Despite being aware all of us save them setting up AdSense channels for our sites – a mistake we will nonetheless quickly regret. I have been using only 2-3 AdSense channels for my biggest website for years, so do you probably.

The only reason to use channels I could think of was to track performance changes when relocating/recoloring the ads. I was wrong, AdSense channels are far more powerful and can impact our AdSense earnings like nothing else. Setting up the AdSense channels properly is the key, you can do it good or bad.

Before getting started I want you to check out your CPC of Placement targeted ads vs. content network ads. Do the following to see how placement targeted ads perform for you:

• Go Into your AdSense reports
• Click “Advanced Reports”
• Date Range: Yesterday
• Show data by: Individual ad
• Tick: Show data by targeting type – contextual or placement

Unless you are a wizard you should see a significant difference between placement targeted ads and content network ads. In my case the Placement-targeted ad’s CPC is 5 times higher (gaming niche). The question is: How can we increase the amount of placement targeted ads? Watch the video, I am showing you how I am doing it.

Our video guide

How many channels do I have to make?

For tracking your CTR one per ad unit. For upping your CPC it’s a pain in ass, and we are aware of that. But to make it as attractive as possible for advertisers you need to make custom channels for different niche-related content on your website. For forums for example: custom channels per forum.

Tracking individual CTR performance

By setting up your ad units to be each in an individual channel you can easily track changes when for example relocating/redesigning your ad units. For example: You wanna check out how red vs. blue title color works, testing it for some days you can then see which unit has the higher CTR and thus stick to that color. (Blue will probably work best). Simply add that specific ad unit into a custom channel and you can track the performance.

EASY: Tracking sitewide earnings

Are you a webmaster with multiple websites each having 50 ad channels? AdSense introduced so called URL channels. Without putting any of your ad units into a custom channel you can set up so called URL channels to track AdSense earnings summed up per website. To setup new URL channels do the following:

• Go into your AdSense account
• Open the tab “AdSense setup”
• Open the sub-tab “Channels”
• Click on “URL Channels”
• Click on “+ Add new URL channels”
• Enter your website’s url – example: www.duoblogger.com

Testing never ends

We never finished the testing process, we are still testing for more than 3 years now. There are hundreds of factors to consider. Never stop testing and tweaking. Not doing so could result in potentially wasting money.

How do I contact potential advertisers?

Google for your main keyword, you will see Google Ads. Visit the advertiser’s website, write them an email. Make sure that it’s a good one, once finished reading your email the advertiser should feel like whether there is no way around advertising on your website. That’s possible, we don’t blog about writing but you might wanna check out outstandingwriter.com (thanks to Corey Freeman – @coreyfreeman). It’s time consuming, but the return is an incredible CPC boost.

Let us know your success with optimizing both Click Through Rate and Cost Per Click using the channels. You’ll also wanna make sure to check out Google’s new AdPlanner, another handy tool making it easier to increase placement targeting.

1. 

   Start An Online Business

   May 10, 2009 at 12:52 pm

   Thanks for the information, This should be very useful.

   Reply
2. 

   Steve

   May 26, 2009 at 4:28 pm

   Adsense for channels has been very useful for my websites to help organize my different blogs and sites. Some great information here.

   Thanks Hendrik.

   Reply
3. 

   Kaan Çağatay

   July 28, 2009 at 6:05 pm

   Hi,
   I want to know something about forums.Should I create channel for every forums ? e.g.
   mysite.com/forumdisplay.php?f=5 (Pc Game)
   mysite.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6 (Pc Game Cheats)
   mysite.com/forumdisplay.php?f=7 (Off Topic)

   Because I have about 25 fields in forum.

   My second question is I’m gonna write some stuff in the channel description. Must I write in english or in my country’s language.

   Thanks

   Reply