Regular AdSense and AdSense for Mobile

[naplesdave]

I have been running regular AdSense on my site for years and now want to include AdSense for Mobile, which I know is only shown to mobile phones, smart phones, etc.

When I include the Mobile AdSense code, it actually creates a blank space on the page where the ad would show when I am viewing it on a regular browser.

I'm using Wordpress and Thesis as my theme and have an established site.

Wouldn't it make more sense for the Mobile AdSense to collapse when the browser isn't mobile than to have it show white space?

Maybe I'm missing something and that's why I'm here.

Thanks for any input.

Kind regards,
Dave Jackson

[gseth]

Actually the AdSense for mobile goes only on mobile sites. Putting it on a normal page will give you that white space. You need to separate the mobile version of your website.

On my site I basically have two versions of the same site, mobile and desktop version. I put the ad code individually. Thats the only way to do it I believe.

[netmeg]

I think that ad only displays if it detects a mobile browser. Get the User Agent Switcher plugin for Firefox and you can see for yourself.

There are several ways of running mobile sites; I'm experimenting with them now. The first one I put everything on a subdomain, and redirected traffic there with a script. This next one I'm working on, I'm going to see if I can do it entirely with CSS. I have a bunch of WordPress installs, most with Thesis also, and I may use a plugin to render those for mobile viewing as well.

I need to clone myself is what I need.

[johnmoose]

Thats indeed the trick. I saw a white space too until I installed the UA switcher.

[naplesdave]

OK, thanks.

So when you create this mobile version (which is a lot of nonsense if you run Wordpress with many super great themes that render very well for mobile devices) do you then keep Google from indexing all that so you won't have two copies of your website?

Plus, how do you realistically keep them synchronized?

Would make much more sense to me to have some sort of ad code that does the detecting and would serve normal ads for viewers on computers, and mobile ads for mobile users... or..

cut out all the shenanigans and let normal ads be seen on mobile devices.

Dave

[netmeg]

I haven't turned any of my WP sites into mobile sites yet, but when I get to it, I expect I'll use one of the various plugins that are available. I sure don't wanna be loading any stylish theme on my BlackBerry; believe firmly in keeping it simple for phones. Keeping the sites synced wasn't an issue; they're just two different front ends out of the same MySQL database. I tried NOINDEXing the mobile site, but because of the redirect that took my real home page out for a few hours, so instead I just put in a canonical url and hoped for the best. I still have to work out the best way to do that. If I can find a way to just serve mobile pages with CSS and the browser detect, that might solve the problem.

I use a browser detect script, but I might also test giving the user a choice. Dunno about that yet.

I posted in detail what I was doing a few weeks ago here:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[naplesdave]

Thanks Netmeg! Very helpful. I was looking all over the place for some code that would recognize a mobile connect and then serve the mobile version of the ad... Thesis doesn't look half bad in a smart phone. And thanks for the idea about the plugin. I'll go do some searching. And it's quite possible Google doesn't even index mobile pages.

[naplesdave]

Thanks Netmeg! Very helpful. I was looking all over the place for some code that would recognize a mobile connect and then serve the mobile version of the ad... Thesis doesn't look half bad in a smart phone. And thanks for the idea about the plugin. I'll go do some searching. And it's quite possible Google doesn't even index mobile pages.

[netmeg]

My mobile page went into the index at first, but after I put in the canonical url tag, it disappeared.

[jetteroheller]

What Smart Phones?

I see on my Android the regular AdSense ads and prefer normal websites.

Same for iPhone

Other cell phone operating systems do not have the market share
to support the smaller mobile ads

[naplesdave]

Hi Jetteroheller,

I have a Verizon Blackberry. The ads don't show up on the Blackberry browser.

I suppose you're right ref the market share. Makes sense.

So maybe it's not worth the effort to use the Mobile ads.

Thanks for your input.

[Leonard0]

The ads don't show up on the Blackberry browser.

According to the specs on the Blackberry site, both OS 5 and 6 have javascript capabilities.
Is javascript turned off by default?

Since both Android and iPhone OSes show Adsense just like a normal browser, it doesn't seem worthwhile to change or develop sites for the few that don't run Adsense ads. All of the newest smartphones will probably have javascript capability.

On the other hand, having a mobile version of your site will probably attract more traffic, if none of your competitors have mobile versions.

[netmeg]

I don't see the ads on my (two month old) BlackBerry either; and I don't have javascript turned off. But I know they're there, because they brought in significant revenue the last two months (and I can see them when I switch the user agent with the Firefox add in) I chalked it up to some BB browser weirdness.

[naplesdave]

I think it may be more than just being able to run Javascript. I've never seen the ads in Blackberry's browser.

[Leonard0]

Could be that Blackberry doesn't support iframes. I believe that the Adsense ads are written in an iframe.
Or else it could be the security settings, though I doubt that they would be set to block Adsense. Google would have kicked up a fuss.
I assume that Adsense for mobile ads show on the Blackberry.

Anyway, back to the main topic. Google should update its archaic policy of restricting Adsense for mobile ads to mobile sites. The new smartphones are perfectly capable of running HTML.
XHTML is pretty much dead, though some people still like it. See the HTML forum [webmasterworld.com...]

It would be much simpler for publishers to have one version of their site and (if they are running php or asp) check for smartphone users then insert the mobile code instead of the regular Adsense code.

[jetteroheller]

Blackberry? Here Google analytics stats for mobile devices from my strongest site

1. iPhone 179
2. iPad 118
3. Android 43
4. SymbianOS 36
5. iPod 27
6. Windows 15
7. BlackBerry 2
8. Samsung 2
9. Sony 2

[jetteroheller]

Anyway, back to the main topic. Google should update its archaic policy of restricting Adsense for mobile ads to mobile sites. The new smartphones are perfectly capable of running HTML.
XHTML is pretty much dead, though some people still like it. See the HTML forum

I assume each i#*$! Android and Windows can show perfect normal HTML with normal AdSense ads.

When I look on my stats above

382 : 42

The large majority can show normal AdSense

[lzr0]

It would be much simpler for publishers to have one version of their site and (if they are running php or asp) check for smartphone users then insert the mobile code instead of the regular adsense code.

For someone who is not familiar with asp, would you mind posting the code?
Also, I wonder if this would not be against Google policy: they say their AdSense code should not be a part of any software.
I would be interested to hear from anyone who is actually doing this (i.e. determining the media and serving the code accordingly) if they did not get any messages from Google?

[rajivatre]

Izr0,
I am doing this for one of my site which is written in php. It detects the user agent and depending upon that it either puts javascript code or put the php code for adsense.
If i remember correctly on this same forum I got the idea from one of the members (sorry dont remember the name) and did some searching on google before finally putting into the site.
I have been doing this for last 2-3 years and never had a problem from google.
IMHO google should not have a problem with this as long as we are not changing anything from their code snippet (given by adsense).

Thanks
Rajiv

[lzr0]

I am doing this for one of my site which is written in php. It detects the user agent and depending upon that it either puts javascript code or put the php code for adsense.

rajivatre,
Thanks for your reply. Does your code distinguish high-end phones? The members here noteed that some phones will display regular AdSense. Would you mind sharing the code unless it is proprietary?
lzr

[TamanRoyal]

Would it be better if google can detect the browser and serve proper replacement ad for mobile device?

It will save lots of individual efford from webmasters...

[maximillianos]

Would it be better if google can detect the browser and serve proper replacement ad for mobile device?

I use to think this way until I built and rolled out our mobile site. Then I realized where I place my ads on my desktop (main) site is no where near where I want my mobile ads to show up. So it makes sense to have them separate.

Though I think they could/should offer it as a setting where webmasters could enable such functionality to default the ads based on User Agent if they so wish.

[lzr0]

Though I think they could/should offer it as a setting where webmasters could enable such functionality to default the ads based on User Agent if they so wish.

I came across this:

...you may request that Google redirect the user to an alternate page whenever the user attempts to view the page through the transcoder. You can do so by including the following line in the <HEAD> section of the HTML file for your page:

<link rel="alternate" media="handheld" href="alternate_page.htm" />

The alternate page should be a mobile-optimized version of the original page or a message informing the user that the site is not available on the phone.

[google.com...]

But I think this work only when a visitor clicked on your url in mobile Google SERP.