Ad Units and Channels

Do you create an ad unit per channel?

[azn romeo 4u]

I have 2 ad units, and 2 link units. But I have created a bunch of channels. Is the purpose of channels, suppose to be connected to one ad unit each?

Since I only have 2 ad units, I put this in the adsense code

google_ad_channel = "#*$!#*$!x";

Is this find, or would it be better to create 1 channel per ad unit? I ask this because today I logged into my adsense, and even though I only have 4 channels and 4 units, for some reason there is a channel that reports 60k impressions when I have not added that channel's id into the google_ad_channel on any of my ads.

Also what do you guys do? Use one channel per unit or just set up one unit and use the google_ad_channel?

[Sally Stitts]

My method -
One ad block per page, at the top.
One unique channel per page.
That way, I can see everything.
When experimenting with additional ad blocks, another unique channel per page, such as, pagename-bottom.

I need to be able to evaluate every single ad block separately, otherwise I don't know what is going on, and what to fix.

I vaporize any ad block that has poor performance, unless it pays extremely well. I don't want to dilute my stats, because I think that Google looks at your overall CTR. Higher CTRs are much better than lower CTRs, IMHO.
.

[Leonard0]

If you are going to have more than a few dozen pages on your site it is more practical to group several pages under a single channel.
But keep a separate channel for each ad unit. That way you can determine if changes you make to an ad unit results in improved earnings.
Earnings can differ greatly from the top ad units to those lower down. If the channel contains ads in multiple locations on a page you can't see which are the best earners.

[AdSenseAdvisor]

What we recommend to most publishers is to set up channels for any unique way you want to slice your data. There's not really a magic number. So if it's important for you to understand how a particular ad unit is doing across your site, you may set up one channel for all 728x90 ad units. If you want to see how the sports section is doing on your site, you might set up a separate channel with all ad units that are a part of your sports section.

Here's a video and blog on custom channels that is worth a read:

[adsense.blogspot.com ]

Also, any set of ad units that you want to make targetable to advertisers, you should set up as custom channels and then enable placement targeting. This allows advertisers better visibility into your users and site content and they are willing to bid higher for this inventory (meaning more revenue for you!).

Here's more info on placement targeting and how to set that up:

[adsense.blogspot.com ]


ASA.

[netmeg]

To reiterate what ASA says, it's not unusual for me to put four or five different channels on a single ad, depending on what type of performance tests or reports I'm running.

Typical channels are for:

Ad Size
Ad Placement
Page
Color or styling
Text or Image
Geographic Area


Then I can run reports telling me which colors are doing best for me (red is great, green sucks for some reason) or look at 468x60 vs 160x600's, or ads vs link units, or Michigan vs Ohio sites (NOT football for once) etc etc. I am always testing stuff.

The increase to 500 channels was a big help in this - hey, can I have 1000 now?

[Sally Stitts]

The increase to 500 channels was a big help in this

Amen to that. I was stuck at 300 for too long, and I simply stopped putting up ads, since I couldn't see what was going on. Now, I still have plenty left, so I am good for quite some time.
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[realwahl]

I tried to find the syntax for dynamically creating the google_ad_channel parameter (directly from my pages, not from my adsense account) with the new adsense code, but I didn't found it anywhere. Can you please help me?
Also, do the channels need to be created in Adsense first, or I can just invent channels in my script and expect to find them later in the reports?