Tag Archives: optimization

Viewability Spotlight for Sellers: 3 speedy ways to improve viewability

Our latest infographic puts a spotlight on viewability by sharing a dozen technical best practices for improving viewability based on insights from Active View, Google's MRC-accredited viewable impression measurement technology.

Recently on the blog, we focused on 2 tips for enabling viewability measurement. In this post you'll learn tips for improving ad viewability by optimizing your apps and sites for speed and responsiveness.

Here is today's recommendation:

We hope these recommendations are improving your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below.

In the next part of our Spotlight on Viewability, we'll share 4 ways to improve ad layouts for better viewability rates.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran,
Product Marketing Manager

Source: Inside AdSense

Viewability Spotlight for Sellers: 2 tips to enable viewability measurement

There's a lot that publishers and app developers can do to increase the likelihood that their ads will be measured as viewable. Our latest infographic puts a spotlight on viewability by sharing a dozen technical best practices for improving viewability across four categories based on insights from Active View, Google's MRC-accredited viewable impression measurement technology. These insights and recommendations come from our services teams that have spent thousands of hours working with publishers and developers to improve advertising outcomes.

In this post, we focus on tips you can use to improve ad viewability by optimizing your apps and sites for speed and responsiveness.

Here is today's recommendation:

We hope these recommendations will improve your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below.

In the next part of our Spotlight on Viewability, we'll share 3 speedy ways to improve viewability.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran,
Product Marketing Manager

Source: Inside AdSense

When can Quantum Annealing win?

Posted by Hartmut Neven, Director of Engineering

During the last two years, the Google Quantum AI team has made progress in understanding the physics governing quantum annealers. We recently applied these new insights to construct proof-of-principle optimization problems and programmed these into the D-Wave 2X quantum annealer that Google operates jointly with NASA. The problems were designed to demonstrate that quantum annealing can offer runtime advantages for hard optimization problems characterized by rugged energy landscapes.

We found that for problem instances involving nearly 1000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly outperforms its classical counterpart, simulated annealing. It is more than 10⁸ times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core. We also compared the quantum hardware to another algorithm called Quantum Monte Carlo. This is a method designed to emulate the behavior of quantum systems, but it runs on conventional processors. While the scaling with size between these two methods is comparable, they are again separated by a large factor sometimes as high as 10⁸.

Time to find the optimal solution with 99% probability for different problem sizes. We compare Simulated Annealing (SA), Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) and D-Wave 2X. Shown are the 50, 75 and 85 percentiles over a set of 100 instances. We observed a speedup of many orders of magnitude for the D-Wave 2X quantum annealer for this optimization problem characterized by rugged energy landscapes. For such problems quantum tunneling is a useful computational resource to traverse tall and narrow energy barriers.

While these results are intriguing and very encouraging, there is more work ahead to turn quantum enhanced optimization into a practical technology. The design of next generation annealers must facilitate the embedding of problems of practical relevance. For instance, we would like to increase the density and control precision of the connections between the qubits as well as their coherence. Another enhancement we wish to engineer is to support the representation not only of quadratic optimization, but of higher order optimization as well. This necessitates that not only pairs of qubits can interact directly but also larger sets of qubits. Our quantum hardware group is working on these improvements which will make it easier for users to input hard optimization problems. For higher-order optimization problems, rugged energy landscapes will become typical. Problems with such landscapes stand to benefit from quantum optimization because quantum tunneling makes it easier to traverse tall and narrow energy barriers.

We should note that there are algorithms, such as techniques based on cluster finding, that can exploit the sparse qubit connectivity in the current generation of D-Wave processors and still solve our proof-of-principle problems faster than the current quantum hardware. But due to the denser connectivity of next generation annealers, we expect those methods will become ineffective. Also, in our experience we find that lean stochastic local search techniques such as simulated annealing are often the most competitive for hard problems with little structure to exploit. Therefore, we regard simulated annealing as a generic classical competition that quantum annealing needs to beat. We are optimistic that the significant runtime gains we have found will carry over to commercially relevant problems as they occur in tasks relevant to machine intelligence.

For details please refer to http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02206.

Source: Google Research Blog

Getting to know Active View and the world of viewability

We've had a lot of questions recently from AdSense publishers about viewability and the new Active View metrics in AdSense accounts. Active View can really help you improve your AdSense earnings, so let's take a closer look.

What are Active View and viewability?

Active View is Google’s ad viewability measurement solution. It tracks the viewability of ads served by AdSense: that is, the percentage of ads that are considered viewable out of the total number of ads measured. We use the online ad industry standard: a display ad is counted as viewable when at least 50% of the ad is within the viewable space on the user’s screen for one second or more.

So an ad that is (for instance) placed below the first screen on a given page won't be counted as viewable if the viewer never scrolls down. This is why viewability a good way of determining whether your AdSense ads are actually being seen by your website visitors or simply loading without a chance of catching the viewer's eye.

Why is viewability important?

The industry shift towards viewability is good for both publishers and advertisers for many reasons.

Benefits for advertisers and the advertising industry

Without viewability metrics, advertisers could be paying for ads that loaded on a page but were never seen. If you're an advertiser paying per click you might not care, but if you're paying by the impression it could be a much bigger deal.

Active View metrics help because they show advertisers what percentage of their ads are actually being seen by users and which publishers provide the highest level of viewability. This helps advertisers make smarter decisions about where they should buy ad impressions. That makes display ads both more measurable and more effective.

Benefits for publishers

Viewability metrics also help publishers understand the true performance of the AdSense ads they display. Whether the ad is being paid for by click or by impression, ads that aren't seen by the user can’t have an impact. In the long run, they won’t generate reliable ad revenue.

If publishers notice that the Active View percentage for certain ad units is lower than others, that ad position is probably underperforming and ought to be optimized. Active View can help publishers increase their AdSense earnings as they take corrective action and improve the performance of these ads.

How to improve your ad viewability

Once you become familiar with viewability statistics, there are two changes you can make to improve your results.

Change ad sizes

Vertical ad units such as 160x600 and 120x600 tend to have higher Active View percentages. This makes sense: vertical ad units are in view for longer as the user scrolls up or down the page. Other ad sizes with high viewability rates include the 120x240 and 240x400 ad units.

Change ad positions

Rethinking the position of your AdSense ad units can also help improve your viewability rates. It's not always just a matter of putting more ads at the top of the page: for example, ads positioned just above the fold tend to have higher viewability rates since they remain within view for longer as the user scrolls down. Experiment with what works best on your site.

Paying close attention to your Active View numbers will help you bring your visitors the targeted ads you want them to see and remove the uncertainty around unviewable ads. In the end, that should mean fewer underperforming ad units and a potentially a new way to achieve better revenues overall.

We think that in the long term viewability will change the way that advertisers allocate their budgets to online display. And if you're a publisher, it's a good idea to start paying attention to these new numbers and make adjustments to your ad sizes, ad units, and ad positions to improve viewability and potentially achieve better results.

To learn more about viewability and Active View, see the AdSense Help Center.

Not yet an AdSense user? Sign up now!

Posted by Paul Healy

Publisher Monetization Specialist

Source: Inside AdSense

Five useful ways to check your AdSense performance

Sometimes it's a good thing to step back and look at the basics.

With that in mind (and with the new AdSense interface now in place), we'd like to recap the big five AdSense reports you should start with to analyze your overall account performance.

Let's take a look at these reports.

1. The reporting dashboard: Get an overall summary of your performance

As the name suggests, the reporting dashboard gives you a quick summary of three main reporting metrics: estimated earnings, page views, and revenue per thousand impressions (RPM).

This report is a great way to get a quick check of your recent AdSense performance. You can switch to a wider date range, too, like the past month or year. If you see a sudden change in your results for any area, you can see a more detailed report with a click on the View report button.

2. The entire account by day report: Monitor your daily performance

To see this report, visit the Performance reports tab, click Common reports on the left-hand panel and then select Entire account by day.

Use the Entire account by day report to analyze your daily performance. Try selecting estimated earnings, impressions, CTR, and impression RPM to view them all at the same time and get a better idea of why your earnings change over time.

For example, if the drop in estimated revenue is mainly due to a drop in CTR, take a closer look at ad units and ad placement to understand what caused that CTR drop.

3. Ad units + Platforms: Check ad performance by device

To use this report, visit the Performance reports tab, click Common reports on the left-hand panel, select Ad units and then add Platforms from the top as a secondary dimension.

This combination offers a good look at how your ad units are doing on different device types. Maybe every ad is doing great across the board, or maybe some ad units are doing well on desktop but not on mobile (or vice versa).

CTR and Active View Viewable are two key metrics to check first. Active View Viewable shows how many of your total measurable impressions were truly viewable. Google considers an ad viewable if 50% of the ad is visible for at least one second*. With some impressions, for instance, the visitor may not scroll down your page to see an ad.

If an ad unit has an active view percentage below 50%, check the ad's placement and try to improve this.

Hungry to learn even more? Take it one step further by filtering the report for any individual ad unit that you would like to analyze.

4. The Platforms report: Compare platforms

The Platforms report enables you to see which devices your ad units were viewed on, for example, on desktop or mobile. You can see and compare the traffic and estimated revenue coming from any platform. If there’s a big discrepancy between these two, you might want to check the desktop ad placement and find ways to optimize it to close the revenue gap as much as you can.

5. The Sites report: Compare different domains

Manage multiple domains in your AdSense account? The Sites report can compare the overall performance of those domains.

If you have different versions of one site (like one for desktop and one for mobile), you'll see them separately. If you have a responsive site you can add Platforms as a secondary report dimension to analyze your mobile and desktop performance separately.

Start with these big five and you'll be getting a good basic view of how your site is running. Most of these reports can be found in the Common reports section under your Performance reports tab. You can also create your own reports and save them to run later.

Have a favorite report? Share it with us in the comments!

Not yet an AdSense user? Sign up now!

Posted by Cansu Özaras

Publisher Monetization Specialist

Source: Inside AdSense

How to improve your AdSense performance with Google Analytics

Want to freshen up the AdSense performance on your site? Google Analytics can help. Here are some simple and effective places to start.

1. Find out where to focus

Content Groups let you bundle your offerings to analyze them more clearly. Instead of analyzing all shoes at once, for instance, a shoe company might divide content into shoes for adults and kids, for men and women, or by tennis shoes and high heels. You can view and compare aggregated metrics by group, or drill down to any individual URL or page title.

Suppose you want to know: What topics have the best AdSense CTRs?

Group content by topic (such as food, politics and sport)
Use the AdSense Pages report to view metrics

Once you learn which topics have the best clickthrough rates, you could then focus on creating more content for those topics.

Suppose you want to know: Which product groups have slow-loading pages?

Group products by type (such as shirts and shoes)
Use Page Speed reports to look at page load performance

Are some pages very slow? You might focus on fixing uncompressed images to improve the user experience (and your AdSense revenue).

Content Groups are easy to set up. Learn how to create them and then follow these best practices from Google Analytics evangelist Justin Cutroni.

2. Understand where your users arrive and leave

A Landing Pages report can show you how engaged visitors are with your content. You can analyze individual pages or the Content Groups we just talked about.

Suppose you want to know: What pages cause visitors to leave?

Look for pages with high bounce rates, this usually indicates content that isn't appealing to visitors or is irrelevant to their needs
Try changing the headline of your article or finding better images
You may also want to analyze the page speed for pages with high bounce rates; visitors may be giving up on a very slow-loading page

Both Content Groups and Landing Page reports can help you find underperforming pages on your site and take action to fix them.

3. Get to know your users

Demographics and Interests data helps you understand the age and gender of your users, as well as their interests based on their online browsing and buying.

Suppose you want to know: How old are my visitors?

Try Demographics Report > Age
Check the bounce rate: if it’s high, consider changing the headline or the visuals to make your pages more relevant and engaging for your target audience

Suppose you want to know: What are my users interested in?

Try an Interests report
Then shape your content based on the user interests you see; if viewers of you tech blog are interested in photography, try publishing more articles on that theme

To get started with the Demographics and Interests reports, enable them in your Analytics account.

The key to making your site better is to jump into the data, have fun, and experiment. Find out what works and do more of it. Have any ideas to share about using these reports? Add them in the comments below!

Not yet an AdSense user? Sign up now!

Posted by Stephen Dunleavy

AdSense Analytics Expert

Source: Inside AdSense

Give your site a content boost

5 tips to grow site visitors

If you're like most publishers, you think a lot about how to grow your site audience. It should be no surprise that for this topic, content is key. Great content attracts and engages new users and keeps your wonderful old users coming back again and again.

But how do you produce content that is high in quality, value, and unique? For the answer, look back to why you became an AdSense publisher in the first place. Do what you love and your content will naturally be at the heart of all you do.

As you build your new content, use these five tips to make what you create as engaging as it can possibly be.

Be targeted, be consistent, be frequent
Take time to figure out who is reading your content and what topics they find most interesting. Does your blog about dogs get 20 comments about Chihuahuas for every one comment about Great Danes? Maybe you should focus on the little guys!

Update your content as often as you can. With regular updates you’ll build trust and engagement with your users, and they’ll be more likely to share your content with their friends and family.

Create engaging videos
People crave video. In fact, the average mobile viewing session on YouTube is now around 40 minutes. You could boost the amount of time your visitors spend on your site by using video and photos.

Create your own videos; it gives your site personality and unique content. Try adding a separate video section, or integrate video within your articles. Use A/B testing to find the best spot for your video: for instance, see how a video performs in the middle of article versus at the end. Remember, if you use videos that aren't yours, make sure that you have the rights to distribute them.

Be mobile-friendly
The number of smartphone users is estimated to grow by 16% to two billion users in 2015. In all, web access from mobile phones will represent 69% of all traffic by 2017, according to emarketer.com. The average user now spends almost three hours per day on mobile devices.*

To win more visitors, optimize your site for all screens. Your site needs to be accessible anywhere and anytime, on smartphones and every other device. (Hungry to learn more? See more tips on going mobile.)

Go social
The way users find and share content has changed. Along with direct and search traffic, social sharing is key for your site visitor strategy. Remember, your article or video could be the perfect fit for someone’s micro-moment, so make sure you have the most important message in the first few moments.

Use social plugins and sharing buttons to help users share your content on the spot. Use large icons to highlight those sharing options. Try to A/B test where those buttons get the best engagement: at the top, at the bottom or embedded right in the article. For the best user experience, keep those buttons separated from your AdSense ads.

Look at what the numbers are telling you
If great content is job #1, great measurement is job #2. Google Analytics can bring you a deeper understanding of your audience and their demographics, time on site, which pages people leave fast, and which they visit most.

Use these insights to provide your users with the right content that works across devices. For instance, try the long-term revenue framework.

Have some top tips of your own? Share them with us in the comments below.

Not yet an AdSense user? Sign up now!

Posted by

Jason Le

Account Strategist

and

Draven Leong

AdSense Onboarding Agent

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Tag Archives: optimization

When can Quantum Annealing win?

Source: Google Research Blog