Setting Up AdSense for Mobile

Okay, the technical mumbo-jumbo is out of the way. I don’t claim that what
you’ve read so far in this topic is everything there is to know about understanding
mobile programming languages and protocols, and creating mobile
Web sites. This is an AdSense book and it doesn’t cover everything mobile.
If you want to know more about creating mobile Web sites, check out Mobile
Internet For Dummies, by John R. Levine, Michael J. O’Farrell, and Jostein
Algroy (Wiley Publishing). If you really want the whole nine yards, go for
Nirav Mehta’s Mobile Web Development. It’s technically dense, but you’ll find
everything you need to know in it.
Setting up AdSense for Mobile is a lot like setting up AdSense for Content. The
differences are all related to the mobile platform and are easy enough to navigate.
You have to tell the AdSense folks which programming language — or a
markup language (or just markup for short) — you used for your site. You also
have to tell AdSense which character encoding you used for the site.
Character encoding happens when you combine one set of characters with
some other indicator, such as numbers or integers. Morse code is probably
one of the best known sets of character encoding because it combines letters
of the Latin alphabet with dots and dashes that are used in telegraphy. The
result is that a set of dots and dashes (or depressions) can be sent with a telegraph
machine and then decoded to represent the characters they represent.
In other words, with a telegraph, you could send messages from one place to
another.
Character encoding for Web sites works basically the same way. Characters
are encoded with some numerical system. Then, the Web browser can decode
those characters to ensure that they’re displayed properly. In most cases,
UTF-8 is the most commonly used character encoding for U.S. Web sites.
I’m jumping just a little ahead of the game here. To begin creating your
mobile ads, first log in to your AdSense account. Then use these steps to
create the ad:
1. Click the Get Ads link on the AdSense Setup tab.
The Get Ads page appears.
2. On the Get Ads page, select the AdSense for Mobile Content link,

The AdSense for Mobile Content Wizard appears, ready to walk you
through the process of setting up mobile ads (see Figure 10-3).
3. In the Format section of the wizard, use the drop-down menu to select
the type of ad you want to display on your Web site.
You have two options: Single or Double. Single shows the link to one
advertiser whereas Double shows the links to two, but the ads are
stacked one on top of the other.
Mobile text ads contain 24–36 characters of text depending on the language
in which the ad is written, followed by a destination URL if advertisers
choose to enter one. Advertisers also have the option to allow
customers to directly connect to their business phones by placing a
Call link next to the destination URL. If the Call link appears, visitors
can click the link to initiate a call to the advertiser.
4. In the Markup section of the wizard, use the drop-down menu to select
the markup language used to create your mobile Web site.
Your choices are WML, XHTML, and CHTML. If you’re not sure what
these are, flip to the discussion about them earlier in this chapter in the
“Mobile requirements” section.
5. In the Character Encoding section of the wizard, use the drop-down
menu to select the character encoding for your Web site.
If you’re not sure what character encoding is used on your site, AdSense
gives you the option to Auto-Detect encoding. Make sure that option is
selected.
6. In the Colors section of the wizard, use the color palettes to choose
colors for the various elements of your ads.
As with AdSense for Content, you want your mobile ads to blend with
the pages on which they appear. Use the Color Picker (that pretty colored
box) next to each element to choose the color you want to use for
that element. Alternatively, you can also enter the six-digit hexadecimal
number in the text box provided to further customize colors if the one
you want to use isn’t available in the Color Picker. However, you should
know there are some markup languages — like WML and CHTML — that
don’t allow color customization, so your ads are displayed in the default
Google palette if you’re using one of these languages.
7. Click Continue.
You’re taken to the next page in the wizard, where you have the option
of selecting or creating specific channels to track your mobile ads.
Remember, channels are simply tracking tools that help you visualize
how ads are performing. You can add a channel to your ad, and then
when you look at your AdSense reports, you can immediately see how
one channel of ads performs over another.
8. In the new wizard page, use the drop-down menu to select a channel —
or click the Add New Channel link to add a new one — and then click
Continue.
You’re taken to the Get Code page of the wizard.
Placing mobile ads to increase earnings
Placement is one problem that you’ll likely
encounter with mobile ads. The format of a
mobile Web site is already so small, so how do
you place ads that catch the attention of mobile
surfers?
My suggestion is to place them near the top of
the page. For example, if you’re setting up your
mobile Web site so that a small logo appears
and then content and links for your page immediately
display, ads appear between the logo
and the content.
This gets the ads right in front of the mobile
Web site users as quickly as possible to ensure
they don’t navigate away from the page before
your ads are seen.
Another alternative might be to put your ads
at the top of a list of links that appear on your
mobile Web page. This integrates the ads into
the links, making them feel a little more natural
on the site. But again, they’re still above the links
so that users have the chance to actually see the
ads before they navigate away from the page.
Ultimately, the perfect placement of your ads
may take some trial-and-error. With any form
of AdSense, don’t take my word — or anyone
else’s for that matter — as gospel. Instead,
begin with my suggestions and test your ads
over a period of time to see where they earn
the most click-throughs for your site. Only thorough
testing can you really determine what
works and what doesn’t on your specific pages.
Ultimately, what works for you is all that really
matters, right?