Earn more from your website this summer! Over 50 promotions from U.S. advertisers will be available exclusively to Google Affiliate Network publishers from June 22nd to June 25th. When you post an exclusive promotion on your site, you’ll earn a performance fee when your users click through and make a purchase.

Follow these steps to get started:

1. Apply for Google Affiliate Network with your AdSense publisher ID (or sign in if you're already a Google Affiliate Network publisher).
2. Once approved, review the promotions available and click the "Apply Now" link for each one that you wish to promote. These promotions will also be available in your Google Affiliate Network account from June 22nd to June 25th. You can find them in the Home tab or by searching for “June Exclusive” in the Links tab.

When can I post these promotions on my site?
All promotions will be available by 12 am Central Time on June 22nd, and all will expire at 11:59 am Central Time on June 25th. Note that you may not post any of these exclusive promotions until June 22nd.

For additional questions, check out the Help Center or contact us.

Posted by Erica Sievert, Google Affiliate Network team

When you think of The Financial Times, you might envisage bankers in bowler hats and pinstripes clutching furled umbrellas and a sheaf of pink newsprint. But that’s a pretty dated version of the FT, which is in fact a leading business news and information organization with a hefty digital presence. The average daily print and online readership is 2.2 million, while FT.com has more than 4.5 million registered users.

For the FT, maintaining a leadership position in the dissemination of news and information online has meant a company-wide commitment to encouraging and embracing social media. With this focus on achieving a high-quality social media presence, Google+ was a natural choice for the organization. “We decided to create a Google+ page to add another touch point for our readers,” says FT Community Manager Rebecca Heptinstall. “We want to allow people to read our content where and however they choose.”

In developing its Google+ page, the FT opted to emphasize captivating content and exclusive reporting. As early adopters quickly took to Google+, it might have been easy to just push tech and digital content on the platform, but the FT has gone far beyond this narrow remit, sharing a wide variety of content including a rich stream from correspondents around the world.

Part of the team’s Google+ strategy has also been to play up to the highly visual nature of the platform. Rich media content has been particularly successful. “Google+ is a hugely visual platform for the FT and that is where we see the highest degree of engagement. Whether it’s a video, image or infographic, the interface of Google+ just works well.”

With its combination of rich, unique content and a personalized approach, the FT has reached a significant milestone, recently achieving over 1 million followers -- making their Google+ audience one of the largest and fastest-growing among all newspapers.

“The Financial Times is now read by more different types of people than ever before and Google+ plays a key role in terms of reaching new readers.”

Want to emulate their success? Read the full case study.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team

(Cross posted to the Inside AdWords Blog) 

Last year in the U.S., we launched the AdChoices Icon on the Google Display Network. AdChoices is an industry standard "i" icon that expands to “AdChoices” when users move their cursor over the icon. Giving users clear notice about the ads they see is a high priority for Google and for many in the online advertising industry at large. Users who click this label are taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they see.

We’re now rolling out the AdChoices feature across Europe, supporting industry-wide efforts to provide more information to consumers.  We'll soon start to change our “Ads By Google” in-ads notice icon to a new icon that expands to an "AdChoices" label. These notifications were developed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB Europe)-led Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising to proactively give users notice and choice about the ads they see. With the adoption of a common icon users will see on ads across the web, we hope to show our support for the industry-wide initiative and to increase users' understanding about their choices.

Over the next few weeks, we'll start showing the new icon and label on most ad formats across the majority of European-language sites. Over time, we’ll expand the notice to ensure that all European-language publisher sites in the Google Display Network come within the Self-Regulatory Framework. This will be the single largest rollout of the "AdChoices" label to date, and we're encouraged that others in the industry are also adopting the label.

Users who click on the "AdChoices" label will be taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they are shown. This page will also link to the Ads Preferences Manager, where users can control the types of interest-based ads they see on the Google Display Network. Our tests of this new icon and label showed that they should not have any effect on ad performance. We think this rollout will help users better understand the ads they're seeing, and we look forward to seeing widespread adoption of this label throughout the industry.

Posted by Jason Bigler - Product Management Director

If you have a website in Slovenian or Estonian, you'll now be able to earn money through the AdSense program. To get started, review the basics of AdSense and our policies, then sign up for a free account. Already an active AdSense publisher? Simply place the AdSense ad code on your sites in Slovenian or Estonian to start showing targeted ads.

If your application for AdSense with a Slovenian or Estonian website was previously disapproved for being in an unsupported language, you’re welcome to resubmit it by logging in with the original login details you provided.

For now, you’ll be able to access the interface and help resources in English, as we heard from your feedback that you’d prefer to begin using the program in the meantime. Rest assured that we’re working to provide help content in these languages in the near future.

We look forward to welcoming our Slovenian and Estonian publishers to the AdSense program!

Posted by Ulrike Jung -- Product Sales Lead

Last week we announced that Neal Mohan, Google's VP of Display Advertising, will sit down with industry leaders to explore the explosive growth in ad technology and the next wave of innovation in ad tech. Tune in to the DoubleClick Insights event on June 5th via the live stream to hear leaders from top publishers, advertisers and agencies.

Please register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.

Agenda items include:

Adapting to the Empowered Consumer - Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising at Google will be joined by David Kenny, Chairman & CEO, The Weather Channel Companies, and James Pitaro, Co-President, Disney Interactive Media Group, to discuss how technology is being used to deliver new content and advertising experiences to consumers.

If We Build It, Will They (Consumers) Come? Terry Kawaja, CEO and Co-Founder, Luma Partners (and creator of the now legendary LUMAscape chart) will lead a conversation about the ad tech ecosystem, and what it needs to do next to add value for agencies, publishers, marketers – and ultimately consumers. Terry will be joined onstage by:

• Omar Tawokol, Chief Executive Officer, BlueKai
• Greg Stuart, Global CEO of Mobile Marketing Association
• Kurt Unkel, President, VivaKi 
• Shishir Mehrota, Vice President of Product Management, YouTube

Outside the Box: Technology = Creative Friend or Foe? Technology is supposed to make the life of a marketer easier.  For our final conversation, we’re going to focus on the question of:  Is this technology exploring resulting in better marketing?  Or, is it just resulting in mediocre creative and complexity for both consumers and marketers?  Karim Temsamani, Vice President - New Products and Solutions, Google moderates the conversation with leaders from creative agencies, iconic brands and publishers including:

• Brad Ruffkess, Global Connection, Coca-Cola
• Mike Lowenstern, Managing Director of Digital Advertising, R/GA
• Peter Minnium, Head of Digital Brand Initiatives, IAB 
• John Caldwell, Chief Digital Officer, National Geographic

The live stream will start on June 5, 2012, at 9:00 am PDT, and you’ll be able to watch it from your computer, tablet, or mobile device. To learn more about our highlighted speakers go to the Speakers page on our site.

DoubleClick Insights
Tuesday, June 5th 2012
9:00am - 1:00pm PST
Set event reminder today

Following us on Google+ or Twitter? Use #dclkinsights as you're watching the event to ask questions or share comments during the event.

Posted by Stephen Kliff, DoubleClick Marketing

Over 2 million AdSense publishers like you create the unique and diverse content that we all love - whether it’s finding reviews for a new restaurant, or do-it-yourself furniture makeovers. Online advertising helps fuel this creativity, and we’ve been improving our products to help you make the most of every opportunity - from making it easier to earn revenue from the mobile web, or welcoming Indonesian publishers to the AdSense community.  One of the ways we can continue to support you is by giving access to new sources of industry knowledge to enable you to make the most from display advertising. With this is mind, today we’re introducing a new report, “Display Business Trends: Publisher Edition”.

What’s inside for AdSense publishers? Well for starters, there are answers to questions like:

• Which ad sizes are rising in popularity? You control the ad experience on your site by choosing ad sizes that fit the design of your pages. But with such a flexible selection, which ad sizes should you pick? We found that 80% of all ads served tend to be the three best performing ad units for AdSense publishers: the medium rectangle, leaderboard, and skyscraper. We’re also seeing fewer publishers use smaller ad units, like the 468x60 banner.
• Is the mobile web really a big deal? We think so! We saw a 250% increase in mobile web impressions over the last three months of 2011. Growth in mobile usage has exploded, and there’s never been a better time for your site to go mobile. Check out resources for publishers on our GoMo site and Mobile Mondays blogposts.
• Which sites are showing strong impression growth? In 2011, we found that Shopping, Sports, and Auto & Vehicle sites were some of the fastest year-on-year growth verticals on the Ad Exchange and AdSense. We saw impressive figures across the board, with 15 out of 25 publisher verticals displaying double-digit growth.
• Where in the world are you? All over, as it turns out. Of a possible estimated 245 different countries and territories, we saw publisher ad impressions from 235 of them. These included the island country of Palau - one of the world’s newest sovereign states - and the middle-African nation of Equatorial Guinea, with astounding growth rates of 1106% and 4635% respectively. And while the United States still accounts for the highest percentage of impressions overall, we’re seeing a significant representation from China and Japan, coming in at 11% and 6% respectively.

The Publisher Edition will be the first in a series of publications looking at aggregated global data from across Google’s display advertising solutions, so stay tuned for more industry metrics to come. In the meantime, join the conversation and tell us what you think is behind these trends on our AdSense +Page.

Posted by Mel Ann Chan, Product Marketing Manager, Display Advertising

As the digital media world continues to grow and diversify, we see unprecedented opportunity for both publishers and advertisers. AdSense publishers are an integral part of the display industry community -- so what does this mean for the future of buying and selling ads?

Tune in and watch Google's Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising, sit down with industry leaders to explore the digital ecosystem's swift evolution, and how publishers and advertisers can work better together to make the most of every opportunity, while simultaneously addressing the challenges both face.

The live stream will start on June 5th, 2012, at 9:00am PDT, and you’ll be able to watch from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

Please register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.

DoubleClick Insights

Tuesday, June 5th 2012

9:00am - 1:00pm PST

Following us on Google+ or Twitter? Use the #dclkinsights as you're watching the event.

Posted by Stephen Kliff, DoubleClick Marketing

Did you know that 40% of mobile web users reported that they’ve turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience? With 44% of Americans owning a smartphone, publishers have the opportunity to meet their users’ expectations by delivering a mobile experience that’s on par with the desktop experience.

If you haven’t yet developed a mobile-optimized site, we’re here to help. We recently teamed up with DudaMobile to release a free mobile site builder.  In three easy steps you’re able to get started with mobile: (1) enter your site’s URL, (2) customize your site and (3) redirect mobile users automatically to the new mobile-friendly version.  It’s free and takes just a few minutes to complete!



Join us tomorrow, May 24th at 1pm ET/10am PT and watch as we showcase how ScienceDaily.com can use the mobile site builder to build a mobile-friendly site--live on air.

You’ll also hear from the CMO of DudaMobile, Dennis Mink; he’ll talk about best practices when using the mobile site builder and walk through important questions to ask yourself when building a mobile-friendly site.

Details on how to tune in

1. Sign into Google+ on Thursday, May 24 at 1pm ET/10am PT
2. Go to the Google AdSense+ Page
3. Look for the stream post and click to enter the live stream

If you have questions before or during the Hangout, post them on Google+ with the hashtag #GoMoSite.

Posted by Joseph Corral, Google Mobile Ads Marketing

We’ve talked a lot recently on our blog about how mobile usage is rising at a rate faster than any other technology to date. To keep up, it’s important for your business to develop a mobile strategy.

If you’re located in the London, UK area (or are willing to travel to London!) we’d like to let you know about the GetMo Exhibition we’re hosting on Wednesday, 30 May. During this event, you’ll have the opportunity to learn more about mobile trends. You’ll meet mobile site developers from the GetMo site to hear how they can help you develop a mobile site with their offerings.

The agenda will feature sessions including:

• Mobile Industry Trends with Ian Carrrington, Mobile Advertising Sales Director
• A glimpse into the world of Android with Richard Hyndman, Developer Advocate
• Offerings available from GetMo vendors
• GetMo publisher panel

Spots are filling up, but if you’d like to attend the upcoming event, fill out our interest form before Thursday, 24 May. Although we won’t be able to accommodate all requests due to space constraints, we’ll do our best to include as many interested publishers as possible. 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 in London at our GetMo Exhibition!

Posted by Marta Lysiak - AdSense Optimisation Team

QLife is a leading hospital finder, drug database and health-care information website. QLife’s mobile application, “Medicine Search” is one of the biggest health-care applications in Japan. The app enables users to search for information on a range of medicines. QLife reached 2.5 million downloads of their app after the 3/11 Japan Earthquake, when Japanese consumers sought to pay greater care and attention to their family’s health-care.

Recently, QLife’s Executive Producer, Yoshimasa Mine spoke to us to describe why they choose to use Custom Search Ads for Mobile Applications and AdMob mobile advertising, and shared some optimization best practices.

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Why and when did QLife choose to start building a mobile application?

In 2008, when the iPhone was introduced to the Japanese market, there was a mobile industry event, Mobitec, where I felt the potential of high-end mobile. Mobile phones are a device that's always with a consumer, regardless of whether they're at home, at work, or at play. This was a good match with our business of providing a medicine search service - a search that is done instantly at a time of need.

Next, we took a look at our own company's data. We began to see large increases in traffic from mobile, even more than PCs. We wanted to build and encourage mobile activity to complement desktop traffic, particularly during holidays and weekends where we saw mobile traffic surging.


Why did you decide to monetize your mobile app using AdSense and AdMob?

We originally started using AdSense on our desktop site. As a health-care review site, we need to protect our objectivity and integrity to our users. As a result, advertising is the best solution for monetization, over paid reviews from other health-care services and companies.

We chose AdSense because of the quality of the ads, the content matching technology, and the limited number of sales resources we had internally.  Serving relevant ads is important to our business; we view ads as useful content for our business, and irrelevant ads have not been successful in bringing revenue to us.

We used to use only AdMob to monetize our application. But last year, when Custom Search Ads for Mobile Apps was released, we decided to implement it for two reasons. First, we already used Custom Search Ads for our desktop site. Secondly, we’ve heard that using both Custom Search Ads and AdMob will increase CTR because Custom Search Ads will show more related ads in search results.  


What did you see as a result of implementing Custom Search Ads for Mobile Apps?
We’ve seen revenue from mobile increase by 560% after implementing Custom Search Ads for Mobile Applications. We’re seeing CTRs, CPCs, and RPMs maintain healthy levels in line with our internal benchmarks. Ad engagement tends to be higher with users who own our free app.

When we compare how these perform to our desktop site, we find that the mobile app generates lower CPCs but higher CTRs for us.To increase more app downloads, we are working hard to create high quality content to meet our user's needs. 

How long did it take to implement Custom Search Ads on mobile apps?
We took some time to implement Custom Search Ads on our app, since changes won’t go live until our users update their version of our app. It took us three to four days including the test period to implement this.

Could you share any publisher best practices you’ve found across using Custom Search Ads and AdMob?

1. Show Custom Search Ads on search result pages. Use AdMob on other content pages.
2. We also use the AdMob House priority level to serve direct ads to users.
3. With Custom Search Ads, you'll see a variation in the number of ads that show, depending on the amount of organic search results you're delivering.  We'll always place one ad above search results. We'll also choose to show another ad below when there are more than five search results. In doing so, we can maximize revenue while complying with the program policy, which permits only one ad per view.

What’s next for QLife?

We've found a lot of success with the medicine/health-care search and service business. We'd like to expand our business in a couple of new directions.

First, we're interested in growing our business as an app developer for the health-care and medical service sector. We saw good success with the consumer application, and so our reputation as a medical app developer has increased in the industry overall.

We're looking to take our app to new global markets. There is a need for a quality medical and health-care search service anywhere in the world. With a publisher solution like AdSense, we are excited to expand and monetize our business beyond our home market in Japan.

Finally, I’m excited to announce that we just launched a new iOS app, Find Clinic that seeks to help people easily find and access hospitals at home and abroad. We’ve implemented Custom Search Ads for mobile apps on Find Clinic as well, and look forward to seeing similar successes!

Posted by Tatsuo Sakamoto, Account Strategist