Monetize Pro

Bigger is better, right?  Except when something’s too big, people view it as obnoxious, and the object in question gets shunned.  So if you’re waffling between using medium and large AdSense rectangles, some new info supplied by Google may help straighten things out.

A post on the Inside AdSense blog states, “We took this question to our Optimization Team, who gave us insight into the strengths of each ad format.”  Use these tips as a guide, although of course, you should test stuff out on your site to make sure the general rule holds true.

Anyway, the post stated, “The 300×250 medium rectangle is a widely supported format that advertisers often use when designing their branding and rich media campaigns. Using this ad format and opting in to both text and image ads may generate more placement targeting opportunities, which will help drive up competition for your ad space and should lead to higher earnings over time.”

It also noted, “The 336×280 large rectangle tends to have a higher clickthrough rate due to its larger size.  It often performs well on text-heavy pages where it’s integrated into the content.”

Good luck using this info to your advantage.

Today’s post won’t exactly look at the traditional ways in which people earn money online - you won’t find the Google gospel off the company’s latest blog post or anything of that sort.  Instead, this is the tale of how a guy who suffered through a bad vacation made about $892 off a blog.

Monetization is monetization, eh?  And Andrew Sharman used a blog, a Twitter account, and little else besides word of mouth to get a fair amount of both cash and attention.

Richard Savill wrote, “Mr Sharman told . . . how he and his girlfriend Taryn Capewell, 26, were misled when they booked their ‘first proper holiday together’ at a Thomson store in Leicester. . . .  But when they reached Tunisia they said they found beer was 3 a pint, twice the price quoted by Thomson; the Sahara was eight hours’ drive away; there was no scuba diving and their room had had two single beds instead of the requested double.”

So Sharman, instead of (or at least in addition to) wacking himself for not doing his own research, wrote a letter to the Thomson travel agency.  After he didn’t receive a response, he blogged about everything and promoted the blog on Twitter.  Before long, he then found that his blog, and not the Thomson site, ranked high for several “Thomson Tunisia”-related searches.

So Sharman relayed that fact to Thomson, at which point the company gave him a refund covering about two-thirds of the price of his vacation.

If a fool and his money are soon parted, this at least goes to show that blogs and Twitter have the power to mostly reunite them.

Google has upgraded AdSense in yet another important couple of ways this week.  After all, if something’s bad, you don’t want to deal with it for half of a workday, right?  And it’s bad regardless of how much other stuff you’ve previously deemed bad.  So have a gander at improvements to the Competitive Ad Filter.

First, a post on the Inside AdSense blog acknowledged, “In the past, the Competitive Ad Filter sometimes took up to several hours to block URLs you’d entered.”

It then continued, “Knowing you’ve wanted a faster filtering system, we’re excited to let you know that URLs added to your Competitive Ad Filter are now usually blocked within 30 minutes.  We hope that this will help you quickly make changes to maintain a positive user experience on your sites.”

The post also stated, “At the same time, a growing number of you have let us know that you’re running out of space in your Competitive Ad Filter.  Now, you can add up to 500 sites to your filter list, more than double the previous limit.”

Try not to shoot yourself in the figurative foot going wild with these upgrades; remember that advertisements contribute to your bank account.

Otherwise, well, have fun eliminating bad stuff with greater efficiency.