New AdSense Code Rolling Out

Control Channels, Colors, and More Straight from Control Panel

[heyday]

Anyone notice that the new "Adsense units" don't have the individual adchanel codes in them any longer?

Now there is a new line of code...

google_ad_slot = "1234567890"

I know this is going to be an issue for some....

heyday

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Thanks for your feedback and feature requests for this new ad management feature. The product team is taking your comments seriously as they continue to develop it and roll it out to more publishers. They're also investigating some scattered reports of ad display delays, but assure me that it should take no more than 10 minutes for ad settings changes to propagate to the live ad units.

Keep the feedback coming,
-ASA

[iridiax]

I tried it again hours later and it now works. This will definitely make it easier to test out different ad colors.

[icedowl]

I'm sticking with my old code until they get it all, and I mean ALL on one page.

[EricDraven]

Holy unnecessary complications Batman! I'm sorry AdSenseAdvisor, but what were you guys thinking with this one? Please give us coders the option to have things the way they were with the open face color and channel code. I can't lose the time envolved in doing all of this through the AdSense control panel.

[Scurramunga]

Holy unnecessary complications Batman!

LOL

[titaneye]

I agree with most here. These changes are terrible. Please change it back to the way things were.

[titaneye]

And for the record, the ads do not appear after 10 minutes. Going on 24 minutes and 47 seconds, and still no ads.

[Forest Dweller]

I've had the new codes on my pages for 2 1/2 days and one of the ad blocks is only showing sporadically. It's not displaying my alternate either. It's always the same ad block ... a banner on each page of my site. Wrote Adsense help about it right away but haven't heard back.

Sure do wish it would fix itself because my connection speed is about as slow as they come and it takes forever to upload my entire site. That's the reason I switched to this code as soon as it was available ... thought it would make it a little easier to manage the ads.

[nmweb]

Currently I can't delete any adsense-blocks in the manager. This would be really helpful. Also I'd like to see a feature so I can disable a certain adsense-block so it won't show any adds but just background-color or sth. This also goes back to the testing of adsense-blocks. E.g. I hardly get any clicks on my frontpage ads, what if I would disable it would I get more clicks or visitors elsewhere? Testing within Adsense would be great for these experiment, especially together with Analytics.

[jomaxx]

Can you imagine doing site design under this system, and trying to test out various color schemes? If the old code wasn't available, you'd have no choice but to take a screenshot and do the whole thing in Photoshop.

[titaneye]

The ads still aren't showing up for me. Channeled ads are now ending up in the wrong place, with the wrong color. This has turned my last 2 days into an absolute nightmare.

Of course ASA posts his typical canned reponse. Are they working this, are they not? What's the status, this system is terrible.

[AdSenseAdvisor]

I can tell you that nearly everyone on the team is following this and related threads, and your feedback has already sparked a variety of conversations about the development of this ad management feature.

Your feedback also allowed us to identify an unrelated technical issue that's indirectly causing some ad delays:
[adsense.blogspot.com...]

Also, please know that you aren't required to switch your sites to the new ad code immediately. We do encourage you to test out the new feature and implement managed ads on your sites as you make updates because future product development and improvements may center around the new style of code. However, we know that many of you have well-established sites and workflows, so we understand that this can be a major undertaking and that the change won't happen overnight.

I'll continue relaying your questions and comments to our product managers, and will give you updates as I have them.

-ASA

[ken_b]

you aren't required to switch your sites to the new ad code immediately.

Does that mean we WILL eventually be FORCED to adopt the new system? If so, when?

[AdSenseAdvisor]

There's currently no plan to disable old ad code. However, in the future we may launch features that depend on the new code format. I don't know when this would happen or what it would look like, but I'll try to find out more. In the meantime, it won't hurt to play around with the new code and code generation/editing interface.

(To be honest, I probably won't be able to answer this question with the detail you'd like, but I'll let you know whatever I can.)

-ASA

[ken_b]

Thanks ASA.

[kpaul]

EDIT to add: Seems to be working ok now. Took more like half an hour to an hour to show up, though? Looking good otherwise...

----------------------

I switched to the new code and am getting black boxes (blank) on a site that was previously showing ads. Any ideas? It's been over 20 mins...

Thanks.

Ok, I can see the preview now. Maybe I just gotta give it more time...

[icedowl]

I decided to try it on only three channels today. The adblocks displayed immediately.

[londrum]

one thing i've noticed... but maybe i am going blind... is that you can't delete the 'manage ads' once you've made them.

i set up a new 125x125 box ad for my site, stuck it on my site, and then noticed that i had mistakenly chosen 120x240 instead. when i went into 'manage ads' to fix it, i was not offered anything to change the ad size - only the borders, colours, corners and channels.

because the ad briefly appeared on my site its status is now shown as 'active' (even after i've removed it), so now i have a new 'manage ad' on my list that i can't delete.

... not a major problem, granted, but it doesn't take much to wind me up

[fredw]

londrum: I believe this is addressed in their FAQ somewhere. They specifically did not include an "ad delete" feature because they were concerned that you could, unknowingly, delete an ad that you still had working out on a site somewhere.

The FAQ said that after sometime (two weeks? i don't remember) unused ads will go "inactive" and that you could chose not to show inactive ads in the list.

[londrum]

oh, right. fair enough. but why can't we change the ad sizes too? that would make it more handy... because people test out different ad sizes just as much as they do the colours.

[icedowl]

Yes! Being able to change the ad size is definitely a must have!

[AutoReverse]

@ASA: +1 more unhappy with the control panel approach (and it might be helpful if the reasons for the change and benefits to publishers could be clarified :)

The ability to manually or progammatically edit basic parameters is an advantage "AdSense Classic" had over other advertising programs. At the very least please ensure that "AdSense Classic" code doesn't die - and keep a classic wizard available for publishers.

{ Anyone else got CJ Link Management Initiative deja vu? }

[ann]

Just waiting for the hot spot approach.

Ann

[nailah phoomee]

@ASA, do you have any suggestion for those who hire a web designer and don't want them to access google account?

[jam2005]

I like the change, but I can see why some people might not like it. I'd rather just login to AdSense and make changes to the look of the ad then mess changing the HTML all over my site.

[icedowl]

Here's my main problem with the way it now works. I used to be able to get code for one channel, paste it into my file for that channel, and then repeat as needed to generate code for another channel until all were done. I had been able to do that for all of my channels in about 20 minutes total time. No longer can I do it that quickly. Now I have to go all the way back to the beginning to generate the next channel's code, choosing once again all of the same things except for the channels and it's taking a ton of my precious time. I suppose once I get them all created it might be okay but not during this initial setup stage.

It sure would be a whole lot more convenient if it were all on one page so I could get it done in nearly the same amount of time as before. Most of the time I've been only changing the channels involved and haven't needed to change anything else.

</end gripe>

[Lipik]

For testing I made one "new" code (250x250). The only thing I see after 4 days is one black square with "ads by google". Anybody has the same problem?
However, after 1 day there where for a limited time ads displayed, but only 2 of them in a box where 4 had to be.

Second question : is it still possible to generate "old" code? if so, how?

Thanks.

[edited by: Lipik at 4:44 pm (utc) on Nov. 12, 2007]

[Forest Dweller]

The only thing I see after 4 days is one black square with "ads by google". Anybody has the same problem?

Yep. Same here almost. The last four days I've had a white rectangle. I don't have "ads by google" ... just a blank space where the ad should be.

[edited by: Forest_Dweller at 5:38 pm (utc) on Nov. 12, 2007]

[mojomike]

it's been asked and I'll add my 2 cents to it,

why does Google forbid the color change locally,

well besides the checking routines that Google does, there is another item.

they are checking and learning what color combination work to what extent.

I pay a lot for the Vegas color report ( published yearly, it's about the slot machines colors and the sales that each color makes ).

Now take the data Google has, and they can present a web site with the right colors, to the right people, to generate the proper click.

when Google offers it's own API. I would think this would be one of their most exclusive features, picture presenting a web site that tunes itself to a customer based on region and based on users past history.

-mojomike

p.s. the "LV color report" called the change from blues to greens 2 years ahead of the curve, and has done this numerous times over the last 25 years.

-mm

[thing3b]

At the moment I have 400 pages across my sites. Each AdSense unit has completely different channels and I use the full limit of 5 channels per advertisement.

I use my channels for:
- Ad Position and layout
- Topic of the page
- Where the page idea came from
- Where the page contents came from
- Marketing techniques used

As I have 3 AdSense units on each page I could potentially have more than 1000 unique AdSense Units.

Does anyone know if the new interface is designed to work with over 1000 AdSense units (Due to channels)?

I would be happy to move over to the new system if I could only have access to the channels the same way as we did in the old code.