In another announcement today the AdSense team has decided to change the default font face that will be used for displaying ads, currently most of the ads are displayed using Arial and Verdana, the new default font faces for ads will be as follows;

Arial: 728×90, 336×280, 120×600, 120×240
Verdana: 300×250, 160×600, 468×60, 250×250, 234×60, 125×125, 180×150
Times New Roman: 200×200

If you are not happy with the default font face you can change it by editing the ads.

Default font faces to be updated [Official Google AdSense Blog]

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The changes are related to the DoubleClick DART cookies, that will stored on users computers who visit websites displaying Google AdSense ads. The email asks users to update their privacy policy before April 8th 2009.

Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. "sports enthusiast").  To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network.  As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the "sports enthusiast" interest category.  To learn more about your associated account settings, please visit the AdSense Help Center at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=20310.

As a result of this announcement, your privacy policy will now need to reflect the use of interest-based advertising. Please review the information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=100557 to ensure that your site’s privacy policies are up-to-date, and make any necessary changes by April 8, 2009.  Because publisher sites and laws vary across countries, we’re unfortunately unable to suggest specific privacy policy language.

AdSense publishers will now have to add-in a new policy that tells users about these changes, but is it really the publishers job? What is your take on this? Do you think Google is right to tell publishers to update their privacy policy? Do let us know through your comments.

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You will have to choose a new form of payment to resume the payment sending service, those could include checks, EFT and Western Union.

If you have changed your country and lost you checks don’t forget to read our tips about changing your country for Google AdSense, for more such AdSense tips you can visit the Google AdSense category.

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The first interesting change is no ad units under section headings that imply ads are not ads. According to the policy such formats may mislead a user that the ads are part of the post. This change affects the hugely popular format used by most blogs wherein the ads are directly placed beneath the title before the content starts. Check out the screenshot below to look at the format of the ads.

As you see the new guidelines ask you to refrain from posting ads below the title, but wait do not panic it is only for posts which have misleading titles that try to blend the ads as part of the actual content. You can continue using this format on your blog as long as the title is relevant and not misleading.

The second policy change implies that the ads on your site should be easily distinguishable from the content. Check out the screenshot below for offending formats of ad placements.

As you can see the content and ads are not easily distinguishable. You can such many such ads being using on MFA (Made For AdSense) sites.

Summarizing

As always these policies are bound to affect many publishers and it is always good to stay on the good side of the AdSense team rather than getting banned. That said the first policy change should raise many a doubts among publishers but like I said it will not affect you unless there is a title that is actually questionable.

If you have any doubts about Google AdSense do feel free to tell me about it, you can leave a comment or contact me directly.

Via: [Official Google AdSense Blog]

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Before posting videos or pictures on a page with Google ads, put yourself in an advertiser’s position and consider whether you would want to have your ad displayed on the page. If your content might potentially be seen as offensive or disturbing, an advertiser may not be comfortable running their ads on that page. Here are a few specific types of content that you can check for:

• Adult or mature: Includes, but is not limited to, images and videos containing sexual activity, full nudity, and lewd poses. Please review this recent post to determine whether your content might fall into this category.
• Violent or gory: Can include images and videos of street-fighting, people hurting each other, or gruesome accidents and their victims.
• Culturally insensitive or hate speech: Includes content promoting racial intolerance or advocating against a specific individual, group, or organization.

In addition to that they are also advising publishers not to place AdSense ads on pages involved in unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials. As usual these announcements need to be taken seriously to avoid a ban from the AdSense program.

So next time you are using any images or videos that do not confirm with the AdSense policy make sure to disable AdSense for the page.

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With Google Analytics being so feature rich and has pretty graphs to give you visual feel for all the numbers, it’s a little surprising that Google doesn’t offer such performance tracking tools to its flagship brand, Adsense.

CSV AdStats is a free application that can analyze your Google Adsense data that you can download in CSV format. AdStats then calculates detailed statistical information like CPM, number of clicks, moving averages, etc.

CSV AdStats Quick Facts

• Supports automatics download of csv file from Google Adsense
• Powerful analysis in 7-day, weekly, monthly and yearly trends
• Choice of different parameters to get relevant stats on your earnings
• Supports stats for ‘Search’ and ‘Referrals’ as well
• Extensive charts give you a visual feel of your performance and you can save charts in emf, bmp, jpg or png formats
• A timer allows you to download csv files from Adsense automatically and you can opt to get notified if the earnings go up.

Download CSV AdStats

Some of the menu options are still in French after choosing Language as English but the tool is useful enough to learn a little bit of French! Especially the automatic update throughout the day and a message with increase in earnings without the need for a browser is just incredible!

Check out some of the screenshots in this page to get an idea of what you can see in AdStats.

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This was earlier also reported in Search Engine Land. Obviously I was a bit late to spot it. Have you been seeing the new functionality in AdSense ads?

The question though is whether user would be enticed to click on it and who will be actually credited for the clicks for the Ads. I am not sure as I have not heard much about this on the AdSense blog yet or I may have been ignorant about this.

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I had complained to Google about it and my channels was fixed immediately. So this shows that Google does work in ASAP mode when there are problems . Are your channels report showing up fine now? Do let me know.

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The Advanced report too does not show proper channel information. They have not even posted any clarifications about this issue on their AdSense blog. What’s up Google?

I guess this may have been caused due to the new changes they are rolling out to allow you to make ad changes without replacing code. But since there is not clarification from the AdSense Blog yet nothing can be speculated.

Below is a screenshot of how my reporting looks taking at 12 PM EST today.

Are you facing a similar problems with your AdSense reports? Do let me know through your comments. I would also like to know whether you use AdSense channels to tweak your Ads for better performance.

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The first thing I did when I moved to US was changed my country for my Google AdSense account because it would be beneficial for me to receive payments in US dollars rather than Indian Rupees which I earlier used to get and also since I got a bank account it US it meant faster payments than regular check payments.

You can use the following instructions to only change your country whenever you move to someplace else, the above EFT transfers are only available in US, in other countries you will receive the regular check payments.

Important Information: When you change your country with Google AdSense you have to create a new Google Account. The old account will be canceled so you will have to create a new account to use Google AdSense with a new country. The other services associated with your old account like Gmail, Calendar etc will not be affected and you can continue using it.

The Preparation

The first thing before you can change your country is populate this information

1. Have you ever received an AdSense payment? If so, what was the amount of your most recent payment?
2. What was the first day you received a page impression?
3. How many page impressions did you get on your first day?
4. What is your new address?

The answers to all 4 questions are easy.

Answer 1:

Login to your existing account and go to My Account -> Payment History and find the most recent Payment Issued Date. If you have not received a payment then state that you have not yet received your payment yet

Answer 2:

This is more tricky, for this go to Reports -> Advanced Reports and choose the following options as shown below.

Make sure to select the date range as all time and click on the Display Report button. Now in the displayed report below choose the first date which is always the first date you started receiving AdSense impressions on you site. That date becomes the answer to your second question.

Answer 3:

With steps you performed above you also get the answer to the third one under the Page Impressions column.

Answer 4:

Enter your correct new address information including, country etc.

Making a Contact

Once you have collected all this information you need to contact the Google AdSense representative to inform them about these changes, to do that do the following steps.

1. Go to the contact page for Google AdSense. From the option provided select Account Issues after which you have to select Want to change my country as shown below.

Once you have done that click on Continue button, you should be taken to a new page where you have to fill in the information that is asked in the text area provided enter the questions and answers that you collected earlier.

For example you will need to paste the information with something like this;

Have you ever received an AdSense payment? If so, what was the amount of your most recent payment?
Yes, I have recieved an AdSense payment, the most recent being so and so date

What was the first day you received a page impression?
I recieved my first page impression on so and so date.

How many page impressions did you get on your first day?
I got xxx page impression on the first day

What is your new address?
your new address info here

That’s it now all you need to do is submit the question and cross your fingers.

Waiting Period

An AdSense representative will get back to you within 3-4 days time and guide you with the steps to change the account to your new country. Once you have setup your new account you can now start using your new account.

Other things to know

Canceling your old account does not relinquish your earnings but they will rather be transferred to your new account. But don’t expect the transfer to happen immediately it takes a minimum of 90 days for payments to be transferred from old account to new ones.

The ad units do not perform well for the first 1-2 days but after that performance returns to normal.

Some Guidance Tips from me

Once you have received your new account first thing to do is that you have to change the AdSense publisher id for all the pages where you currently are running AdSense. The old account will no longer receive payment for clicks. Also within a few days the old account will stop showing ads and display public ads.

Since you the old account balance will not be transferred to you for 90 days, wait until you receive the payments for the current month before making the request. In such case you will not have a huge amount stuck for 90 days.

If you do not hear from the payment team you can always send them a gentle reminder and they will tell you the status of your account.

Click here to view the official help from Google AdSense for changing your country. Let me know if you have found this information helpful or if you have any other tips related to AdSense.

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