Time to switch from AdSense to Ad Manager?

[guarriman3]

Yes, I'm aware that it's and old issue, but I've browsed tens of webpages (including the official one, [support.google.com...] and I do not have an accurate answer for my questions. In this forum I've found this thread (https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4954256.htm) with a starting level, but it does not cover all my questions.

I've got a personal webpage with 1.1 million pageviews/month and showing Google AdSense for the last 15 years. It's created directly with PHP+mySQL+Notepad, without any Content Management System, by hardcoding the AdSense code.

Now I want to boost the AdSense RPM, and I've heard about 'header bidding', 'lazy loading' (to improve viewability), etc. And found (again) the option of Google Ad Manager.

Am I allowed by Google to use Ad Manager? I've just signed up, and I see that I can create Ad Units, but not sure if I am already in.

According to your experience, is it easy to 'translate' the old AdSense code into Ad Manager through hardcoding? Is it just to change the heading and the ad-slot?

As far as I've read, the AdSense network would be already within my inventory. Is it right? Is it easy to add other networks?

Is it true that 'small' publishers (1.1M pageviews/months) see an increase of the RPM with Ad Manager?

Is it easy to implement Lazy Loading? Does it work?

Thank you.

[csdude55]

Are you allowed? Yes.

All the rest of your questions...

From my experience, Google Ad Manager is extremely hard to use, with little to no documentation and no one to help. I've never seen any additional revenue from it, the whole thing has really just been a massive waste of my time.

I'm in the US, and have found that I get about a 20% improvement by using ad networks like Sulvo, Ad.plus, and I'm currently testing Ezoic. I don't know if any of these are available in your country, but there may be other ad networks that you can use.

[LucasPerez]

Although I no longer have Ad manager, it pays less than Adsense even though I have many impressions, since Ad manager pays by CPM, not by CPC, even so Ad manager does not pay well.

You usually need a partner, who collects a portion of your profits, but I managed to do things alone.

I learned how to place ads within Ad manager with this video:

[youtu.be...]

And I also learned with this series of videos:

[youtube.com...]

This is all the most useful information I could find so far, the rest teaches nothing.

[csdude55]

@LucasPerez, I've read countless times that you can use Ad Manager to force ads to compete. I've been trying to figure that out for YEARS, but have never found a way to do it. I see where I can manually plug in direct sold ads with a floor price, but not a way to make Adsense compete with, for example, Ad.plus on every page load to show whichever has the best price.

Did you ever figure that out?

[VieX]

That’s not right @LucasPerez.
AdManager pays actually nothing. What you connect to ADM is paying you.

You get on AdSense %68 of revenue.
AdX Partners are getting more and this cut of RevShare of AdX Partner does not hurt you.
You will have a professional partner at your side, if it comes to troubles with Google.

When you have a violation:
AdSense will get limitations of showing ads. Your valued account is always at risk.
With AdX Partners you will just get an info about that (detailed) anf you can solve it, while your website shows ads nonstop.

And if you only use Ad Manager for AdSense it will bring nothing extra.

[not2easy]

I read here a while ago (maybe a year or so) that AdX Partners is a Google product. People did not have good things to say about it, though for some sites it did well.

[Sal Collaziano]

@csdude55, can Sulvo be used without any Ads Manager setup? In other words, simply having an account without anything set?

[csdude55]

Yes, Sulvo just has you add this to the header:

<link rel="preload" as="script" href="https://live.demand.supply/up.js">
<script async data-cfasync="false" type="text/javascript" src="https://live.demand.supply/up.js"></script>

and then a one-line DIV where you want the ad to show. Easy peasy :-) And it's a small company (but 10 years old and with a good reputation), so whenever I have a question or concern I email David directly instead of submitting a ticket and dealing with a low-level tech that has no idea what's going on. I like that a lot.

Infolinks is great, too. That's just 4 lines in the header. Their anchor ad has made great money, the other units are just so-so.

I mentioned testing Ezoic. Their setup takes a TON more work, and my first 2 days made about half as much money than I was making before. The rep there says he's working on it, but I'm dubious that they can really beat the others.

So far, my best money has come from using Ad.plus with Adsense as a fall back, and then using Infolinks for the anchor ad. Ad.plus with Adsense took a ton of work to get set up, too, though, and it's maybe 5-10% more than I was making before. Which is good, but maybe not worth all of the work.

If you're looking for an easy setup, my recommendation would be Sulvo for banners and Infolinks for the anchor ad.

[Sal Collaziano]

@csdude55 I'd like to try Sulvo but all their emails are no-reply and there's no way to contact them through the publisher login...

I also signed up with Ad.plus but not sure what goes into that setup yet.

[Sal Collaziano]

The more I read about this, the more I’m convinced desktop and mobile sites won’t be affected by these changes - and that they’re geared toward “app inventory”.

[csdude55]

Hmm. The email I use for Sulvo is simply david(at) sulvo.com. I don't think that's privileged, when I first signed up that's the address that emailed me that my application was approved and I've used it ever since.

Ad.plus uses Google Ad Manager, so you have to plug in GAM tags. You don't HAVE to have your own GAM account, though, you just plug their tags in. They have a pretty low fill rate, though, which is why I coded mine to use Adsense as a fall back. I made a thread when the code I'm using for that, but I've changed it since then so, although it's functional, it's not the code I using now:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Sulvo has a much better fill rate, so they don't have the same problem.

The more I read about this, the more I’m convinced desktop and mobile sites won’t be affected by these changes

I'm not sure that I understand what you mean. Are you saying that you don't think Sulvo or Ad.plus will make more than Adsense on websites? That wasn't my experience, my revenue went up significantly.

I recommend to ALWAYS be testing, though, because sometimes I would make more on Adsense! So if you have the ability to A/B test on a near constant basis then you might be able to follow the money regularly, but personally, I stopped micromanaging and just accepted that I would make more at the end of the month if I just stuck with Sulvo or Ad.plus.

[edited by: not2easy at 2:12 pm (utc) on Dec 27, 2023]
[edit reason] email anonymized [/edit]

[Sal Collaziano]

@csdude55 Thank you. I’m going to invest time into Sulvo and see how it goes.

Regarding the desktop vs app statement I made in my previous message, I’m saying that I don’t think traditional Adsense is going away for desktop and mobile, but apps only. It sounds like there will be no revenue made on apps using traditional Adsense code for apps moving forward past October.

[Sal Collaziano]

I guess I'm the only one thinking this only applies to apps?

[csdude55]

Sorry for the delay, for some reason I'm not getting emails from WebmasterWorld anymore :-/

I’m saying that I don’t think traditional Adsense is going away for desktop and mobile, but apps only. It sounds like there will be no revenue made on apps using traditional Adsense code for apps moving forward past October.

I don't have an app so I'm not familiar with this, but I did a little research and didn't see anything about it. But I'm finding that AdMob is really what you would want for an app.

[support.google.com...]

[Sal Collaziano]

I guess we'll find out soon, but I don't think we're going to see any change for desktop and mobile ads - only apps. But who knows for sure...? I figured more people would chime in on this, but it's only been the two of us...

[wbntff]

@csdude55

and I'm currently testing Ezoic.

Did you find any improvement in site speed and user interface using ezoic ?
They approached me 4-5 years back. I tried for a month. Income increased by 20-25% but site was combarded by ads. Each page had 6-7 ads which sometimes overlapped content and made it look like a xxx site.
I thought user comfort is more important to retain them, so removed ezoic.
Also was not comfortable with ezoic taking control over DNS.
They tried to convince me that after 2-3 months of experiments, it will settle down to a 50-80% increase in revenue with less ads but i felt users will leave the site by then.
They are still sending me emails to re-consider them but i havent responded

[csdude55]

Did you find any improvement in site speed and user interface using ezoic ?

Site speed is a tough one to answer.

Generally speaking, pageloads have been faster. Even on pages where I explicitly don't allow caching! So that's good.

BUT! If I leave my site open in an unused tab for awhile (eg, I open another tab and leave it in the background for a few hours, or if I go to bed and leave it in the main tab), when I come back the tab is unresponsive. I can refresh the page, wait a minute for the browser to give me the option to Exit, then refresh the page and it's fine. Or, I can close the tab and start over in a new tab and it's fine. This has happened with both Chrome and Firefox. No one has complained about that, though, so it might just be me that leaves it open like that.

Income increased by 20-25% but site was combarded by ads. Each page had 6-7 ads which sometimes overlapped content and made it look like a xxx site.

When I let their system automatically do whatever, I had a similar experience but with 15-16 ads! The site was literally unusable, it was just pure trash.

But they have a better option where you can turn all of that nonsense off, create ad units the way you want them, and then manually plug in placeholders where you want ads to show. Those placeholders look like:

<div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-109"></div>

Once I did that, everything was exactly the way I wanted it. My rep hounds me to plug in more placeholders, etc, but... nah.

I haven't been using them long enough to give a fair review, I figured that I would update in a few months in a new thread. But yesterday my income was up about 50% more than my best day with Ad.plus! If that keeps up, then... yay! :-D

I've definitely confirmed, though, that I make more from Infolinks anchor ad than with Ezoic's or Ad.plus's anchor ad. I had to work with my Ezoic rep to allow the Infolinks tag since they didn't allow it by default.

Also was not comfortable with ezoic taking control over DNS.

Yeah, I definitely didn't like that, either! But what really happens is that, when you create the account, they copy your server's DNS settings to their end and you can still modify whatever you want. And, of course, you can always change your domain's nameserver anytime you want, they don't have control over that.

I understand that their AI system would need access to the page pre-load in order to plug in whatever they wanted. I'm not using that, though, so I don't REALLY see why it's necessary. But I did it and all seems OK, so I'm not losing any more sleep over it.

[LucasPerez]

In case it can help, I found from the company Wortise how to place Ad Manager ads and everything related, they have two pages in English and in Spanish, it has very good tricks, I leave the page in Spanish (since I did NOT find the tricks in English) which for Of course it can be translated.

In case someone is going to change from Adsense to AdManager.

https://wortise.com/blog/como-obtener-las-etiquetas-de-anuncios-en-ad-manager/

[edited by: not2easy at 6:48 pm (utc) on Nov 20, 2023]
[edit reason] See Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]