Creating your own PSAs - Making your own choices

Just in case Google's are not to your liking

[loanuniverse]

I have read some complaints about the type of PSAs that Google provides as in “I really do not want to support this particular charity”. Prompted by my recent success raising online for my March of Dimes walk, I decided to go ahead and make links to the charities myself. The problem that I found was being able to find a charity that I liked, which allowed for internet donations. This was solved when I found this resource “network for good” that lets you create a landing page and pick and choose several charities in that page.

I have already implemented it in a couple of zones, and strongly encourage you to consider doing something like that if you are not using your defaults right now.

[mquarles]

Great idea. Boys & Girls Clubs for me :-).

MQ

[ownerrim]

lv, when you did this did you create and upload a graphic for adsense to display when your psa was shown?

[loanuniverse]

Well when I create my code through my Google Adsense account manager, I create it with a default like such;

google_alternate_ad_url = "http://www.yourdomain.com/default.html";

Then it is just a matter of changing the banner code in this default file. I had a Commision Junction banner in there, but just replaced it to load a banner that I got from the charity place and saved in my server.

Doing it like this gives you the flexibility of changing the default.html file whenever you want to without having to go get another set of code from Google.

[HughMungus]

Is it OK for your alternative/charity ad to also be a text ad?

[loanuniverse]

I would stay away from making it look like Adsense text ads or even their Big lettered Charity ads.

After that, I think you can make it look whichever way you want.

[mquarles]

The way I read that, it should be ok HughMungus.

The operative language, I think, is:

You also agree not to display any other text-based or content-targeted advertisement(s) on the same Web page in connection with which an Ad Unit or any Ad is displayed.

In the situation you mentioned, there is no Ad Unit displayed at the same time. Might be a good one to ask ASA when he's back to be positive, though.

MQ