What Is Google AdSense?

How Does Google AdSense Work

Google AdSense is a program that allows publishers to make money by displaying advertisements on their web pages.

When a visitor clicks on an ad, the publisher is paid. But publishers can also earn money on a per-impression basis when a visitor simply views an ad on a page.

Google AdSense serves various types of advertisements like text ads, images, videos, and interactive media on websites.

The advertising revenue is shared between Google and the publisher. But Google does not publically state how much the shared portion is between publishers.

How to get approved

The approval process for Google AdSense can be rigid and you have to make sure that you follow its terms of service. For instance, your website must comply and ensure it does not contain inappropriate content.

Additionally, your website should include a privacy policy and mention Google’s advertising cookies. Because Google may use cookies to help serve its ads, your website can automatically get rejected if you don’t include it.

After you submit your application to Google AdSense, they will review your site and determine if it meets their eligibility requirements. Once approved, you will receive an email that outlines the next steps for adding ads to your website. These steps can include adding auto-ads and creating your own ad units. Finally, you can start displaying ads to your visitors on your entire site, or on specific pages.

AdSense publishers need to follow the guidelines and policies of the program. If you are caught violating these rules, your account can be banned. You need to ensure that your ads are not excessive or include incentives to click them as well.

Advertisement bidding

How Google AdSense works is that advertisers bid for ad spaces in a real-time auction. They can bid for specific keywords through the process of smart bidding during an auction.

Previously, the winner of an auction was based on the second-highest bid. But since 2022, Google has switched to first-price auctions, in which the winning bid is the highest.

Although this won’t have much of a significant impact on publisher earnings, it may give a slight increase as well.

Ad types

AdSense offers a variety of advertising methods to monetize your website. For example, Google AdSense has text or image banner ads that can be placed anywhere on a website. I used to like link units but Google retired them in 2021.

When you create an AdSense ad, each one is created with a specific ad unit or ad tag. If you set them to be responsive, these ad units are designed to fit the content of the website and are ideal for mobile phones

It’s important to know that Google AdSense allows publishers to monetize their content through contextual advertising. This is when the company matches advertisers with ads based on the content of the site and the preferences of visitors.

Auto ads

Google AdSense introduced a new feature called “auto ads” that has made it even easier to integrate Google’s advertising platform into any website. Although auto ads are the most intrusive type of ad, they have been the best-performing ads in my experience. Auto ads consist of three types of ads:

In-Page Ads – Adsense will automatically place ads within the content of your website
Anchor Ads – Pop-under ads that stick to either the bottom or top part of your webpage.
Vignette Ads – Pop-up ads when users click a page between page loads.

Which ad types do I use?

Before getting into my best-performing ad types, you should test out Google AdSense’s A/B testing tool for ad experimentation. This is the only way to know which ad types perform the best on your website.

After running my ad experiments, vignette ads for desktop and mobile are my highest-performing ads. Next, anchor ads are my second highest-performing ads followed by in-page ads. Remember these WordPress advertising plugins to help insert them on your website.

When Google first introduced auto ads, its earning performance was terrible for an overly-intrusive ad type. Previously, link units performed much better but they have completely retired these types of units. Because the ad landscape continues to evolve, this is why you should always be running tests to find the highest-paying advertisements that fit your website best.

How does Google AdSense work

AdSense ads are a form of advertising where websites can earn money for placing them on their sites.

While Google AdSense has been a hugely popular ad network for many years, it is still a good choice for many people in combination with affiliate marketing.

It uses first-price real-time auctions, where the winning bid is who bids the highest. Then, advertising revenue is shared between Google and the publisher.

We use auto ads and it’s our best-performing ad type. But we always suggest to keep making experiments with different ad types in an evolving advertising ecosystem. And remember that there are always alternatives to AdSense if you’re looking for something else.