Google Hacks, 2nd Edition

Serve Backup Ads

Use AdSense’s built-in (and rather thoughtful) ability to serve ads from alternate URLs when there are no targeted ads to offer.

There’s a time and place for public service announcements. You just might not think your web site is the place and certainly not if it happens more than occasionally. When you signed up for AdSense (while you’re no doubt a good citizen who pays their public radio and television dues), your intent was to reap a revenue stream from all the hard work that you’ve put into your content.

Yet there are times when a new section of your site hasn’t yet been noticed and indexed by Google, AdSense has nothing appropriately targeted in its inventory, or there’s a temporary outage of some kind. The net result is that you’ll be running public service ads for the Red Cross or the like rather than revenue-generating, targeted advertising. Google AdSense doesn’t get paid and so doesn’t pay you for click-throughs on public service advertisements.

Now, you can either simply be OK with this coming up every so often—I know I am—or you can make use of a backup system Google AdSense provides: alternate ad URLs.

Point your browser at Google AdSense (http://www.google.com/adsense) and click the Ad Settings tab at the top of the page. Then, scroll down until you see “Alternate ad URL or color,” as shown in Figure 7-11.

Figure 7-11. Provide an alternate URL for ads when ...