Up until recently, if you were away from your computer and wanted to check in your AdSense earnings for the day, your options were to use the full website (cumbersome) or one of a couple different third-party apps (incomplete and unreliable). Now, in case you hadn’t seen it, Google has released an official Google AdSense mobile app that is particularly easy to use (links below).
In case you aren’t yet using Google AdSense, it’s a great platform for websites, particularly blogs, to help monetize your site. You sign up for a free account, create a profile, and then set up one or more ad units. You can have different channels, different sites, and of course different ad sizes. On my site, for instance, we use Google AdSense to power the 250×250 headline ad on the home page, as well as the tall Skyscraper ad in the right sidebar of all other pages. The beauty of Google AdSense is that Google will scan your site and content and try to match what you’re talking about with advertisers and ads that correspond, resulting in a greater likelihood that one of your readers will actually be interested in the content of a displayed ad and click on it.
Here’s an example ad:
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Why You Should Monitor Google AdSense
Keeping an eye on your Google AdSense performance is more than just counting coins. While it’s certainly fun and important to see how much your content and ads are earning, a closer look is warranted, particularly if you have multiple web properties, channels or ads.
Channels – If you only have one website or one category of ads, you’ll likely only have one Channel and therefore have nothing to note here. But if you’re running a few different niche sites or businesses, knowing your total Google AdSense earnings for the month is only part of the picture. Which site is earning more? Which site is still struggling to get ad clicks. If you’re monitoring site traffic as well using Google Analytics, and can see that a site is getting visitors but not ad clicks, that indicates a problem that needs to be addressed.
Ad Units – Similarly, if you only have one ad, this metric will not be of value. But most sites will have more than one place to put an ad, and if you have more than one site, this becomes even more relevant. And again, this is a metric you’re going to want to review regularly in order to keep an eye on how your specific ads are performing. How does my Home page ad stack up against my Sidebar ad? In the extreme, ads that get no clicks at all are just wasting space and should be replaced.
Google AdSense Mobile App
Once you’ve downloaded the app, you’ll need to log into the Google account associated with your Google AdSense product. As soon as you do, the first screen will be a nice Overview that shows you yours earnings data: Today, Yesterday, This Month, Last Month and Lifetime. I’ll glance at this once a day or so to see how my properties are doing. The values also include handy comparisons between the previous day or month so you can tell at a glance how you’re trending.
Selecting any one of these values reveals a more detailed report that includes Estimated earnings, Page views, Clicks, Page CTR, Cost per click and Page RPM.
The upper left has a menu button that reveals reports for Top Products, Top Channels, Top URL Channels, Top Sites and Top Ad Units. When you view any of these reports, you can adjust the Date Range to reflect Today, yesterday, Last 7 Days, Last 30 Days, This Month and Last Month.
So using these reports, you can analyze how specific sites and specific ads are doing. If you make an adjustment, you can alter the date range of the report to compare how the ad or property has fared since that change. We’ll spend some more time in a future post digging into how to create ads and how to use some of the more advanced features of Google AdSense, but this little app is a great way to keep an eye on your ad results during your busy day.
If you aren’t yet using Google AdSense, here’s a short little video from Google with some comments from other publishers:
[iOS link][Android link]