DFP Small Business and AdSense - is it worth it?

DFP Small Business, AdSense

[zarathustra2011]

I'm a bit behind the times here (well actually a lot behind the times), but Google sent me an email about DFP. As I only use Adsense, is DFP worth investigating? I've tried reading about it briefly, and have done some forum searches, and it seems some people have benefited and other people have had nightmare experiences. Do you normally have to be affiliated with other networks to benefit from using it, and for those who have tried it, have you seen an increase in profits?

[netmeg]

Increase in profits? No. But if you have a large enough property (or a large quantity of properties), or you're using multiple ad networks, and/or selling direct ads - it can help a lot with organization and management.

Granted I haven't messed with it in a while (and it's on my todo list to get back to it) but I didn't think it was particularly well set up for AdSense (remember, it's a product they bought and made some changes to; it wasn't designed to integrate with AdSense from the getgo)

It's not going to make you more money. But, for example, it allowed me to create my ads by uploading a spreadsheet - that was a HUGE help. I dunno why AdSense doesn't do that now.

There's someone here knows a lot more about that I do (dastarbug?) but ultimately, it's a management tool and not a profit-increasing tool.

[Leonard0]

If you have other ad networks, a major advantage is that DFP will allow Adsense to compete against those ads and select the maximum CPM.

One drawback to DFP is that it is not asynchronous - though it's rumoured to be in limited testing.

Also I think that it takes two consecutive server calls to load a non-Adsense ad: one to get the DFP code and one for the ad code.
If you have a lot of non-Adsense ads it may be faster to use an ad manager that resides on your server to insert ad codes into your HTML.

[zarathustra2011]

Cheers netmeg and Leonard0 - really appreciate you summarising your thoughts and experiences about this. The only other competitor I've tried in the past was chikita, but I didn't get on very well with it.
Sounds like for me, it's not something I need at present, but if things continue to pick up, I'll certainly be investigating further.

[ember]

Actually, I think it is supposed to help increase revenue by letting two different ad networks compete for the same spot and then showing the best paying ad.

[netmeg]

Yes, but he mentioned specifically that he only uses AdSense.

[ember]

True. I read and typed too quickly.

[Chrispcritters]

Anyone looking at DFP in conjunction with AdSense should be aware that moving to/from DFP, or changing some fields in DFP, causes a break in placement targeted ads. Advertisers would need to switch over to the new placements. This could actually cause a *decrease* in revenue.

There does appear to be somewhat more tag time in ad display when using DFP, which could also hurt revenue.

Both of these factors, aside from the big pain it is to setup, need to be taken into consideration.

[DaStarBuG]

Hello

Using AdSense only with DFP will not increase your earnings BUT you can use DFP to optimize your AdSense placements with split tests.

Regarding "causes a break in placement targeted ads" that is not always true. You can assign your adsense channels in DFP as well or implement AdSense as Line Items, both methods will preserve your current placements and your placement targeting.

I wrote a Tutorial blog about DFP if you don't know how

[ember]

I have to vouch for DaStarBug's tutorial. At first glance, dfp can seem daunting, but his step by step instructions made implementing it a lot easier.