Google Advertising Tools

Preface

Google and the Web have changed the way the world publishes content and the way the world advertises. It’s now possible for anyone to publish a web site, and, if the content of the site draws traffic, to make money from Google’s AdSense program, all with almost no additional effort.

It’s easy to publish a web site. The ability to make money from any site that interests visitors makes self-publishing possible in a new and revolutionary sense. If something interests you, it is likely to be of interest to at least some other people—and you can get paid to follow your interests. For example, if you write a blog that people read, it’s now easy to get paid for blogging. All of this is possible with the AdSense program.

Google’s AdWords program and contextual and CPC advertising, in which the advertiser pays by the click, have also revolutionized advertising. Contextual means that ads are relevant to site visitors—a promise that is fulfilled as in no other advertising medium.

The AdWords auction mechanism makes targeted, low-cost advertising available to almost everyone and means that there is no need to hire a specialized advertising agency to place professional and effective ads (you do need to know your way around AdWords!).

One of the wonders of AdWords is that it provides reports and mechanisms, such as conversion tracking, for understanding how successful your ads are. It’s easy to create high-quality advertising campaigns using AdWords and to understand exactly what the return on your investment is.

Advertising on the Web is a $7 billion market as of 2005, with a 40% estimated annual growth rate. This is big business, with interested parties ranging from business people to advertising agencies to technical folk. If you need to advertise, want to advertise, or are an advertising manager, this book contains nuts-and-bolts information about AdWords that you will not find elsewhere and that will help you to efficiently drive traffic to your site.

Google has exposed the functionality of AdWords to programmers via the Google AdWords API web services. This isn’t for everyone; you need to be able to write code, for starters, and you probably need to be either a large advertiser or an agency managing many advertisers for creating custom code based on the AdWords APIs to make sense. But it’s encouraging to know that the ability to automate interactions with the AdWords servers is there should you want to make use of it.

The AdWords API web service program shows Google’s commitment to openness and to exploration and experimentation that will lead to still more advances in advertising on the Web.

Google Advertising Tools explains the business and technology behind making money with content and advertising on the Web. This is a practical book for technically inclined people about how to use the Google advertising services to make money. The book provides the background information that is needed to understand and work with both AdSense and AdWords. You’ll learn how to build a site that can derive revenue from AdSense and other programs, how to drive traffic to that site, and how to improve search engine placement for the site. You’ll also understand how to use AdWords before you’re done.

This book is for you if you want to make money with content on a web site. I don’t promise that you’ll get rich by carrying advertising on your sites (I’m not rich yet!), but I do promise that if you provide interesting content and use the techniques explained in this book, you will make money. It’s also for you if you want to learn how to best use the advertising tools that the Google AdWords program provides.

By the way, Google is constantly improving the features and user interfaces of its advertising tools (as is true of many web-based applications). So by the time you read this book, the way these applications look may be a little different than they do here. But don’t worry: the core functionality will not have changed, and you should be able to use the directions in this book without any significant problems.

Please check out the companion web site for the book that I maintain at http://www.braintique.com/ad/. This site provides resources, updated information, and source code from the book.

Tip

If you create a site that carries AdSense ads using the techniques explained in Part I and Part II of Google Advertising Tools, I will link to it from the companion site for the book. See http://www.braintique.com/ad/for details. I reserve the right not to link to any site I deem unsuitable.

Organization

This book is organized into four parts, with each part containing several chapters. Taken as a whole, these parts cover the gamut of the Google advertising tools. However, each part can be read as a self-contained unit, and each part is aimed at readers with different needs.

• Part I, Making Money with Your Web Site, explains how to make money from a content-based web site, how to build a site that will get traffic, how to get your site noticed, and the many ways to make money with advertising on your site.

• Part II, Getting the Most from AdSense, explains how to work with Google’s AdSense, the premier contextual advertising program for content sites. Participating in the AdSense program is probably one of the best ways to monetize your site.

• Part III, Working with AdWords, explains the nuts and bolts, and metrics, of the Google AdWords program, a highly successful mechanism that anybody with a valid credit card can use to place advertisements that reach over 80% of users of the Internet.

• Part IV, Using the AdWords APIs, is written for programmers who are interested in writing applications that take advantage of the Google AdWords API web services. This part explains what these web services are and how to write code that interacts with them.

If you read all four parts, you will get a comprehensive picture of how advertising works on the Web and how you can use the Google advertising programs to your advantage.

Assumptions

This book does not explain HTML and will not tell you how to create or modify web sites. To put the concepts and software explained into practice, you need to have basic knowledge of web fundamentals and skills or to work with a webmaster who does.

Part I, Making Money with Your Web Site, and Part II, Getting the Most from AdSense, are intended for readers who have, or are interested in building, web sites that can be used to make money with advertising. To take advantage of this material, you will need to be able to publish web pages and to modify the HTML code of these pages, for example, to add affiliate links and to add the JavaScript code needed to display Google AdSense ad units on your pages.

You don’t need any technical skills to become an effective advertiser on the Web using Google’s AdWords program. So, in a sense, Part III, Working with AdWords, is the least geeky part of this book, although, as you’ll learn when you read Part III, advertising on the Web does have its own complex discipline and metrics. If you want to take advantage of AdWord’s nifty conversion- and cross-conversion-tracking features, you’ll need to be able to add JavaScript code to your HTML pages.

To profit from Part III you need, of course, a service or product to advertise that makes you money, but webmasters who are simply interested in monetizing the content of their own sites, and not in advertising per se, will gain from an understanding of “how the other half lives.” An interesting idea to explore is to see if you can profitably drive traffic to your site using AdWords and make more revenue from AdSense and other programs than it costs you to get the traffic.

Part IV, Using the AdWords APIs, is written for programmers and assumes an audience that has a basic understanding of the web services mechanism, already knows how to program, and can sight-read code (in PHP or C#, depending on the chapter).

About the Examples

Various fragments of HTML and code are presented in this book, such as the JavaScript code used to display Google AdSense ad units on your web pages.

In addition, Chapters 14 through 16 provide extensive examples that show how to use the Google AdWords APIs.

Chapters 14 and 16 use PHP in a series of complete web pages. In contrast, Chapter 15 shows a C#.Net Windows application that is compiled using Visual Studio.Net (2003 or later).

If you want to play with the applications presented in these chapters, I do not expect you to type them in by hand. The source code for each of these three chapters is available as a zipped archive from both http://www.braintique.com/ad/ and http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/buildinggoogle, and you’ll also find the PHP applications from Chapter 14 and 16 ready for you to use at http://www.braintique.com/ad/ (once you have your Google AdWords APIs developer key, as explained in Chapter 13).

Conventions Used in This Book

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Constant width bold

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Constant width italic

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Tip

This icon signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note.

Warning

This icon indicates a warning or caution.

Using Code Examples

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: "Google Advertising Tools by Harold Davis. Copyright 2006 O’Reilly Media, Inc., 0-596-10108-2.”

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Acknowledgments

I’d like to specially thank Brett McLaughlin for his excellent job editing this book. It’s rare to find an editor who knows both how to trust his authors and when to challenge them to do better.

Matt Wagner did an excellent job of representing me as the agent for this book. He also deserves acknowledgment for having the courage to follow his own destiny—by setting up shop as a solo agent.

Phyllis is my hero, as well as my wife and friend. Thanks, Phyllis, for reading the chapters of this book before I submitted them, and for taking up the slack around the house and with the kids. Julian, Nicky, and Mathew bore my obsession with writing this book with extraordinary grace, although Nicky did frequently tell me that he wanted his Daddy back, and that he wanted “Daddy’s book to be done” so that he could play with Daddy.

With three little boys in the house, music and a good headset are obligatory. Artists I listened to on this book include Ry Cooder, the Dixie Chicks, John Dowland, Emmylou Harris, Bob Marley, Kitaro, Mozart, Paul Simon, Seal, Bruce Springsteen, and Ali Farka Toure. These musicians are, of course, responsible for all errors and omissions in the text, while I alone deserve credit for everything I happened to get right!