Last month, Adsense Product Manager Violetta Kalathaki announced AdSense Auto Ads and now they’re running on techAU. This is fundamental change in how AdSense works and now leverages Machine Learning to determine the most relevant (and profitable) ad selection for content.
While website owners never chose the ads, rather just the category of ads they were willing to have on their site and text or image-based ads. The way AdSense Auto Ads works is to dynamically determine the best place to position ads.
To enable this, you simple sign into AdSense and enable Auto Ads and you’ll get a single piece of code to embed in the header file that’s rendered for each page on your site. It’ll take around 10-15 minutes for the AI to do its work, after which the new ads will appear.
Previously techAU ran an AdSense injection WordPress plugin which inserted ads after the 2nd paragraph and at the end of the post which was a nice blend of user experience and monatisation. After moving to AutoAds, that plugin is now one less than runs on the site.
Handing over control is a little scary, but after checking the results, I’ve got to say, I’m pretty happy with things. The ads are placed in different locations throughout the article than I had selected previously, but if that’s what Google determines, then I’m willing to see how it goes for a month or two and compare user experiences and income, right now I’m very hopeful the outcome is positive on both fronts.
Some of the benefits of Auto ads include:
- Optimization: Using machine learning, Auto ads show ads only when they are likely to perform well and provide a good user experience.
- Revenue opportunities: Auto ads will identify any available ad space and place new ads there, potentially increasing your revenue.
- Easy to use: With Auto ads you only need to place the ad code on your pages once. When you’re ready to use new features and ad formats, simply turn them on and off with the flick of a switch — there’s no need to change the code again.
Control over ad types
The settings for Auto Ads are fairly limited, but this simplicity is also welcome. Just enable or disable each type of ad you want to enable on your site and Auto Ads will make the best selections based on their vast array of data across millions of websites, layered with the content relevant to the page the visitor is currently on.
