This post was written to support the ‘Adsense Target‘ WordPress Plugin
Introduction:
This article provides a very brief overview of how contextual advertising works and then illustrates how a webmaster using section targeting can have more control over the advertisements served by Google Adsense. Specific recommendations for bloggers are made on how best to use ad section targeting code to maximize profit.
Full Text:
‘Targeting’ contextual advertisements refers to the ability of both website owner and advertising system (in this case Adsense) to match the best ad to the content that surrounds it. In its crudest form, think of contextual advertising as serving up ads that relate to the content of the page. So if this were a page about dog food, an Adsense ad for dog food would probably be the best contextually based ad to serve because it relates directly to the content of the page. After that, ads about dogs and dog products in general would be most relevant.
As a webmaster running any contextual advertising system you need to make sure that the ads shown on your pages directly relate to the page contents. More people will be interested and click on ads about dog food on a page about dog food than ads about yarn on a page about dog food. For those that use Google Adsense to server up contextual ads, Google provides a way to emphasize parts or sections of content on a page. “Section targeting” allows individual webmasters to have finer granularity over the types of ads shown on their websites. With greater control, a webmaster can tweak pages to show the most relevant ads to the content most valued by web visitors.
Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you’d like [Google] to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site’s content. [source]
Section targeting is pretty simple, all you do is surround the content that you’d like to emphasize with specially formatted HTML tags. Here is an example:
<!– google_ad_section_start –> content goes here, content goes here, content goes here, content goes here, content goes… <!– google_ad_section_end –>
You can also de-emphasize certain portions of your content using a very similar method:
<!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –> content to ignore goes here, content to ignore goes here, content to ignore goes here, content to ignore goes here, content to ignore… <!– google_ad_section_end –>
As a blogger using Google’s Adsense program, there are some special considerations you should take into account in order to best target ads on your pages and therefore maximize profit.
Depending on how your blog is laid out, much of the content of the page can actually be comments by other people and whatever is in your sidebar. If your Adsense ads aren’t as targeted as you would like them to be, consider the following tips on using Ad Section Targeting. The goal is to have Google serve up more contextually relevant ads that web visitors will be more likely to click on:
- Use the weight=ignore targeting code to tell Google to ignore the contents of your sidebar
- Use section targeting to focus Google more on the content you have actually written (your post content) than on the comments made by readers
- Wherever you employ section targeting code, make sure to include a significant amount of content within the tags. Google indicates that there may be a penalty of less relevant ads or Public Service Announcements if you don’t include large chunks of text between tags
- According to Google, you can use section targeting to target as many sections of a page as you like. So don’t be afraid to use multiple sets of tags
- It may take up to 2 weeks before Google takes into account any changes you’ve made to your site
- In the end, section targeting is merely a suggestion to Google by you. Google may or may not choose to take your advice on what you think is most and least important about your site
Target Adsense is a free plugin for WordPress (created here at MaxPower) that gives you the option to automatically target the content you have written on your blog as well as provide a way to target only specific portions of your content using the post and page editor.
References:
- What is section targeting and how do I implement it?
- Display Relevant Adsense Ads Using Section Targeting
- Inside Adsense: Stay on target
15 Nov 06
2:27 pm
Look forward to seeing your plugin.
What all features does it support?
I would really like to see random insertion of ads in the post area. Possible?
I also notice that you are using the Adsense Beautifier plugin. How are the results with it?
15 Nov 06
2:28 pm
[...] Social Bookmarking « How To: Maximize Profit using Adsense Section Targeting for Blogs [...]
15 Nov 06
2:40 pm
All good questions!
All the Adsense Target plugin does is allow you to use ad targeting code on your blog. It doesn’t insert the ads themselves or anything like that.
Adsense Beautifier is handy, I had to modify it and the CSS to work with my particular blog set up. I think the results I have seen since I started using it are specific to the readers that come to maxpower, but overall they are very positive.
Inserting ads in the post area randomly… hmm I swear I’ve seen a plugin do that. If not, it wouldn’t be that hard to work something up that would work off the Adsense Deluxe plugin. Although, I’m not sure why you’d want to insert the ad randomly as results could be visually bleh… better to do it after the first paragraph or something like that.
15 Nov 06
3:25 pm
The plugin to insert ads by random is the Adsense Injection. I downloaded but haven’t takena a deeper look at it.
I’m planning on implementing that on Techtites.com instead of fixed Adsense ads.
I also don’t want to enter any code in my post to display the ad. It would mean editting a lot of old posts.
18 Nov 06
7:25 pm
Hello deepthough, thanx for this plugin have installed and used it today the first time. it works great it takes a longer time for me till I understand how it works but know I have it.
Maybe an idea for another feature, could also be that I can’t find it and it is implemented, but I haven found a button to remove words, like wordpress or vbullet, … .
Have solved it with copy and paste, but before I have activated all of them, because of I am tired maybe, but I have never found this possibility.
Is that right that it isn’t implemented or am I too tired or too blind?
I really want to say it agin thanx for your good work.
Greetinx Stefan!
21 Nov 06
6:09 pm
Adsense mit gezielten Werbeanzeigen profitabel beeinflussen…
Dieser Artikel richtet sich an alle, die Ihre Adsense Klickrate seriös und ohne Tricks erhöhen möchten!
Er beschreibt, wie wir mit gezielten Werbeanzeigen unsere Leserschaft richtig informieren!
Adsense und dessen Kunden einen guten Die…
26 Nov 06
10:28 pm
[...] Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and content that you’d like to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site’s content. This plugin helps you to emphasize the content you want by employing Google Ad Section Targeting. You may want to use targeting if you feel the Adsense ads on your pages could be more suited to the content. Ads that are more suited are more likely to get clicked on. It follows that profits may increase from using Ad targeting. For more information about targeting please read how to use Adsense Section Targeting to Maximize Profit. [...]
29 Nov 06
9:48 am
[...] 插件下载点这里，详细使用方法点这里。 [...]
01 Dec 06
1:02 am
[...] Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and content that you’d like to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site’s content. This plugin helps you to emphasize the content you want by employing Google Ad Section Targeting. You may want to use targeting if you feel the Adsense ads on your pages could be more suited to the content. Ads that are more suited are more likely to get clicked on. It follows that profits may increase from using Ad targeting. For more information about targeting please read how to use Adsense Section Targeting to Maximize Profit. [...]
28 Dec 06
11:33 pm
nice plugin
02 Jan 07
4:44 pm
Is there is any tool like blog for forum (invision power board)
16 Jan 07
4:26 am
Take care !!!
The example shown above with Asense adjacent to picture is against the new Adsense TOS, modified recently (few months ago).
I even suggest you rewrite your post and change all your Adsense “maximization” before Big Brother see it.
Bye
11 Feb 07
8:59 pm
Nice idea to make this automated. Wouldn’t mind having that for Wordpress…. by the way, did you know Google recently changed its “Terms of Service” to not allow images next to your ads, anymore?
26 Apr 07
4:52 pm
[...] 插件下载点这里，详细使用方法点这里。 [...]
14 May 07
3:55 pm
The plugin is realy nice.
18 May 07
10:24 am
Maybe I’m missing something… but why not just skip the plugin and add the Google comment to the Loop when your post content is displayed? Granted, the plugin would refine what content you wanted to emphasize, but if you’re posting well-written content, wrapping the post should be enough I think.
17 Jun 07
7:43 pm
I’m having a little trouble with this - when I set it to use the post and page editor, I don’t get the button. Any ideas? The plugin installed fine.
Thanks for putting this together!
12 Jul 07
1:26 am
i use that plugin too
30 Jan 08
10:27 am
its not absolutely true that Adsense does not allow images beside adsense. What adsense does not allow is images with no borders beside adsense ads.. so if there is a dividing line/border between images and adsense, it is allowed. But to stay on the safe side, just stick by the good ol’ tip, just optimize it the correct way..no images.
28 Feb 08
5:48 am
Hello, awesome plugin you have made, I hope I will see some improvement in the coming day/weeks. I do have one question though. Is it possible to, iether by modifying ot some option I’m overlooking, to include the post’s title in the adsense target? I’m no expert, but I dont think the title is included now. Most of the time, my titles are very important I think. Thanks
Bolkie
16 Apr 08
2:24 am
Thanks!! Nice Tips
11 Oct 08
8:01 pm
[...] Maximize Profit using Adsense Section Targeting for Blogs Recomendaciones para optimizar las ganancias de Adsense creando zonas o target de mayor relevancia para google (tags: wordpress seo blogging) [...]
24 Nov 08
6:30 am
[...] Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and content that you’d like to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site’s content. This plugin helps you to emphasize the content you want by employing Google Ad Section Targeting. You may want to use targeting if you feel the Adsense ads on your pages could be more suited to the content. Ads that are more suited are more likely to get clicked on. It follows that profits may increase from using Ad targeting. For more information about targeting please read how to use Adsense Section Targeting to Maximize Profit. [...]
21 Jan 09
12:56 am
I dont see target adsense being used in maxpower?
May be you dont need to.
21 Jan 10
8:18 am
Thank you for this really good information. Keep up your good posting. Looking forward reading your next article.
21 Jan 10
8:37 am
[...] How To: Maximize Profit using Adsense Section Targeting for Blogs [...]