Trues and Falses in Optimizing AdSense

Couple of days ago Google AdSense offered its first online course for the Publishers. And I've been too. The course will be opened on 20th May, 2014. Register now for the course and take a Pre-Course Assessment to justify your AdSense knowledge! 

Course Outline

• Pre-Course Assessment
  
  
• Introduction
  
  
• Unit 1 - CPM and CPC: Winning Valuable Ads
  
  
• Unit 2 - Clicks and CTR: Designing and Placing Your Ads
  
  
• Unit 3 - Impressions: Showing More Ads
  
  
• Wrapping Up
  
  
• Final Assessment 

Just after getting the invitation for the course, I took the Pre-Course Assessment Test. There are 15 questions. You just need to choose one of the options - True, False and I don't know. 

I scored 12 out of 15. This assessment will help you understand what you already know about AdSense and what you still have to learn. Have a look at the questions (modified) of Pre-Course Assessment - 

1. Enabling both text and image ads increases the auction pressure for your website’s Ad and is very likely to increase your AdSense Earning. (True)
2. Every page should have a 728x90 banner ad on it because this is the highest performing Ad Size. (False)
3. Blocking Ad categories in AdSense account will not affect your revenue because the auction will just replace Ads from that category with ads from other categories. (False)
4. You can put the same Ad unit into multiple custom channels. (True)
5. AdSense Experiments can be used to test and compare the performance of different sizes or styles of your Ad units. (True)
6. CPC and CTR are different acronyms for the same thing. Both of them measure how often users click on Ads. (False)
7. The only way to be sure that you’ve put Ads in the right places on your site is to test frequently and understand the behavior of your users. (True)
8. The best way to format text Ads is to blend/ mix with your content as much as possible. (False)
9. If your page calls for an Ad to be served but no Ad is returned, this will be considered as an Ad request, a page view, and an impression. (False)
10. In the AdSense auction, if Advertiser Sami bids $2.40 CPC, Advertiser Raj bids $2.10 CPC, and Advertiser Chris bids $2.15 CPC, Advertiser Sami wins and pays $2.40 for the impression. (False)
11. With contextual targeting, the Google web crawler analyzes colors, images and videos to match ads to your content. (False)
12. The number of AdSense Ads you can place on a desktop site is the same as you can place on a mobile site. (True)
13. Page speed is important to Ad revenue because users are more likely to stay on your page and return again if the site loads faster. (True)
14. If the AdSense crawler can't crawl a web page, the Ads displayed to that page may not be relevant to the page content. (True)
15. A rejected Ad request occurs when site's content does not comply with AdSense policies. (False)

Explanation of the False Ideas/ Concepts/ Notions

Idea # 2

728 x 90 Banner Ads perform well. But it doesn't mean that your page must have it. It  depends on your site's style and type. 

Idea # 3

Blocking non performing Ad categories may increase your revenue if done properly. But personally, I don't believe it - Learn more . . .

Idea # 6

CPC - Cost Per Click is the amount you earn each time when a user clicks on your Ad. CPC is determined by the Advertiser. 

CTR - Click Through Rate is the number of clicks against pageviews. If you get 2 clicks against 10 pageviews, then your CTR is 20%.

Idea # 8

Blending Ad Units in such a way that users can't differentiate between Ads and Contents may be harmful for your AdSense account. Even you could be banned from AdSense program!

Idea # 9

If your page calls for an Ad to be served but no Ad is returned it will considered as rejected Ad request. 

Idea # 10

The Advertiser with the lowest CPC will win the bid. Advertiser Raj bids $2.10 CPC. So he will win the bid not Raj. 

Idea # 11

Contextual targeting analyzes your keywords, topics, text, language, link structure, page structure etc. It considers the central theme of your site rather than a single topic. To be honest, I don't know much about contextual targeting.  

Idea # 15

A rejected Ad request occurs when your page calls for an Ad to be served but no Ad is returned. But if your site doesn't comply with the AdSense policies, simply you will be banned from AdSense! 

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