The Internet and blog world is filled with thousands of tips and tricks to mint money from Ad sense. Most often these don’t work very well simply for the reason that people forget to apply some basic common sense to these rules and tips. Adsense being content driven advertising one has to keep in mind two important things while using it.. one that it is content driven and second and more importantly that it is advertising!

Advertisement by their inherent nature has to grab attention, and with Google Adsense the idea is to not only make the advertisement be noticed but also be relevant to what the reader is going through. Having said that, one should also realize before being a reader, the person is a visitor to your website or blog. So while having a seamlessly integrated ad with your post is effective, one should also make use of the website to use Adsense effectively.

And you can do this by breaking these three rules you were taught!

• Google Adsense blocks should be merged with the text
• Don’t allocate special sections for your Adsense Ads
• Use Sectional Targeting

“Google Adsense blocks should be merged with the text”
9 out of every 10 posts on Adsense teaches you this. It can very well be considered a crime to break this, and you pay with lesser revenue if you don’t follow. Yet I say break it.
One should understand ( and I will keep repeating this line often) that Google Adsense is Contextual Advertising. Ads are displayed based on the content and the reader in mind. There will be times when you have to slip the ad in between the post as a nicely placed link, and there will be times when you want to ad to scream itself out. Create your Google ad blocks keeping in mind the content that you are writing and the place where you are going to put the ad. Call to action ads need to be made put in an eye catching manner. Informative or resource based website ads should be more on the lines of the theme of your site. If you have to keep your Adsense block in the sidebar, more often than not it would be better to make the ads “stand out”. People will click the ad only if they see it in the first place! If merging Adsense was the best and only way out banner/image ads wouldn’t have existed. Many of you might have also read that keeping images next to adsense also improves your CTR, wondered why, doesn’t it go against the princinple of merging?
Merge your ads their relevance and use into consideration.

“Don’t allocate special sections for your Adsense Ads”
Including this “tip” as something not to be followed is very debatable. More so because this rule actually reinstates the Adsense definition of contextual advertising, if you place your ad separate it isn’t really being contextual. Nevertheless, I have seen that there are times when one can keep Google ads separate from the content. If you have a blog or a website whose content is strictly defined to your niche field, using the single line link menu of Adsense can be very effective, for they are used by visitors much like a menu of the website. Another use of Adsense away from the post is of course using the Adsense search feature, no visitor would be very happy to see a full fledged search bar in every post no matter how handy it might seem.

“Use Sectional Targeting”
Now, sectional ad targeting is one of my personal favorites, and I have used it many a times with successful results. Still, there are times when I believe you can do without them, in fact not just do without them rather completely avoid them. Such scenarios require you to assess your post and know your audience thoroughly. Sitting in India, I know that my audience are not the kind that would go and apply for Loans online, so using sectional ad targeting in a post where I explain loan consolidation would yield no money to me even though loans/mortgages are high bid keywords. Similarly, if you ad is placed on the header of your page, or on the sidebar away from the content you have written about, sectional targeting wouldn’t be half as effective as it otherwise is. This is because your reader has not got involved in the post to click on an ad that has something of his interest. By the time the interest level goes up, he must have scrolled down, and the sidebar well, wouldn’t he rather read your engrossing post than look elsewhere?

This post was to lay down a notion that Adsense is not something that can be tamed through a set of defined rules. It has to be worked upon, and analyzed effectively with reference to the context where it is being used to generate maximum returns from it. Well written ads make users click on them, your job is to make sure that this ad is presented in a manner that will suit your reader. What worked for another blogger might not be the best option for you, so know your content and know your audience very well, because all said and done Adsense is still advertising!

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