Thursday, November 8, 2007

Simplified ad management is rolling out now

Two weeks ago, we gave you a sneak peek of what was in store for November. Now, we're happy to let you know that we've started rolling out our new ad management feature to publishers! As a reminder, this feature will save the settings of your ad units within your AdSense account. That means, each time you want to change the colors, channels, or even the corner styles for your ad units, you can make the changes directly in your account rather than generating and pasting new code. Again, we're still working on rolling this feature out to all publishers, so don't worry if you don't see it in your account yet -- it'll be there soon.

Below are a few answers to questions you might have about this new feature:

How has the process of generating new ad code changed?
On the 'Get Ads' page of the 'AdSense Setup' tab, you'll find the same code generation wizard you've used before. At the end of the wizard, you'll now be prompted to provide a name for the ad unit you've just created. We recommend using a descriptive name so that you'll remember where you pasted this ad unit. For instance, use names like "Homepage Leaderboard, example.com" or "Top 300x250, Sports pages." You can find more detailed instructions in our Help Center.

Why do I need to name my new ad units now?
With this new feature, all your new ad code will have a name and an unique ad slot ID. This will help you remember them so you can make changes to them later directly on the 'Manage Ads' page. As noted above, please be as specific as possible when naming your ad units and include information such as location, ad size, and domain.



Will the old ad code on my sites still work?
Any ad code you've generated in the past will continue to work as normal. However, please note that the old ad code will not automatically be updated to include this feature. If you'd like to apply this new feature to your old ad units, you can import the code and save the new settings.

Why don't I see anything after adding a new ad unit to my site?
If you're implementing a newly created ad unit on your site, the ad unit may not appear for up to 10 minutes while our servers are informed about the settings for the new unit. Don't feel like waiting? Simply use the Preview function on the 'Manage Ads' page to check out your updated pages immediately.

I made some changes to my ads, but nothing changed on my site. What happened?
Just as noted above, any changes to the ad unit may take up to 10 minutes to be visible. Feel free to use the Preview function to see your changes immediately.

How do I change the size of my ad units on the 'Manage Ads' page?
Unfortunately, size is one of the few things you can't change with this new feature. To change the size of your ads, you'll need to visit the 'Get Ads' page to generate a new ad unit.

How do I delete some of the ad units I created?
Right now, it isn't possible to delete ad units from within your account. This is designed to help avoid instances where an active ad units might be accidentally deleted. However, ad units that have not generated impressions for 7 days will become 'inactive' and will automatically be hidden. You can check the 'Show inactive AdSense units' box to unhide them.

One last reminder - please keep in mind that this feature only applies to ad code generated from your account at https://www.google.com/adsense. If you create your ad code through one of our partners, such as Blogger, Dada.net, or Apple iWeb, you'll continue to use the standard ad code.

Want to learn more about this feature? Feel free to check out our complete guide. You might also find our videos on generating ad code and managing your ads useful.

Finally, we'd like to hear what you think about this feature.

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