your merchant account set up and ready to go, you simply need to link your merchants and adwords accounts together to get product extensions to work.

1. Select the adword campaign in which you want to use product extensions.
2. A new tab called “Ad extensions” should now appear in campaigns, click it and tick the Google merchant account email address to activate product extensions.

A few notes on Product Extensions and Google Merchants

• Product extensions only appear on Google search network, and at the moment only on ads place above organic search
• There is no guarantee that extensions will appear, the requirement seems to be high quality score and enough products in your range that match the search phrase.
• Google merchant lists your products in shopping search results, which may get you free traffic from the shopping results.
• You have no control over which products appear, so it may be in your interest to tweak your inventory, with relevant names and pictures, to optimise for adwords extensions.

Sitelink Extensions

The sitelink extension allows you to add four additional links to your site underneath your regular adwords ad. This gives you an opportunity to get more exposure and prominence for your ads in search results. It also allows you to place alternative offers and products to entice users to visit your site.

Sitelink Extensions are relatively straight forward to create, go into your adwords campaign > ad extensions and enter the title and URL of your links.

Few tips for sitelink extensions

• Only send visitors to relevant pages with the intent on selling, with your eye on ROI, don’t be tempted to fill up all your sitelinks just for more exposure.
• Keep concise, sitelinks is an extension of your main ad, and not an alternative ad.
• Use it to promote seasonal and weekly offers, such as free shipping on $100 orders, or free bonus gifts on mother’s day purchases.
• When the adwords ad is for a specific product, it can be useful to use sitelinks to promote free add-ons main product, or a close substitute product which user may be interested in.

Conclusion

With the first page of Google search results being increasingly crowded with various different search results, it’s important to use as many tools at your disposal to increase traffic to your ecommerce website. Sitelink and product extensions for Adwords costs nothing to set up, and can help boost your campaigns and overall profitability. While product extensions is meant primarily for ecommerce websites, sitelinks can be used for various different offers such as affiliates, information products, software, services etc.

Guest author Karim is the webmaster of OnlineBackupServices.co and a SEM strategist.

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Twitter Adsense Ads

Here is what the Twitter ad on Google Adsense looked like

Upon loading, the ad autorefreshed showing the latest tweets of the Twitter account for around 7 times. The cursor shows that you could click the arrows and this will bring you to the new tweet. It seems clicks to these arrows will not be charged to the advertiser as you are browsing the tweets. Click the arrow and get a new tweet.

The image, tweet link and “Follow Me on Twitter” seem to be clickable as observed by change of cursor image (we didnt click at it though). The call of action is clearly very good, and I am sure it will attract a high CTR. I like the Twitter Adsense units. Have you seen such Twitter Adsense units on your site?

We have spotted several strange Adsense ads over the years like ads with 2×2 ads, favicons, no titles, titles in italics and no Ads by Google and interactive keywords. Lets see how this will work out.

Update: @blogsdna tweets that he has spotted such ad units before and “specifically only Windows 7 Twitter account is advertised that way”.

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Targeted Behavioral Advertising

All 3rd party ad networks use cookies to track your Web preferences and usage patterns in order to tailor advertising content to your interests. What is notable is that information gathered at one Website may be used to direct targeted ad content at another site based on your behavioral preferences.

Here is a video about Third party Ad serving basics

This video shows more about Audience Based Advertising

Stop Online Targeted Behavioral Advertising

The NAI requires that all member advertising networks provide an “opt-out” mechanism for their targeted ad programs they provide. The NAI opt-out tool is a simple Web-based tool to opt out from receiving targeted ads from member ad networks.

The Opt out tool will examine your computer to identify those member advertising companies (like Google, TribalFusion, Adify etc.) that have placed an advertising cookie file on your computer. To opt out of an NAI member’s behavioral advertising program, simply check the box or “Select All” and the tool will automatically replace the specified advertising cookies. I got this…

This video shows how the NAI Opt out tool works.

Opting out of a network will not stop online advertising. It simply means you will no longer get ads tailored to your Web preferences and usage patterns. It stops the creepy feeling that what you searched for is following you across the web, as ads keep displaying what you were looking for to get more clicks. Read the FAQ before you Opt out. It is one of the reasons why Google Adsense publishers require to post a privacy policy.

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Google Adsense shares new recommendations for ad implementation, (which will vary depending on your web page), but are the outcome of Adsense testing across millions of blogs and forums. Of course the  best way is to optimize your site through regular experimentation.

Best Adsense Placement for Blogs

Google Adsense ads on your homepage. 728×90, 160×600, 300x250px Adsense ad units work best for high CTR.

Google Adsense ads on your article pages. 160×600, 336x280px

Best Adsense Placement for Forums

Google Adsense ads on your forum homepage, category, post page - 728x90px banner is by far the best choice when used wiht link units.

So follow these Adsense placement guidelines and improve your CTR to make money online. Read more Adsense tips. You can also get official support via Google AdSense Optimization Specialists.

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The Login page ads provide exclusive placement on login.yahoo.com with a full page ad of 1440 x 1024 max and allow the creative to be static or interactive. The interactive version may include a button that opens a 450 x 450 Flash experience or plays a video. The USP is bigger canvas, bolder creative and massive reach (more than 26 million daily users) with 100% mindshare. Check out some creative examples of Malibu, Traverse, Equinox, Cruze, and Volt.

So did it help to increase sales and brand engagement? GM has a story to tell.

The Login Page takeover not only increased awareness, but it also drove engagement. The campaign drove 100,000 incremental visits to the Chevrolet site. That engagement carried over to Yahoo! Search, where search activity for relevant brand terms soared immediately after the ads premiered. During the campaign, 4.3 times more users searched on relevant terms. Searches for the Malibu on Yahoo! reached the highest volume of the year, and for the first time exceeded that of competitor Ford Fusion. Searches for both Traverse and Equinox reached their highest level since Chevrolet launched specific TV and print campaigns for each model. The campaign also delivered purchase intent and leads, with requests for price quotes on Yahoo! Autos increasing by 22%.

Yahoo! Digital AdVentures invites advertisers to the brave new world of advertising on Yahoo! properties. Rethink online marketing. Push limits. Get significant results.

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AdSense publishers can sign up here and an official AdSense optimization specialist will contact you by email or phone to implement the tips you want to try, and as a bonus some of you may be featured on the Inside AdSense blog. Remember to sign up before December 15th, 2010.

Improve your AdSense Implementation for the holidays and earn more money online. You can find some cool Adsense tips on our site too.

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