In latter half of 2017 AdSense rolled out what they call “Auto Ads”.
IMPORTANT UPDATE FEB. 22/18
I believe it’s still in beta. I’m not sure it’s available for every AdSense account, but it’s definitely a product AdSense likes to promote inside AdSense accounts.
AdSense Auto Ads was released to all accounts on February 20, 2018. If you have an AdSense account, it’s now available to you.
I’m still using the in-article auto-placement via Auto Ads and really like it. I’m not getting rich from it, but it puts money in my pocket every day and they are actually decent looking ads in the middle of content.
I’ve turned Auto Ads off on my highest traffic niche site late this afternoon, Feb. 22/18.
Why?
Because Ezoic sent me some alarming information about using Auto Ads with additional ad networks.
I’ll be monitoring revenue changes after turning them off and in the event revenue takes a worst hit than I expect, I’ll make some adjustments with other ads and go from there.
– END UPDATE –
What is AdSense Auto Ads?
AdSense Auto Ads is letting AdSense split test ad placements on your site. You add a snippet of code to your site and AdSense injects different ad formats (you can pick and choose which formats get tested) in different placements across desktop, tablet and mobile devices.
Am I using AdSense Auto Ads?
Yes, I am but in a limited way.
Here’s how I use AdSense Auto Ads. I still manually place best-performing ads via Ad Inserter plugin and Advanced Ads plugins, and then use Auto Ads to inject AdSense in-article ads. I also have the mobile anchor unit and Vignettes turned on.
My main reason for using this is for automatic placement of the AdSense in-article native ads. I actually really like those ads. They span full width of content and look well. They also get clicked and earn well.
Do the AdSense Auto Ads Earn a Lot of Money?
I earn 10 to 15% more ad revenue by using auto ads. BUT please keep in mind that I use it in a limited way. That 10 to 15% bump in revenue is because in-article ads are added to my content that otherwise wouldn’t be there.
Also, the revenue fluctuates quite a bit day to day which is interesting.
How long have I been using this AdSense split-testing option?
2 weeks.
Why do I use Auto-Ads when I could just insert in-article ads myself?
Because it’s a lot easier. I don’t think me testing manually placing in-article ads is going to make a big difference. I might as well let AdSense do it.
Why don’t I let Auto Ads handle all ad placements?
I’ve done enough testing to know where the three best earning locations are for my sites. There’s no reason to let AdSense figure it out.
I may, however, when I get to it, use Auto Ads entirely for my newer niche site. Since it’s in a totally different niche, it may well be worth testing different placements.
How do you activate or turn on Auto Ads?
I’m not sure every AdSense account has this right now. It’s still in beta. If you have it, you’ll see the following:
Once you click into the Auto Ads, you’ll be directed on how to set it up (it’s extremely easy and takes only 1 minute tops).
Great reporting and analytics
The Auto Ads has its own reporting screen which offers a good deal of data for all units.
The main reporting breaks down earnings, clicks, CPC, CTR by every type of ad unit you have running via Auto Ads.
Which unit performs best for me?
The in-article units perform best.
What’s interesting is also have regular AdSense ad units turned on to be injected into the content, but the in-article units perform way better in-content. That said, I do have the regular units placed in my premium locations (i.e. above the fold), which do outperform in-article units.
My point is is whether you use Auto Ads or not, I think it’s worth injecting some in-article native AdSense units in your content. They may very well earn you more than regular ad units placed in the middle of your content.
Does it slow down my web pages?
Not that I can tell. However, sometimes the in-article units don’t show up as quickly as I’d like. In other words, there’s a large gap where the ad should appear. It usually does appear, but sometimes it doesn’t.
Do these placements mess up content formatting?
Once in a while I see an in-article unit that isn’t in the best place, but it’s not terrible because the in-article unit is not a bad looking ad. By “not the best place” I’m referring to a section of content I have split into columns and the the ad displays in one column which doesn’t make the columns symmetric vertically anymore (i.e. one column is pushed down a bit further than the other column).
Will I continue running Auto Ads?
Yes. I like the in-article units as well as the money they earn. I don’t think they’re annoying; in fact the blend well so I have no problem continue using this AdSense service for now.
Should you try this?
Yes, why not. It takes about a minute to ad to your site and you have control which types of ads are placed on your site. At the very least try the in-article units and mobile offerings. You can keep your current placements if you’re happy with them. If you’re not happy with current placements and want to do full scale testing, let Auto Ads test everything.
Jon Dykstra is a six figure niche site creator with 10+ years of experience. His willingness to openly share his wins and losses in the email newsletter he publishes has made him a go-to source of guidance and motivation for many. His popular “Niche site profits” course has helped thousands follow his footsteps in creating simple niche sites that earn big.
Interesting! Didn’t know about this opiton. Would love for you to check into Mediavine. Just switched to them after being with Ezoic for awhile. Only had them in place for a couple of days, but they load really fast, work with AMP pages, and the payout so far has been good. Curious to hear how it compares to other ad networks you’ve tried.
Thanks for the heads up. I just switched this feature on for one of my blogs. It seems to be putting quite a few ads per page – more than I would have, that’s for sure. It would be interesting to see the effect both on revenue and traffic too. I hope visitors don’t find it too off-putting. At least I know Google won’t penalize for these ads directly. Though of course, user behavior matters to Google too.
After a few weeks now, I just run the in-article native ads via auto ads. I really like those ads. They don’t look so intrusive. Yes, AdSense does seem to inject quite a few and there is no setting to lessen the number shown. I’m fine with the number shown, but I could see how some publishers wouldn’t want so many.
Hello
Such a great and informative article.
Thanks for sharing
I have a question.
Should I remove all existing Ad codes from the site while enabling the Auto Ads? Or I can keep both..
(I have already 4 ad slots)
I run both Auto ads and regular ads. When I do both, I only select in-article ad units in the Auto ads.
I’m loving it so far. They’ve been putting these “matched content” units that pull other pages from my site and link to them and also have like 3 ads. So basically automatic post recommendation and native ads. Its pretty sweet.
I’m impressed too JT. I really like the in-article units. They look good. The photos look good. The button for the click looks good. I’m not using Matched units currently, but have on and off over the years. All-in-all, I think there’s some merit in AdSense Auto ads for many publishers using AdSense.
thanks for the advance experiments about this adsense auto ads.
You’re welcome.
I’ve been using it for about a week. Since it’s still in beta, I had to put the inline ads. Another downside is it often appear randomly and breaks the whole page structure which is not nice. However, I’m quite hopeful about this.
Nice and detailed article.
I have also enabled Auto Ads. I like it and for the auto placement of ads in regions where I did not cover manually.
However, the downside is that sometimes, ads appear where it should not be…interfering with the website layout. Example. I won’t prefer ads to appear in the header bar, but it appears sometime. Other than that, all okay.
I have been running Auto-Ads for almost a month on several of my sites, and although I am quite happy with the placement and content of the ads (ie: not too many and not always the same old ads I used to see), the click-through and revenue have really dropped.
It did take almost a week for ads to start coming through on the sites, even though I have had Adsense ads on them for over 5 years.
I am hoping that allowing Adsense to determine which ads and where to place them, rather than my trying to place them myself, that this will start to pay off fairly soon. So far, on two sites, I haven’t had a single click-through on any of the Auto-Ads, which is a bit worrying.
Meanwhile, I am trying to create more new content and optimising the SEO to see if this has any effect on the ads that are placed and the click-through rate.
Really, I like this detailed guide. But I still wonder, does Auto Ad have the ability to inject the Ad unites inside the articles?
Hey Farooq,
Yes, auto ads injects AdSense units into your content.
This is interesting I will try it tonight on my blog, will keep my main ad positions and let the auto ads try other locations.
Hi,
Just enabled auto ads, now see what happens. Thanks for the report.
Cheers!
Yes I have implemented Auto Ads on one of my blog. but No effective results. Mobile loading time was also increased drastically.
Thanks for the article! I have activeated Auto Ads as well, seems to work fine on mobiles and tables, but not on my Windows 10 desktop. On desktops no ads are shown. I just can’t figure out how to solve this issue, if someone can point me in the right direction to solve this problen i would appreciate it very much.
I am also facing problem at http://www.bloggerbrew.com with adsense auto ads.
sometimes ads appearing sometimes not.
When the Adsense team resolve this God knows.
hey jon, that guide is awesome and I’ve learned a lot from your post. Thanks for sharing such a nice article specially for AdSense newbies.
Can we see your niche site?
Sorry, no. I have enough competition.
I reviewed auto-ads in April, and now I have had it running on 3 of my sites for a few months, I have a better idea of what it’s doing.
Meantime, my Adsense revenue has dropped significantly, but I’m not sure if that is due entirely to using auto-ads or to other changes that I have made to my site.
Allowing auto-ads to place ads where it wants doesn’t always work as I would like. If I have several paragraphs alongside an image, it will sometimes insert an ad after the second paragraph, which leaves a whitespace along the lower part of the image, and the remaining paragraphs then follow the ad, which is annoying. It would be nice if I could easily mark a section of a post like that to not be split with ads.
No ads ever seem to appear in the sidebar, which on my sites would be ideal for narrow column ads. No matter what I do, I haven’t figured this out yet.
Some ads are repeated multiple times on a page as well, which is frustrating.
If I get time, I might try and see if I can create ad placements using shortcodes, which would be better, but it’s rather tedious to setup, especially if you want to go back over older posts as well as doing this moving forward.
Maybe there is a way to better controlling the auto placement of the ads which I haven’t managed to figure out yet.
I activated auto ads and have had it running for a few weeks. They have totally screwed up my formatting completely. Inserting ads that split a pricing table, ads that kick an image block out and smush my text block. It is horrible and I don’t know how to fix it! I have a lot of pages and to go back in an re-institute page level ads would be a nightmare. I have tried reformatting over and over to no effect. Any one else have this issue? Ocean WP theme with elementor builder.
Hey Patricia,
I know what you’re talking about. Didn’t your formatting correct itself when you turned off auto ads?
Sometimes it’s irritating to use autoads on our blog because sometimes it loads completely and sometimes it doesn’t at all. But i also use this because I don’t have to put ads manually.