Mountain View, California — Search engine goliath Google has adopted a novel technique to tempt its AdSense publishers, today announced that it will start adding relevant image ads to the bottom of the page users see after clicking a link unit topic in AdSense. So if you are executing AdSense Link Units on your sites, this new feature might interest you. Google says publishers will see revenue improvements.
Link ads are part of the Google Adsense program. The company says experiment has exhibited that this leads to improved revenues for many AdSense publishers.
Link Units are an alternative to the standard text ads. Rather than displaying ads that link directly to an advertiser’s site, a link unit includes keywords that link to a page full of Google ads.
“Using the same contextual targeting algorithm that targets Google ads to your content pages, link units display a list of topics that are relevant to your page. Each topic, when clicked, brings the user to a page of related advertisements,” the company explained on its blog.
And the new version of the ad page with banners are shown at the bottom of these ad pages:
Look at the difference? The 2009 Special Olympics image at the bottom is new and it is an ad. The Inside AdSense blog sheds some light on few important points:
“These image ads are contextually targeted, based on the link unit topic users clicked to reach the ads. If no image ads are available for the given topic, we will only show the original text ads — in other words, we would not show a PSA or insert a blank space in place of the image ad in this case. Advertisers can bid on these image ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, so you will generate earnings for valid clicks and impressions. You can review the performance of image ads on your link unit pages by generating a link unit report on your Advanced Reports page.”
If a visitor to your site clicks on any of this link, they will be brought to a standard AdSense page with ads. Whereas before, Google only displays text-based ads on this Link Units page, you might have noticed that right now, relevant image ads are also being displayed.
Google asserts that it has witnessed increased revenue when adding the image ads, which means that a combination of text and image ads produces higher revenue than text ads alone.
Google encourages users who do not use link units on their pages to check them out. “They do not take up much space and can help add to your AdSense revenue,” says Arlene Lee of the Inside AdSense Team.