AdSense for Feeds won’t be in beta testing too much longer. If that’s the case,
you’ll want to know how to use it once it becomes available to you. Not a
problem. I have seen the future — beta tester that I am — and it is cool!
The first thing you need to know is that AdSense for Feeds needs two subscriptions.
One is to AdSense (of course), and the other is to another Google
program — FeedBurner. At the time of this writing, those two accounts are
not the same. And unlike other Google programs, you can’t sign in to your
FeedBurner account using your Google Account information. You have to
create a separate account. (Rumor has it that this will change in the near
future, but no one can give me an exact date.)
FeedBurner is a program that lets you track how your feeds perform. With
this program, you can analyze, optimize, monetize, and publicize your
content feeds. FeedBurner also has an option for troubleshooting, called
Troubleshootize — wouldn’t want to break with the -ize theme.
Creating an account in FeedBurner is easy enough. All you have to do is
1. Point your Web browser to www.feedburner.com.
Feedburner’s home page loads on your computer screen.
2. Click the Register link in the upper-right corner of the page.
The Create an Account page appears.
3. Enter the requested information in the Create an Account page and
then click Sign In.
You’re automatically signed in to your new account where you’ll see
a bold, red message, like the one shown in Figure 11-1. This is your
prompt to create — or burn — your first feed account.
4. Enter the URL of your blog, podcast, or news feed into the text field
and then click Next.
A new page appears, giving you some information about your feed.
5. Read through the information, and then if you want, you can change
the feed title or the feed address. When you’re ready, click Activate
Feed.
The information provided on the next page gives you details for the services
that have been enabled. You’ll see mention of BrowserFriendly, a
service that approves the appearance of your feed in most browser windows
and makes it easier to subscribe to, and FeedBurner stats, a service
that tracks basic traffic statistics — like number of subscribers — for
your feed. You also get the option to add other traffic statistics services.
6. If you want to add other services, click the Next button. If not, click
the Skip Directly to Feed Management link.
Assuming you click the Next button, you’re taken to a page like the one
shown in Figure 11-2.
7. Choose the additional tracking options that you want to include and
then click Next.
Click-throughs and Item Enclosure Downloads — that’s podcast downloads
— are two of the tracking options included. You can also choose
to use FeedBurner Stats Pro, which allows you to see the number of
people who have viewed or clicked the content in your feed and shows
the popularity of individual items.
That’s it. You’re done. Now you can begin using FeedBurner to manage
your content feeds. And you can use it to include AdSense ads in your
feeds.
Enabling AdSense for Feeds
Just like AdSense ads that appear on other parts of your Web site, ads that
appear in your feeds are unobtrusive. They usually appear at the bottom of
the feed, as shown in Figure 11-3.
Enabling your ads is easy enough, just follow these steps:
1. Point your Web browser to www.feedburner.com and click the Sign
In link.
2. In the new page that appears, enter your username and password and
then click the Sign In link.
Your feed dashboard appears.
3. Click the title of the feed you want to manage and then select the
Monetize tab on the page that appears.
The screen shown in Figure 11-4 appears.
4. In the In Your Feed section of the Monetize tab, use the drop-down
menus to select how often you want ads to appear in feeds and what
length of posts they should appear in.
You can choose to have your ads appear after every post, or after every
second, third, or fourth post. You can also limit the ads that are shown
according to length. Your options are to show ads in posts of any length,
or only in posts that are longer than 50, 100, or 150 words.
5. In the On Your Web Site section of the Monetize tab, select the
Display Ads from AdSense Content check box.
6. Use the customization options of the Monetize tab to configure
your ads.
The configuration portion of the screen, as shown in Figure 11-5, looks
much like other AdSense configuration screens you’ve seen before
now. Select the desired options for the ads that will display in your
content.
Your available options include
Color: Select colors for the border, title, background, text, and URL,
or you can use a pre-designed color template from the available
drop-down menu.
Channel: Select the desired tracking channel for your ad.
Ad size: You have two options for size: 300 x 250 or 468 x 60.
Ad position: This option allows you to choose to place your ad on
the left, in the center, or on the right. Keep in mind, though, that
this is specific to the area of your feed where ads will appear — at
the bottom.
7. Choose your blog provider from the Get the HTML Code to Put Ads on
Your Site drop-down menu.
A new window, like the one shown in Figure 11-6, appears on-screen.
Leave this window open for just a bit. I show you how to paste the code
into a Blogger blog on the next page.
8. After that window appears, be sure to switch back to the configuration
window and click the Save button to save your ad configuration in
case you need to access or edit it in the future.
After loading for a few seconds, the configuration screen appears again,
but you’ll notice there’s a confirmation message near the top of the
page. You’ve created your first ad for feeds.
Of course, if you could just create the ad and be done with it, wouldn’t life
be grand? I think it would, but you’re not that lucky. After you’ve created the
ad, you still need to copy and paste the code for the ad into your Web site or
blog account. (Remember, the code is still available in another window. You
didn’t close that window, right?)
Different blogging programs do this differently. Here’s how you do it for
Blogger. (You need to have both your Blogger account and your FeedBurner
account open.)
FeedBurner actually provides specific directions for several different blogs,
including Moveable Type, WordPress, and even a generic blog — one you
might have created on your personal Web site or through your Web site hosting
company. When you use the Get the HTML Code to Put Ads on Your Site
drop-down menu to generate the HTML code for you, you get some handy
instructions on how to deal with the code after getting it.
1. Log in to your Blogger account and select the blog for which you want
to include ads for feeds.
If you’re not clear on the whole connection between AdSense and blogs,
Chapter 13 should answer all your questions. Go ahead and flip over
now. I’ll wait . . . good, you’re back.
2. Go to the Layout tab and select Edit HTML.
3. Remember that window from FeedBurner that you left open? The one
with the code in it? Switch over to it now and copy the code provided
by FeedBurner.
This code is provided when you select the blog that you’re using from
the bottom of the configuration page.
4. On the Edit HTML page of Blogger, place a check mark in the box next
to Expand Widget Templates, see Figure 11-7.
5. Read through the HTML code displayed in the Edit Template box until
you find the line that reads:
div class=’post-footer’>
6. Paste your AdSense code generated from FeedBurner (see the previous
set of steps) immediately below this line.
7. Click Save Template.
Now you should have ads enabled in your feeds.
After you’ve created a feed, you can find it listed in the Review/Approve section
of your My Account page at FeedBurner. At this time, there’s no reference
to it in AdSense, however. Even the ability to create ads for feeds is only
available through the FeedBurner Web site.
After the AdSense for Feeds program goes live, it’s likely the way ads are
tracked will change. Even the way ads are set up and installed is likely to
change some. So, before you begin creating your AdSense ad, you should
check out the help topics in FeedBurner’s Help section to read about how
the program is installed and how it works. FeedBurner’s help is much like
Google’s, so you should be able to navigate it easily.
Style notes
One thing you’ll notice as you’re creating your feed ads is that the style options
are very sparse. You’re really limited in both the size and the display that are
available for feed ads because of the nature of feeds. Most feeds are mostly
black text on a while background. That limits what you can do stylistically.
The important thing to remember as you’re creating your feed ads is that you
want people to click through them. So, keep it simple. Black titles and text
and blue links should do the job very well. Don’t try to use funky colors or
to make every colorized element of a feed ad a different color. Basic is better
when it comes to these ads because of their location.
Ads that are displayed in feeds will very obviously be ads. Remember to
eliminate the border around the ad, and blend the text of the ad with the surrounding
text. It doesn’t matter if your Web site has a black background with
lime green lettering. Feeds will appear to readers as black text on a white
background. Make your ads match so they blend in as well as possible.
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