Are you sure you fully understand the Google adsense channel system and make full use of all available benefits ?

If not - I will show you how to improve your channels - all you need it to fully understand the manifold benefits and to invest some real time into establishing a sophisticated channel scheme system that really gives you some valuable feedback.

Hopefully you had already a look at your adsense account channels section - AdSense Setup - Channels. All sites asking for help or advise that I have visited so far had no elaborate channel system. Usually most webmasters have one channel per ad-unit.

Google currently has 200 channels in each account and allows up to 5 channels to be included in each adsense ad-unit.

I will show you in below example extracted from a real life example on my site's complex but successful adsense channel system:

• how to optimize your adsense channels
• how to use channel systems for highest feedback value
• how to create a channel system that benefits both - you as site owner and your advertising partner as your source of advertising revenue
• understand the difference of channels made for your sole web-site manager purpose and those channels made only for your advertisers targeting purpose.

Below we look at an example adsense channel-setup of a complete channel set for a section of a web site. I need to emphasize that I have already used up all the 200 channels allocated by Google - a request to adsense support team for more channels was answered negative with an option for later change. Hence right now I have used all 200 channel names that are available - but I would need at least several dozen more for my site. Subsequently some of my site-sections are less optimized than I would and could optimize.

I have many sections with totally different content. Let's look at the section about the Philippine islands - a subfolder of the Cyberspace Ashram for Kriya Yoga.

An idea and complete set of channel-names for my section Philippines would be as below listed:

1. 160
2. 336
3. 300
4. 300_ATF
5. 336_ATF
6. 300_top-center
7. 336_top-center
8. 160_top-left
9. Philippines
10. Philippines_ATF
11. Philippines_top-center
12. Philippines_top-left_160
13. links_Philippines

Now I explain step by step to assure you have a thorough understanding on how to use channels on your own site.

To manage a web site you need decisions - to make decisions you need facts as a basis of your decisions

You need to know how many visitors you have, from where your visitors come, what time you have most visitors, what languages your visitors speak, what monitor resolutions your visitors have, what operating system they use, from where visitors come = referring site / SE, what sections are most attractive, where you earn most, where you spend / invest most in $, time, resources or otherwise.

The available resources for a professional site owner / web publisher are manifold. Some of the most important and most valuable sources of facts and data about your site's traffic and revenue details are:

• access_log analysis
• Google analytics
• Google adsense detailed reports

Think accounting

Channels in adsense are like accounts in a modern and fully elaborate accounting system as required by law for most larger business - channels display sums of clicks, eCPM, pageviews per channel, total revenue per channel at a glance. That is feedback and decision making data you as a webmaster and web site manager need to have before making sound decisions. How else could you decide where to place ad-units, what ad units bring most $, what color schemes are most successful, etc ...

A web-site manager needs facts, detailed, accurate and reliable facts, that is the purpose and advantage of having computers - to control the entire data flow and to gain as much feedback as possible. A whole lot of feedback can be obtained from an elaborate channel system!

By definition - I talk out of experience on my own site - after nearly 10 years of web publishing experience. Hence all data I need is based on an ever growing web site with

1. CMS - managed content such as my blog - the page you are reading NOW is part of my multi-category blog and photo gallery
2. flat files - hand made HTML files - such as the teachings of love - the basis of my entire site
3. photo sections such as LoveCards and tropical wallpapers

Please have a brief look at least at some of the pages - layout, character of pages or content served - presentation in templates or hand-made external CSS to understand the basic need for decision making data and facts for an ever growing site. Keep in mind that even if NOW your site may be small, if you love to do what you do, you may work on your site for years or decades and one day your site may be much larger than mine. If ten years ago someone would have told me that I am going to publish many thousand printed pages, thousands of pictures and graphics, ... I might have called him crazy or stopped working on my project during the initial phase.

Fortunately for me - no one ever told me how many ten thousands of hours and $ I am going to invest - more than any other project in this entire life !!!

But like all other previous project in my most active and thrilling life of an adventurer in the name of God - I started with ONE page and as far as I can remember ONE photo - some 165kb for my first one HTML file site.

My web site grows as I grow - so does your site !! Head up and enjoy web publishing. Do it right and decide to be successful - success in business is based on quality and hence a direct result of your own qualifications, hard work, experience and acquired skills.

What details do I need as site owner ?

To make sound decisions year after year or on a weekly / monthly test phase basis - you need to have a number of data grouped into logical units.

such as

each single ad-unit format has a channel only for its format - like above 1, 2 and 3. Independent of ad-placements and site-section you want an exact overview of how many pageviews, CTR, eCPM and total $ you get for the most successful 3 adsense formats

That is the reason why I have a channel just to accumulate over the weeks, months and years the totals of a.m. data for the currently most successful adsense formats:

1. 160
2. 300
3. 336

The name is merely the above short adsense format - 336 standing for 335x280, 300 for 300x250, 160 for 160x600.

In addition to that we want to have the detailed difference between a 336x280 ATF and a 336x280 below the fold and same formats below the fold. Hence the need for

• 300_ATF
• 336_ATF
• 300_top-center - I call the below the fold top-center without the appendix ATF and clearly define the exact below the fold placement in the channel description available to my site advertisers interested in channel targeting. It is most important that targetable channels and ad-unit placements precisely explain to your advertising customers where and how his ads will be displayed. therefore I also give an example URL with a typical display of the channel described
• 336_top-center

As well as the details for my most successful placement for the 160x600 - for its top-left placement of the wide skyscraper - thus also the need for my

• 160_top-left

So far ALL above adsense channels can be used site-wide. every ad-unit you place should have any and all of above matching channel names included in the adsense code to give you at any time in the future details sums for each of the formats and each of the possible placements on your pages.

That data allows you to decide which of the 2-3 ad-units to remove is your eCPM should drop too low and adjustments in offer and demand balance of ad-space is needed. Never make such decisions on the basis of your personal wishes - only on the basis of solid data, $ amounts. the one unit who may show only minor amounts below 1 $ after 1000 or more page impressions might be the one dropped to increase demand vs ad-slots offered and thus to neutralize Google's smart-prizing that takes effect if number of bidders is lower than ad-slots offered or if bidders are too low in their prices offered per click. get the cheap ones off your site and care for the strong advertisers - that keeps MFA ads off your site and increases the value of remaining services / products of remaining ads. Only the best can afford to continue bidding if ad-space becomes rare.

The adsense channels for both - our own feedback as well as for advertisers' targetable ad-channels.

1. Philippines
2. Philippines_ATF
3. Philippines_top-center
4. Philippines_top-left_160

Why do advertisers need targetable channels ?

I give you a few real life examples - on my large site - to pay for CPM ads on every page would be a huge waste of $ if an advertiser for example is a major national Philippine airline, Philippine hotels, .. I have all a.m. advertisers - hence they need an efficient selective method to display their ads only on pages relevant to their own business territory, the beautiful Philippine islands. Google recently has created the option to make channels targetable by web publishers to make advertising more interesting, more cost efficient and more rewarding to advertising companies.

The Philippines channel is the first one we make targetable in our Google adsense channel configuration page !!

Some of the advertisers have expensive specialized services or products - hence they can afford prime placements for top presentations of their products or services - even at a slightly higher cost. Hence such top of the industry advertisers may wish to bid for a precise top-notch placement - the best in the entire web publishing industry always is top-center ATF - on top of the page - center of page ( i.e. neither left nor right ) and strictly ATF = Above The Fold - that means the part of your page that instantly is fully visible upon page load without any scrolling at all.

Most webmasters are far too stingy to offer that prime placement for advertising - however fact is that such prime locations if you are successfully in web publishing business for years and have a top quality content web site ... that spot may always pay much higher than any other placement - sometimes many times more.

Top products or services are presented either in professionally created image ads for a full ad-unit or even better for a video ad. A global leading computer manufacturer for commercial heavy duty hardware is one of the top advertisers that appears on some of my pages with 336x280 videos. Such prime placements need a separate channel clearly identifying that placement as ATF placement in the description.

Hence the channel

• Philippines_ATF

also is offered as targetable channel for advertisers

both of the remaining channels

1. Philippines_top-center
2. Philippines_top-left_160

may also be offered as targetable channels or just for your own reference and feedback. Myself I use in some sections of my site one or both of these remaining 2 channels as targetable.

Some services or products are of general interest to all surfers of any location - hence some advertisers may advertise and appear on your pages as long as you have the content matching their choice of keywords they placed their bid on and you have the format of ad-units they produce ads. An image ad also can produce substantially higher CTR and much better business for a strong advertiser - hence an image ad deserves a prime placement offered by you - because you too may get substantially more eCPM on image ads if properly presented to your site visitors!!!

Successful business more and more advertise using image ads - of course that is far more expensive and requires thus a higher quality product or service to get the ROI needed to cover such advertising campaigns and make a solid profit out of it.

Instead of making every page-placement targetable which might reduce my own web publishers flexibility to optimize placements and to try new formats when changes in the industry occur or to temporarily drop a secondary placement - I prefer to make a general format targetable - across the site - hence I also offer the wide skyscraper 160x600 as targetable across the entire site where used.

I offer ATF placements without format definition - and offer ATF 336x280 OR 300x250 - that leaves me the free choice to alternate between these to rectangular formats to see which one is more successful - hence more expensive. The higher the eCPM the more advertisers bid on that precise format. ON my site it is very clear that by FAR the 336x280 outperforms by almost 100% its smaller format!

If I offer the top-center below the fold as targetable - again I offer it with free choice of 336x280 OR 300x250. I change - for some time I used the opposite of the ATF format - i.e. when I placed a 336x280 ATF, then I placed the smaller 300x250 below the fold. However time has shown that even on the secondary placement below the fold the larger rectangle is more successful. Thus subsequently I often use both - above the fold and below the fold - in format 336x280 n most cases.

Link units

By many totally overlooked - by me as well for long. I had on almost every page a link unit - but all the way down on the page near my traditional "home" link - above or below. The link revenue never was really significant - else I would have noticed it.

A few weeks ago however I made some tests and changed color and placement. And for my own surprise the link-unit revenue is approx 16% of the total revenue !! One particular site-section has up to 20 $ per day on link units alone. Link units behave quiet differently from regular ad units.

Overall my experience is that some sections barely make any $ at all - or below 1$/day but of course since link-units are in addition to ad-units - it costs nothing at all to have one link-unit up at the right spot in the right color - after a while you figure out that 80% of the sections may have a tiny link-revenue and the remaining an outstanding - simply amazing CTR/eCPM !!

There are 2 precise link-unit placements and colors that have proven successful - really successful - on my pages:

1. link unit horizontal 728x15, 5 links - all the way on top of the page - above everything else !! Link color 0000FF (plain blue !)
2. link unit vertical 160x90, RED link color, placement TOP of navigation bar

Hence in our example section I have a link unit called:

• links_Philippines

Final thoughts about adsense channels

2 key ides need to guide you when setting up an efficient channel system

1. The advertisers need to target his ads at prime location in sections of your website matching his needs - hence channels need to define a topic of a web site, if necessary a language section, a format of ad-units and the ad-placement as well. Many precise data may need several channel configuration included in each single ad-unit to be of any use for your advertisers.
2. Your own needs to figure out precisely how many clicks, impressions, CTR, eCPM and total $ revenue you get from any particular ad-unit on any ad-placement you offer to gain precise confirmation on success of each and every placement and format

What goes round comes round - give the very best to your advertisers and you shall receive the very best from your advertisers

or

charge substantially higher prices to your free site users- i.e. turn your entire site into a member only site - the choice is yours - the chances that all site users are going to pay you for your fortune in time, $ and efforts you invest is near zero - hence I recommend you offer the very best ad-placements - the industry prime placements above the fold, top left and top-center below the fold to your advertisers. Your increased ad-revenue may make your free site-users happy as well, you may have thousands of $ per year more to invest into server security, server performance, server reliability, connectivity, as well as into new and better site-content.

It will be your precise ad-placement strategy with targetable channels for precise ad-formats and placements that may make the difference between having a high end advertiser on your site or having only cheap average advertisers on your site.

Top efforts from your side - offering the very best to your advertisers, making all recommended color and format recommendations precisely and having a truly friendly color scheme for heart and all senses of a site visitor... may give you a 2 digit CTR as well as a 2-digit eCPM - anything else most likely will leave you in the one digit world. The choice to be successful or to fail is entirely in your hands. To have success requires to invest efforts until successful. Efforts in studying your trade, efforts in having all pages fully validated code, validated CSS, sold web design without any fancy stuff. Fancy we-design with java, flash, javascript, etc is for kids and teenies - solid HTML pages is for professionals - look at world's top sites like Google, Yahoo, etc - none of them have any fancy stuff but solid web design! Learn from professionals until you have learned to earn Millions on your own or until you are successfully for decades in business.

Now that you hopefully got the detailed idea of adsense channels - you start section by section to implement the channels and as you proceed you will continue to learn and to optimize your own channel system.

Please note that any numbers or limits stated above for adsense units etc are entirely subject to Google adsense TOS - it is absolutely important that you read the full original Terms Of Service at Google's site - Google does make some changes. In the past all such changes that occurred made our all life easier and more efficient. To abide strictly by all rules and enjoy a truly honest and professional quality web publishing life is the best way to success.

Previous posts and follow-up articles on successful web publishing

More soon - to read all follow ups and previous articles of this free online web publisher tutorial just read the posts published in the topic category Internet - see top of my blog - to find previous articles around search engine optimization - see category SEO and to read more about being successful in general view the topic Love - as love is the key to success in work. Work is nothing else but the expression of love toward a wider audience, or even toward all.

God bless

hans