AdSense Auto Ads

AdSense has been rolling its latest experiment known as AdSense Auto Ads. It’s slowly sending out invitations to AdSense Publishers, inviting them to try the new code.

How Auto Ads Work?

AdSense Auto Ads are billed as a single piece of ad code that publishers can add or replace existing ad units to maximize revenue. Plainly stated, you add the code, and AdSense determines which Auto Ads to show for the most revenue.

Implementing Auto Ads

First off you’ll need to be invited to test this out on your AdSense account. Then, you’ll need to log into AdSense, then select My Ads, then choose Auto Ads from the left side menu. You’ll then be presented with the option to generate your Auto Ad code.

After you’ve generated the ad code for your Auto ads, copy and paste that code, and it on each page that you want to show the ads. You should place your ad code in thetag (or at the top of the body) of your page. If you have existing ads on that page, you’ll want to remove them.

Example HTML page before the Auto ad code has been added:

AdSense Auto Ads Code

AdSense Auto Ads Code

 

Example HTML page with the Auto ad code added in the tag:

AdSense Auto Ads Code

AdSense Auto Ads Code

 

Auto Ads Performance

We’ve had the Auto Ad code from AdSense running on one of our bigger websites for right around 2 weeks, and here’s how it’s performed compared with the previous period of the same number of days:

Ad Placement Start Date End Date Pageviews Impressions Clicks Page RPM Impression RPM Earnings
Custom Placement 9/28/2017 10/9/2017 187,920 773,568 5,263 $6.25 $1.52 $1,173.70
Auto Ad Code 10/12/2017 10/23/2017 156,886 453,213 3,021 $5.22 $1.81 $819.05
Delta -16.51% -41.41% -42.60% -16.48% 19.08% -30.22%

Summary of Auto Ad Results

Bottom line is that when we invest the time to make changes to a website, we expect some sort of return. With Auto Ads we realized a 30.22% decline in estimated earnings and that’s not a win any way.

Notes on Auto Ads

  • AdSense has not yet made available a report or report filter that shows how the Auto Ad code is performing – that’s disappointing. We’ve contacted AdSense about this but have yet to receive a reply.
  • We’ve created our own report o assess the impact of this change. That report is shown above.
  • It may take time for AdSense to become smart about what ads will perform best on a given site. However, 2 weeks seems like an adequate amount of time.

Auto Ads Bottomline

Hold off on implementing this until improvements are made by AdSense.

 

References: AdSense Help