What Is Google Adsense?

Google AdSense can be best described as a major online advertising system. AdSense benefits both advertisers and publishers mutually. However, for advertisers, there is some money to be made with AdSense. Some individuals earn upward of several hundred dollars a month, and some larger companies earn thousands. Google AdSense has changed much over the last five years and added many more tools to benefit website owners and bloggers. If you have been thinking about signing up for AdSense, you will first want to know how it works, as well as the basic structure behind it.

AdSense

Chances are, you have noticed the numerous different types of advertisements on the web. Clicking on them will either open up a new website in a pop-up or take you directly to a new page. More than likely, some of those ads that you may have clicked on were Google AdSense ads. There are many different types of advertising programs on the Internet. Just like television and television commercials, the Internet needs advertising to generate revenue. Google AdSense is basically Google's ad-serving campaign.

Advertisers

Many companies that have a large Internet presence want to advertise their websites to draw in more potential customers. To do this, these companies and websites need to advertise their websites on other websites. Google AdSense is one of the best options for doing this. These companies create ads of all different sizes that they wish to be placed on other people's websites. They then pay Google an advertising fee to include their companies in Google's AdSense program.

Publishers

Publishers are the main backbone of Google's AdSense campaign. Publishers include anyone with a website or blog who is willing to post Google's AdSense ads on their pages. Because these ads do take up space on the page and the publishers are advertising for Google, Google in return gives the publishers a percentage of advertising revenue generated from the ads. It's kind of like a billboard company. AdSense publishers own the billboard display. A company wants to advertise on the billboard space, so it pays you for the advertisement. Google is the middleman that negotiates, and Google does take a profit. If you are interested in becoming a Google AdSense publisher, follow the link in the Resources section.

Types of AdSense Ads

There are many different types of AdSense ads. The most basic ads are the plain text ads. These ads display company slogans and other text-based sayings to draw a web surfer in to click and visit the website. Text on Google AdSense is completely customizable by publishers. This allows them to blend ads to better match the theme of their websites or blogs. Background color, font color and ad size can all be customized by the publisher. The second type of ad available through AdSense is a graphic banner ad. Rather than text, these ads display a picture or animation. Some newer banner ads are even interactive, allowing the web surfer to do things such as play games or watch short video clips. The third type of ad available through AdSense is a video ad. In case you didn't know, Google also owns the popular site YouTube.com. So it now features AdSense players that display small advertisements at the bottom of its video players. You may have noticed these ads while watching videos on YouTube. The fourth type of ad available through AdSense is a feed ad. These ads work well for blog publishers, because blogs often generate a lot of traffic through subscribers. When subscribers subscribe to a feed with AdSense, they will receive advertisements as well.

AdSense Earnings Explained

AdSense ads are constantly fluctuating on how much they pay publishers. AdSense determines pay on various technical factors that Google keeps private. However, there are two determinants that play a huge role in how much money you can make with AdSense. The first is click-through rate. The higher percentage of people that visit your website or blog and click on an ad, the more money you will make. For example, if 100 people visit your blog, but only 1 of them clicks on an ad, you only have a 1 percent click-through ratio. The higher this ratio is, the more money you will make. The second determinant is keywords. Keywords involve what type of ad is displayed on your page. For example, if a visitor to your blog clicks on an ad about pop music, you will only make something like 15 cents. However, if a visitor to your blog clicks on an ad about mesothelioma, you could make $10. This is because mesothelioma is a higher-paying keyword. Advertisers pay Google more to advertise on the topic of mesothelioma.