Alternative Ads option now available!

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Alternative Ads option now available!

This is great news...

RobbieD

3:19 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

October 16 - The new Alternate Ads feature enables you to monetize your ad space in the event that Google is unable to serve targeted ads to your page. Learn more.

[google.com...]

This is great!

Jenstar

3:25 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

More on all the new changes is here:
[webmasterworld.com...]

RobbieD

3:27 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Have added our inventory as an alternative and it's working great. Almost seems like it tries harder to find relevant ads so it doesn't have to display our backup.

All in all great job Google!

RobbieD

3:30 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

No more PSA's. Yeah! I'm loving it.

cyberprosper

3:52 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

i had a problem. I loaded a normal banner code into a file, put the proper reference in the google code, and when I clicked on the resulting ad, it loaded the target page within the little google IFRAME. In other words, the user would not be taken to the new page; they would be just be shown the target page in the little iframe window. I had to use target=blank to open a new window. This is not ideal. Perhaps it is a bug, or I need to specify something else?

whats up skip

5:32 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

May be the alternative ads system is a confession that they are having real problems keeping up to date with new content. This has been a real problem on our site and may others over the last few weeks.

yoyo8

4:52 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

I only use Adsense, and have absolutely no other experience using any other ad service.

Now that this Alternate Ads option has been added, what kind of other ad service might be available for me to use on my site? Or is it pointless?

irock

5:36 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Well, no... you can run banners, right?

I run 300x250 exclusively on my site. I guess I will find a 300x250 banner ads.

mmarlor

5:42 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

I certainly wouldn't mind some suggestions myself. I'd love to have my alternate ads either the 728x90 leaderboard or the 120x600 skyscraper, as I use both format for my pages depending on what fits better.

I'm only new to the site, so I'm not really aware of whether there's any previous discussions as to similar ad sizes and content - please bear with me! :-)

I think that my ideal would be to run the alternate ads with a guarantee of banners-only (no pop-ups or pop-unders), and although I know that it's not likely to be targeted, I'd like to make sure there's a certain guarantee of quality in the ads :-)

mack

5:56 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

There is one thing that has me slightly confused in this whole issue, why would Google want Adsense partners to be able to display other ad-servers advertising. This got me to thinking, perhaps Google are using this laxing of policy to allow them to gauge the competition. The adsense system will still be the factor that triggers the other advert being displyed, so they wil be able to tell what other companies are doing well.

In effect perehaps Google are using this as an opertunity to gauge the level of the competition.

Mack.

europeforvisitors

6:16 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

There is one thing that has me slightly confused in this whole issue, why would Google want Adsense partners to be able to display other ad-servers advertising.

Most ad networks allow publishers to display other networks' ads as defaults. IMHO, Google simply recognizes that it's good business to give publishers an alternative to PSAs when ad demand for their topics is weak.

danny

6:41 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Is it possible to run alternative text ads, if we don't want to use banners? Can the "ad server" option be used to do that - and if so how do I set one up?

rincey

7:18 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

I like this Alternate Ads idea. Unfortunately I run english and german sites and at the moment there is no possibilty to create AA codes for various target languages.

I could try setting up setting my own ad server with simple geotargeting...

ams_david

12:21 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Alternate Ads is a nice feature.

PSA's currently count as an impression, but will alternate ads count as an AdSense impression, too?

Clark

6:10 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Has anyone else had trouble getting the alternate ads to work? Any solutions?

upside

6:32 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Try putting that link inside of an html file and name it something like "ad.html". Then you would put something like this in your adsense code:

google_alternate_ad_url = "http://example.com/ad.html";

Edited several times for clarity

Clark

6:48 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Thanks. In the meantime I think I got it working. Unlike their instructions, I removed the quotation marks and Like their instructions, added a / after the img src=url tag...

WebWalla

8:23 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Still not working for me - I get a "google_ad_width" is undefined error.

<edit>Working with upside's solution</edit>

<edit2>But make sure you open the link in a new window, otherwise you might find, like I did, that the URL opens in the space meant for the ads. I thought somebody had put something in my coffee :)</edit2>

Imaster

9:09 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebWalla,

If you want to avoid opening it in a new window, you can use target="_top". This will prevent the alternate ad from opening in the same frame.

Btw, did you notice that even if you put a small banner in the alternate html file, the amount of space taken up is the same as the Google code size. I guess it is due the Iframe.

e.g If I put 120*240 alternate banner behind the Google 120*600 code, it still takes up a 120*600 space when it is displaying 120*240 alternate banner.

Jenstar

9:12 am on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Yes, I think there should have been a feature to put an alternate ad for each of the four sizes of AdSense. For those who use a combination of skyscrapers, banners, and leaderboards, it makes things a little complicated, to say the least.

fatpeter

2:09 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

could anyone give me an example line of the code. Can't get clickable image to work at all!

Thanks

ubaldo

3:28 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

How about not taking the space at all? I just set up a one pixel transparent gif as the alternate.But now I'm getting a phantom skyscraper, that, the script still produces an iframe (or something) of the same skyscraper size. Anybody experiencing the same?

Am I the only one who needs this behavior? To reiterate, I'm looking to either have paying ads or no space at all taken up by google adsense.

Any help will be appreciated.

jackburton2000

6:36 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Yep, this is very good news. I was really tired of seeing those charity ads pop up all over the place. (Not that I have anything against charity ads. :)) Now, I can insert banners for my other affiliates, since I was worried about overloading each page too much.

The only bad thing? You have to manually insert all the codes again! Urggg! I have over 800 pages and it's a royal pain. Why don't they do it like Fastclick? There, all I have to do is insert the ad in the control panel, and don't have to manually re-insert new codes.

WebWalla

6:39 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

>The only bad thing? You have to manually insert all the codes again!

Not if you're using SSI.

Clark

7:22 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Turns out mine is still broken. So what is the correct way?

google_alternate_ad_url = "http://example.com/ad.html target=_top";

robho

10:11 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

Yes, I think there should have been a feature to put an alternate ad for each of the four sizes of AdSense.

But the present arrangement allows you to have an infinite number of alternate ads: to keep to the letter of the TOS just generate one (or more) copies of the ad code for each size, changing the alternate url each time (or otherwise just modify google_alternate_ad_url).

To clarify, there's no need to keep the alternate url the same for each size (or even for multiple instances of the same size, e.g. it can be varied by the domain or page where you put the adcode).

Also, if you call a script as the alternate url the referrer it sees is your page (not a google page or script), so what you then display can be varied depending on where the ad appears, such as domain or subdirectory.

matthew288

11:10 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

jackburton - Can you use global replace to update the pages? I got a freeware program called BK ReplaceEm (do a Google search for "BK ReplaceEm" to find it) about a month ago and it has been a godsend!

For the alternate ads I just specified that one line be inserted into my AdSense code and it updated about 500 pages of mine in 30 seconds. :)

mack

11:39 pm on Oct 17, 2003 (gmt 0)

"Unfortunately I run english and german sites and at the moment there is no possibilty to create AA codes for various target languages."

Use an advert server that provides geo-targeting. That way you will get revelate adverts for what ever country happens to access your page.

Mack.

jackburton2000

2:21 am on Oct 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

@matthew288,

Holy cow! I didn't know that! I've got to try that!

cyberprosper

2:29 am on Oct 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

CLARK:

You need to get rid of the target=top part

Put that part in the ad.html file you have created.

Turns out mine is still broken. So what is the correct way? google_alternate_ad_url = "http://example.com/ad.html target=_top";

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