Recently Google launched what is known as Google Adsense in Your City. I attended the event in Nashville, and took away a lot of great information to help increase my Adsense revenue and work on my strategy for going mobile. Here are the strategies and tips I took away from the Google Adsense in Your City meeting:

Ad Placements

For generating the best revenue, here are the ideal locations to place your ads:

• above the fold
• embedded in your content
• near navigational menus
• below articles on article based sites

Color Blending

Ads that blend with your content, are ideal for generating more clicks. The “Ad Choices” label clearly identifies the ads, so blending is ideal. The Google Adsense team also recommends against using borders on your ad units.

Ad Quantities 

With Google Adsense, you can add up to 3 Adsense ad units + 3 link units on every page of your website.

You can also earn revenue from Search ads – allow users to search for content within your site. Assist ad targeting with refinements and synonyms, and make sure to customize the look and feel of the results to match your site.

Load the ad unit with the highest CTR first.

• Adsense loads the highest paying ad to the first ad slot in your html.
• Use your performance reports to determine which ad unit has the highest Click Through Rate (CTR) on any page.
• Move the best performing ad unit to the top of your HTML code while keeping the same placement on the page.
• Result: Get the more clicks on the highest paying ads, even if it’s not the highest on the page.

Use wider ad formats and make sure you are opted in to both text and image adsense.

This increases the number of ads competing to appear on your site, and increases your revenue potential. Adsense determines which will perform best in each unit, so you don’t have to do anything other than do the initial set-up!

Integrated, wider ad formats helped increase Adsense revenue by 165% on an example site, so make sure you are using the best ad unit sizes.

Blocking ads and advertisers results in less competition in the auction and lowers CPMs for you.  Block as few ads/advertisers as possible, and filter only real competitors. Make sure you are editing your filter list regularly.

Tracking Your Performance

Use channels to monitor the impact of your changes

• URL Channels: Track the performance of a domain, sub-domain, a directory, a single page or a script that generates multiple pages.
• Custom Channels: Track the performance of a specific ad unit or group.

DFP Small Business (Double Click – Ad Server)

To me, this was the most interesting feature being offered with Google Adsense. It’s a free Ad Server for small businesses that can manage your ads. Currently we use AdRotate on Savvy Blogging for this, but by using DFP Small Business with Google, we could be potentially opening ourselves up to more and better offers for Ad Revenue.

• What is Ad Serving? Helps you manage your ads. You can also do A/B testing with Google Adsense, so that you can see which ads perform the best on your site.
• Maximize revenue with Dynamic Allocation – no other platform enables real-time competition for each impression. This is what DFP Small Business can do for you.

Mobile

According to the Google team, Mobile Users will Surpass Desktop Users by the year 2015. Advertisers are responding to this shift in behavior, and you should be as well with your blog.

What should be your mobile strategy? Replicate Top Content and Add Unique Mobile Content.

Mobile Site Best Practices:

• Design to load fast
• Prioritize features mobile users need
• Make copy easy to scan and minimize scrolling
• Use size and color to emphasize links and buttons
• Provide local info
• Use mobile site redirects
• Use html5 for interactivity and animation
• Use analtycs to learn and iterate

Google’s Mobile Offerings:

• Mobile Websites
• Ad Serving Platform
• Mobile Applications
• AdMob
• Adsense for Mobile Content
• Adsense for Mobile Search

To test out your site and get recommendations for building the mobile version of your site, check out howtogomo.com.

Interested in attending a Google Adsense in Your City event? Be sure to leave a comment and let Google know that this interests you!