Overview on Google Adsense

Google AdSense, commonly just AdSense, is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis. Google is also currently beta-testing a cost-per-action based service.

The Google AdSense module provides Web site owners with the means to earn revenue from visitors by displaying ads from Google's AdSense service on their sites.

Depending on the web site number of visitors and type of content, the revenue can barely cover the hosting costs, or be quite substantial.

The colors are customizable, as well as the type (text/image). Ads can be displayed from within phptemplate based themes, blocks or other modules.

Please read the module author's collection of articles on resources for using Google Adsense with http://www.hiforum.tk . They contain hints and tips on how to use the module. If you have not signed up for a Google Adsense account, please use this link to signup, and a referral amount will be awarded to the author at no cost to you.

Several ad formats are supported. The full list is is in the help section of the module's settings page.

The modules allow up to 3 color and type (image/text) combinations to be chosen. This is useful if your site has a theme that assigns different color schemes to different parts of the page, for example, left sidebar and content. It also allows up to 5 custom channels to be used.

You can setup custom roles that hide adsense from users. For example, if you have paying subscribers to your site that do not want to see ads.

Some caching is also implemented by this module (thanks to Ber Kessels).

Page matching also added, so that ads can be excluded on certain pages.

Ads can now be placed anywhere in the content, via a special tag. This can also be used to call flexiblocks so fine grained visibility can be done using the block mechanism.

Ad revenue sharing with configurable percentage of page views for specific node types going to the node author. Also integrates with referral module so referred user's node can get a certain paercentage to teh referring user.

Google uses its search technology to serve ads based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads is often relevant to the website.

Currently, AdSense uses JavaScript code to incorporate the advertisements into a participating site. If it is included on a site which has not yet been crawled by the Mediabot, it will temporarily display advertisements for charitable causes known as public service announcements (PSAs). (The Mediabot is a separate crawler from the Googlebot that maintains Google's search index.)

Many sites use AdSense to monetize their content and some webmasters work hard to maximize their own AdSense income. They do this in three ways:

1. They use a wide range of traffic generating techniques including but not limited to online advertising.
2. They build valuable content on their sites which attracts AdSense ads which pay out the most when they get clicked.
3. They use copy on their websites that encourage clicks on ads. Note that Google prohibits people from using phrases like "Click on my AdSense ads" to increase click rates. Phrases accepted are "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements".

The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction, in that it commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid.