Have you noticed the new look of text ads on your mobile site? We’ve given them a makeover.

This new format allows for higher performance with a more beautiful and user-friendly appearance. The text ads feature elements such as a shaded background and a centered button which bring together the parts of the ad into a cohesive whole. The look and feel is inspired by material design, like the richer text ads that we launched earlier this year.

To see these new mobile text ads, choose to show both text and display ads on your site, if you haven’t already done so.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this new mobile ad design. Share your comments below and let us know!

Posted by Clyde Li

AdSense Software Engineer

We live in an exciting time, where the number and variety of connected devices are growing at a rapid pace. People are coming online for the first time, and they’re accessing the Web through a mobile device.

Having a solid multi-screen strategy will help you prepare for the next wave of mobile web users. By following the simple steps below, we can help set you up for success on mobile web and answer questions like: How will my users react?, how do I keep my brand identity?, and what will happen to my earnings?

1. Test your site 
Start by understanding how your site currently runs on mobile devices. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to see how your site is performing on mobile and identify your site’s most crucial needs and what to take care of first.

2. Pick your strategy
Next, it’s time to make a choice on which multi-screen strategy to move forward with. The most common solutions are:

• Separate mobile/tablet site
• Responsive web design
• Dynamic serving

The choice is yours and all strategies have both pros and cons. When making the decision, you should consider the following:

• Do I want to serve the same content to all platforms? If so, a responsive design should do the trick.

• What’s more important; speed or flexibility? A separate mobile site or dynamic serving allows for better optimization.

• Do I have the resources to maintain more than one site? Responsive design can help you save valuable time and resources.

• What kind of technical capabilities do I have? Pick a strategy that best suits your skill set.

3. Follow best practices
We’ve finally made it to the fun part – building the site. No matter what solution you choose, every multi-screen developer should follow these general rules of thumb.

• Focus on the main action that you want the user to take: While you had plenty of space on desktop, you’ll have to be resourceful on mobile.

• Make your navigation easy to understand: Users want quick access to key actions, so make things easy to find.

• Use existing design paradigms: Do you already have a brand identity on your desktop site? Reuse the same design elements when possible. Try adapting to the user’s device, for example using Material Design for Android: users like familiarity.

• Make sure videos work: Design your look and feel and page animations using modern web technologies. Read more about Look and Feel for video in our Web Fundamentals guide.

• Limit image-based text: Make use of web fonts when possible. Mobile means lower bandwidth.

• Simplify payment processes: Auto-populate shipping addresses and contact details. Use existing payment solutions such as Google Wallet.

4. Avoid common mistakes
Learn from other developers by checking out some of the most common mistakes on mobile sites. This can save you time as you plan and launch your multi-screen strategy.

We hope these guidelines are useful when thinking about your multi-screen strategy. Let us know if you have any other tips that have worked well for you in the comments below.

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Posted by Felix Nermark

Marketing Communication Specialist

74% of people say that when a site is mobile-friendly, they're more likely to return to that site in the future, according to a Think With Google study.

If that's not enough to encourage you to build up your mobile audience, consider this: 52% of users in the same study said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company.

Designing a mobile-friendly site is important, and so is creating the best mobile user experience. That includes ads: if you want to make the most of every opportunity to earn, your ads should be designed for mobile, too.

Download The AdSense Guide to Mobile Web Success to learn practical ways to engage and delight your mobile audience. Get tips on how to:

• Potentially boost mobile ad revenue with the best ad placements
• Choose the right mobile ad formats for your site
• Send push notifications to your audience just like an installed native app
• Help your audience jump back into your content with just a single tap

What’s your favorite way to engage your mobile audience?  We’d love to hear from you in the comments or on Twitter.

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Posted by Jay Castro

Audience Development Specialist
@jayciro

We’ve recently updated the AdSense app with a fresh new look using material design and added some new features. Based on your feedback, we’ve added the following functionality to make it even better:

• New metrics: View impressions, impression RPM, and CTR of your ads.
• Support for Hindi and Malay: Use your AdSense app in Malay and Hindi, which have recently joined the AdSense family, as well as in 31 other languages.
• New reports for Android: Check the performance of different ad sizes, ad types, ad networks, targeting, bid types, and custom date ranges.
• Today widget for iOS: Check your earnings even quicker on your iPhone in the Today view.

If you haven’t tried the AdSense app yet, download the iOS or Android version today and start checking your AdSense account on the go. Let us know what you think about the new design and what new features you’d like to see in the future.

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Posted by Daniel Kenyon-Jones

AdSense Product Manager

"Mobile to overtake fixed Internet access by 2014"* was a memorable headline a few years ago. We're passing the mobile tipping point and seeing a 70% year over year increase from AdSense impressions on mobile devices. This is just one reason why it’s more important now than ever before for your website to be multi-screen friendly. Here are a few more reasons why you should take an action now.

1. Mobile Google Search algorithm has been changed 

Recently, we announced that Google Search uses a website’s multi-screen friendliness as a ranking signal. This means that websites that are mobile friendly are now easier to find than those that aren’t, for users searching on their mobile devices.  If your website is not mobile friendly, this change will affect its discoverability, which may impact your traffic and AdSense long-term revenue.

2. More publishers are seeing success from going multi-screen

Shifting your website strategy to multi-screen takes time. The good news is that more publishers are starting to see a positive impact including: increased traffic, longer user engagement, and higher AdSense performance. Check out these stories from publishers who have successfully shifted to multi-screen: digiSchool, Famous Birthdays, ThriftyFun.com, and more.

3. More resources are available to ease your policy concerns 

Policy concerns, such as ensuring proper ad placement on a small screen, might be one of the reasons stopping you from going multi-screen, so we’ve created some new resources for you. Check out our Policy FAQs for mobile optimized (multi-screen) websites to help you understand what you should consider when placing ads on your mobile site.

4. Additional resources are available to help you go multi-screen

Do you lack the time or the expertise needed to build your multi-screen friendly website? We’ve identified some vendors** who can help you transition to a multi-screen friendly site easily. You can search these vendors by location, type of website, and services provided.

New vendors added in the past 6 months:

Keep your mobile strategy going with our Multi-Screen Guidelines. This guide will give you everything you need to know about multi-screen strategy from the basics to beyond. If you’re starting out, the Starter Guide will walk you through how to build a multi-screen friendly website. If you’ve already got a multi-screen friendly website, the Implementation Guide can give you more tips around monetization, user experience and SEO.

*Mary Meeker, 2012 KPCB Internet Trends Year-End Update
**Note that recommended vendors are independent companies and not affiliated with Google in any way. Google assumes no liability for any vendor's actions.

Posted by Maiko Fujita - Multi-Screen Strategist
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Recently, we announced that Google Search will be using mobile-friendliness as a search ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in Google Search results. Make sure your website is ready for this search change. Here are some frequently asked questions that can help you.

How can I check if my site is mobile-friendly? 

You can check your site by testing your pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test tool. This tool shows how Google Search sees your pages. To get a list of mobile usability issues across your sites, log in to your Webmaster Tools account and use the Mobile Usability Report.

How can I make my site mobile-friendly?

Get started with the guide to mobile-friendly sites to build your mobile-friendly site. If you need more customized advice for publishers, you can check out the AdSense Multi-Screen Starter Guide.  

My website is already mobile-friendly. Do I need to take any action?

If you already have a mobile-friendly site:

• Double-check your site’s pages using the Mobile-Friendly Test tool and see how Google Search sees your pages.
• Check out the AdSense Multi-screen Implementation Guide to learn about growing audience and revenue from your site.
• Use the Mobile Search Engine Optimization guide to help your site show up in search results.

Go mobile today to provide your visitors a good user experience and to make most of your mobile traffic.

Posted by Inside AdSense Team
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(Originally posted on the Webmaster Central Blog)

As more people use mobile devices to access the Internet, Google Search has adapted its algorithms to help users find mobile-friendly web pages and apps. Recently, Google Search has made it even easier for users to discover multi-screen content with two important changes:

1. More mobile-friendly websites in search results

Starting April 21, Google Search will be expanding its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in Google Search results. Users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results optimized for their devices.

To make sure your website is ready for this change, check out the guide to mobile-friendly sites and start building your multi-screen website today. You can test out how your site is performing with the following tools:

• To test a few pages of your site, you can use the Mobile-Friendly Test.
• To get a full list of mobile usability issues across your sites, log in to your Webmaster Tools account and use the Mobile Usability Report.

If you already have a multi-screen website, check out our Multi-Screen Implementation Guide to optimize your website for the best user experience and monetization. You can use the Mobile Search Engine Optimization guide to help your site show up in search results.

2. More relevant app content in search results

Recently, Google Search began to use information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking search results displayed to signed-in users who have the app installed. As a result, Google Search may now show content from indexed apps more prominently in search. If you have a mobile app, learn more about App Indexing, and allow Google Search to show this information in search results.

Posted by Inside AdSense Team

(Original post by Takaki Makino, Chaesang Jung, and Doantam Phan)

Welcome to the last part of our Valentine’s Day blog series. Today, we’ll explore what eight of the most loved romantic movies of the last few years can teach us about content strategy.

Romantic movies are always a popular choice for Valentine's Day. In the spirit of this special day, we watched some classic romantic movies (for research, of course) to see what they can teach us about content strategy.

Here’s the top tips we found:

1. P.S. I Love You - Have a single common goal

Gerry and his series of letters were designed to encourage Holly to move forward to a new life. Similarly, when you’re creating a series of content pieces, ensure that they have a single common goal or call to action such as email sign-up. All pieces of content should link together and guide your visitors toward a desired goal or call to action.

2. 10 Things I Hate About You - Use list-based articles

This one comes directly from the title of the movie. List-based articles (listicles) provide a great way to deliver your message in a structured and engaging way. Keep them short and easy to read to grab the attention of your visitors.

3. When Harry Met Sally… - Make your content memorable 

When you ask someone what they remember about this movie, it’s highly likely that they will respond with one of several key scenes. Why? Because the film masterfully creates scenes that are both embarrassing and hilarious, making them very easy to recall. When you’re creating your content, ask yourself “Does this content have at least one memorable moment? Is there something that will stick with the my visitor?"

4. Love Actually - Link content pieces to each other

Love Actually tells nine intertwined stories with a common emotion, “love”. Consider all of the content on your site pages in a similar way. Each piece of your content may target one particular theme or audience but in the end, they should serve the same purpose.

5. You’ve Got Mail - Use email marketing

When you’re selecting your distribution channels for your content, make sure to use email. It can be an effective, easy, and inexpensive way to keep your visitors up to date. It also offers a great way to reach your mobile audience.

6. The Princess Bride - Know your audience

For a particular audience, the Princess Bride is the most romantic movie of all time. For others, it doesn’t even rate. This is because the film resonates with a certain audience. In the same way, if you know your audience, you can craft successful content. Get to know your audience more by using experimentation, market research, and other tools.

7. Pretty Woman - Bring unique value to your content

Pretty Woman is a modern retelling of the classic Cinderella story. Similarly, the subject of your content doesn’t have to be a completely original thought or subject matter. Your visitors want to see your personal opinion or a unique value in your content. Start by asking yourself “What is the unique value I’m adding to the subject matter?” or “What am I providing that no one else is providing?”

8. Forrest Gump - Provide a good user experience

To refer to Tom Hanks’ iconic line in Forrest Gump in a modern content strategy way: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what screen you’re gonna get.” Thanks to the rapid growth of mobile traffic, your content is now viewed on multiple devices. If your site is still not multi-screen optimized, check out our Multi-Screen Starter Guide, and if you already have a multi-screen website, ensure you’re giving your audience the best visitor experience by using the Multi-Screen Implementation Guide.

To wrap up, try thinking about these eight tips and how they can be applied to your content strategy. Are you giving your content the love it deserves? Much like Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca will “always have Paris” together, remember that you and your visitors will always have your content, if you get your strategy right. 

Posted by Chris Jones, Audience Development Specialist
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Welcome to the second part of our Valentine’s Day blog series. Today, we’ll take a closer look how to best reach your audience across devices.

This Valentine's Day, many consumers will be shopping for gifts on their mobile devices. In fact, just last year, mobile drove 36.8% of all online traffic during Valentine’s Day, up 13 percentage points compared to the same period in 2013.*

Adopting a multi-screen strategy allows you to offer your site visitors the best experience across devices. It can also help you capture more revenue and drive more traffic to your site. Check out the video below to learn more about how going multi-screen has helped other AdSense publishers grow their business online:

To make the most of your multi-screen traffic, go mobile today. If you’d like some tips on how to build or optimize your multi-screen website, check out our multi-screen guidelines which cover the following topics:

Multi-Screen Starter Guide

• Why go multi-screen?
• Multi-screen success stories
• What are the common approaches? 
• How to build a multi-screen site
• Getting technical support from a multi-screen vendor

Multi-Screen Implementation Guide

• Monetization tips
• Mobile user experience tips
• Mobile search engine optimization tips

Your visitors love it when they have a great site experience. Show your love and appreciation by going multi-screen today.

Posted by Yigit Yucel - Inside AdSense Team
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* IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, February 2014

(Originally posted on the Google Webmaster Central Blog)

Have you ever tapped on a Google Search result on your mobile phone, only to find yourself looking at a page where the text was too small, the links were tiny, and you had to scroll sideways to see all the content? This usually happens when the website has not been optimized to be viewed on a mobile phone.

This can be a frustrating experience for our mobile searchers. Starting today, to make it easier for people to find the information that they’re looking for, we’re adding a “mobile-friendly” label to our mobile search results.

This change will be rolling out globally over the next few weeks. A page is eligible for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot:

• Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
• Uses text that is readable without zooming
• Sizes content to the screen so users don't have to scroll horizontally or zoom
• Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped

If you want to make sure that your page meets the mobile-friendly criteria:

• Check your pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test 
• Read our updated documentation on our Webmasters Mobile Guide on how to create and improve your mobile site
• See the Mobile usability report in Google Webmaster Tools, which highlights major mobile usability issues across your entire site, not just one page
• Check our how-to guide for third-party software like WordPress or Joomla, in order to migrate your website hosted on a CMS (Content Management System) to use a mobile-friendly template

The tools and documentation above are currently available in English. They will be available in additional languages within the next few weeks.

We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.

If you have any questions or want to help others make mobile-friendly sites, visit our Webmaster Help Forum. We hope to see many more mobile-friendly websites in the future. Let’s make the web better for all users!

Posted by Ryoichi Imaizumi and Doantam Phan, Google Mobile Search

For AdSense publishers: Don’t forget to check our Multi-Screen Starter Guide to start building your mobile-friendly website today.

Did you know you can hire a third-party vendor to help you build a multi-screen site? Our certified vendor partners are helping AdSense publishers like you create and optimize mobile sites, giving users a better experience regardless of the device they’re using.

If you don’t have the time or expertise to build a mobile site, working with one of our certified vendors can be an easy way to ensure that your users have a great mobile experience. These vendors offer a broad range of services for building a mobile site, ranging from simple to highly customizable solutions.

Regardless of the complexity of your site and the resources available to you in-house, there's a vendor to suit your needs. You’ll find more information about certified vendors in the Multi-screen guidelines section of our Help Center.

Posted by Wibe van de Vijver - Inside AdSense Team
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We recently opened a new category called Going Multi-Screen in the AdSense Help Forum* where you can post questions and share your experiences about multi-screen optimization. In today’s post, we will summarize the top five FAQs received to date. We hope you find these helpful.

1. Optimizing websites for multiple screens requires resources and commitment. Is it worth my time and investment?
   Yes, going multi-screen is worth your time and investment, although it’s not always something you can accomplish in a day. Our research shows benefits to both monetization and user experience. On average, publishers with mobile-optimized sites can have 8% higher RPM and their site traffic grows twice as fast as non-optimized publishers.** Having a mobile-optimized site can also help you to improve time spent on site and bounce rate.
   
   Furthermore, since global advertiser spending on mobile ads is expected to increase by 52% in 2015, you could benefit even more from this trend.***
   
   As Evan Britton, the founder of FamousBirthdays.com, said: “The important thing to realize is that growth in the mobile market is all about offering a better experience… the potential in the mobile space to grow ad revenue is huge.” (find more publisher stories)
2. I’m planning to create a responsive website. How are responsive ad units performing? 
   
   We’ve found that responsive ad units generally perform better than normal ad units as they work in line with responsive layouts. This helps to improve the experience for your mobile users. We recommend using the smart sizing mode if you’re just starting out, but there‘s also an advanced mode if you're looking to customize ad sizes on a more granular level. You can find code samples for the advanced mode in the Help Center.
3. What are the best practices for mobile site ad placement?
   
   The best ad placement will depend on your own site content and structure, but you can see our recommended placements for mobile sites below. We recommend that publishers use the large mobile banner (320x100) and medium rectangle (300 x250) sizes, which are high performing and fit nicely on your mobile screen.
4. What's the maximum number of ads allowed on mobile pages?
   
   You can place up to three content ad units per page on your mobile sites. This is the same number of ad units allowed on desktop sites. For smaller screens, carefully consider the balance of content and ads so that users can find the information they’re looking for. Please avoid showing only ads on your first screen.
5. How can I improve the user experience on my mobile site?
   To check your mobile user experience, try the PageSpeed Insights tool and read the suggestions in the user experience section. For more detailed and technical approaches, we recommend you go through the Web Fundamentals resource on the Google Developers site. You’ll learn more about how to deliver your content as quickly as possible, optimize images and videos, and improve the mobile experience for users. If you’d like to see some examples of good mobile site design, check out the white paper, Principles of Mobile Site Design.

Still have questions? Visit the forum and start a conversation with other publishers to learn multi-screen best practices.

* Currently only available in the English, Spanish and Japanese Forums
** Source -  Google internal data, please note that results may vary
*** Source - Global Ad Spending Growth to Double This Year, July 19, 2014 (digital advertising spending includes paid media spending on ads of any format delivered to any internet-connected device, mobile Internet ad spending includes display and search.)

Posted by Maiko Fujita - Multi-Screen Specialist
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In recent years, mobile devices have brought the web to new users and introduced many new device capabilities, screen sizes, input methods, and more. To help publishers and developers navigate this new space, the Google Developers team recently built Web Fundamentals, a useful source for modern best practices aimed at web developers. We’ve also made it even easier to build multi-device experiences with the Beta release of the Web Starter Kit.

Whether you are creating a mobile site yourself or hiring a developer to create one for you, this resource will offer you useful guidelines to get started.

Web Fundamentals' guidelines are intended to be fundamental to the web platform: useful no matter which framework you choose or which browser your users run. The guidelines include a range of useful articles to help you build a site including articles focused on responsive layouts, forms, touch, and performance, just to name a few.

Inside Web Fundamentals you will find a web starter kit - a lightweight kit to help you or a developer get started with creating your mobile-optimized site. This kit is highly useful and includes helpful tools, including a visual style guide, that you can implement on your site.

Keep in mind, this content is pretty technical and is geared more towards web developers.  If you find the content to be too technical, we do offer a list of recommended vendors that can help you build a mobile-optimized site.

Keep an eye on this space moving forward. We will be updating the Web Fundamental guidelines with more content and resources in the future.

Posted by Matt Salisbury,  Multi-Screen Specialist
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This blog post was adapted from content originally posted on the The Chromium blog.

Wondering which web design approach is best for mobile? Evan Britton of FamousBirthdays.com had the same question back in 2012. He looked to Google to help develop a mobile strategy for his website, deciding on responsive web design (RWD) as the best solution for his needs.

Evan chose RWD for a host of reasons, especially as it meant the site would adjust to fit various screen sizes, giving users a positive experience regardless of what device they visited from. Additionally, he liked that RWD is low maintenance once implemented, allowing him and his team to focus on growing the site.

Before implementing RWD, FamousBirthdays.com received around 100,000 mobile visits a month. After implementing a mobile-optimized site, this number grew to over 2 million. Evan believes that “the potential in the mobile space to grow ad revenue is huge”, and attributes this twenty-fold mobile growth to better user experience after implementing RWD. Today, the site employs a team of twelve to manage their fast growth. Evan claims, “without RWD, we would not have been able to grow as quickly.”

Read the full story, and hear from other publishers who have successfully adopted a multi-screen strategy, over in our Help Center.

Elise Thygesen, AdSense Multi-screen Specialist
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Mobile empowers users to access your site at anytime and from anywhere. Is your site ready for them? Your mobile site should allow users to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for without sacrificing richness of content. While there are a lot of expert opinions about how to do this, very few are based on actual data and research. So we partnered with AnswerLab to study more than 100 mobile users as they completed conversion-focused tasks across a diverse group of sites. From this research, we developed 25 principles of mobile site design to help you develop a mobile site that both delights your users and drives engagement.

Let’s take a closer look at three findings from the research:

Primacy of site search
Study participants with a specific need, especially those visiting retail sites, turned to site search to find what they were looking for. Participants were quick to abandon sites that returned irrelevant search results or a large set of results that they were unable to narrow.

Key takeaway: Ensure site search is visible on the homepage via an open text field, returns relevant results, and is equipped with advanced features, like auto-complete and filters, to get users what they want quickly.

Mobile site misconceptions
If presented a choice, study participants would often tap on the link to visit the “full site” due to a perception that they’d be missing out on something by staying on the mobile site. Choosing the “mobile site” implied to them that they were not getting the “full” experience, when in reality, the mobile site offered most, if not all of the functionality in an easier-to-view format.

Key takeaway: If your mobile site provides the same content and functionality as your desktop site in an easier-to-use format, then there is no need to provide a link to the desktop site. If you do decide to provide users with a link to the desktop site, then use terms like “desktop site” instead of “full site” to be clear that both sites offer a complete experience.

Sites with a mix of mobile optimized and desktop pages provide a poor user experience
Unsurprisingly, it was easier for participants to navigate mobile-optimized sites on their mobile devices than desktop sites on their mobile devices. However, sites that included a mix of desktop and mobile-optimized pages were actually harder for participants to use than sites with all-desktop pages.

Key takeaway: To improve user experience, task completion and conversion rates, go all in and optimize your entire site for mobile. If launching in phases, then make sure users don’t have to traverse between desktop pages and mobile optimized pages to complete their tasks.

To review our complete findings, download the Principles of Mobile Site Design from Think Multi-Screen. Use the principles to review the effectiveness of your existing site or to guide the creation of your first mobile-optimized site.

Posted by Jenny Gove, User Experience Researcher, Google

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How does your site perform across devices? With multi-device usage growing rapidly, understanding how mobile users access and interact with your site’s pages is becoming more and more essential. You can use Google Analytics to measure mobile sites and apps interaction as well as visits from web-enabled mobile devices, including both high-end and basic phones and tablets. Check out the following tips to grow your mobile presence with insights from Analytics.

1. Use Mobile App Analytics to measure the end-to-end value of your app

Mobile is changing the way that people communicate, work and play, and much of the growing adoption and innovation is driven by mobile apps. With Mobile App Analytics, you can measure your entire user journey on your app from first discovery and download to in-app purchases and engagement, helping you make better, data-driven decisions for mobile investment. Watch this video for more details on monetizing your app with AdMob.

2. Make sure your user experience delivers across devices

Google Analytics mobile reports can be found under the Audience section on the Reporting tab. They show you statistics by location which lets you understand the current origins of mobile traffic, and make predictions about where traffic will increase. With key insights and metrics such as which devices are driving traffic to your site, bounce rates and visit duration, you can design your website to give visitors what they need on smaller smartphone screens as well as tablets and desktops.

3. Consider different strategies for multi-screen and set goals for mobile monetization

There are no rules around mobile strategies, but mobile sites need clearly defined goals in order to be successful. For example, your goals might revolve around engagement and visits. If you have location-specific content, you may want to incorporate local elements into your mobile offering. Your site goals should align with the needs of your users. Google Analytics mobile reports provide a breakdown of visitors by whether or not they visit using mobile devices. Use this information to shape your multi-screen strategy. If you’d like to place ads on a mobile site designed for users of high-end devices, use AdSense for content to create your ad units.

To help you optimize your mobile presence, we’ve created a custom Mobile Key Metrics Dashboard for you to download. Once downloaded, just select which profile you’d like to import. You can access this dashboard any time by clicking ‘Dashboards’ under the Reporting tab in your Analytics account.

Don’t forget to submit any questions you have on the topics covered in this blog post. We’ll share a video at the end of this series answering your top questions. Next week, we’ll continue our blog series, looking at how specific Analytics insights can help you grow user loyalty on your site.

Posted by Cemal Buyukgokcesu - Google Analytics Specialist

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As the holidays approach, you can expect an increase in smartphone usage, especially in activity with gaming apps. Each year around this time, millions of new mobile devices are activated and billions of apps are downloaded. A recent AdMob study* also revealed that downloading and playing gaming apps are users’ top priority when getting a new smartphone, which represents a special opportunity for developers.

A new strategy for game-app developers can help them make the most of this increase in usage. Game developer Izumi Artisan used this strategy to increase his revenue by 60%, and so today we’ll share the details on how he achieved these results. 

Step 1)  Create a strategy guide for your game and post it on your website

Game guides, strategy manuals, and walk-throughs have become commonplace for gamers looking to get the edge or just take the easy path through a tricky section of a game. As a result, numerous third party game-strategy sites have popped up, and are attracting users in mass numbers.

This represents a great opportunity for you as a game developer, as you can create your own strategy or walk-through guide and host it on your website. There are many examples of successful game guides on the Web that you can use as a model when creating your own. The guides will vary in structure and length depending on the format of the game, so we suggest browsing a few to find the most suitable format. If there are already third-party guides competing for your users’ attention, try releasing the “Official” guide to separate yourself from the rest of the pack.

Step 2)  Monetize your new website with AdSense

Creating great content and putting it on the Web is an important step for those looking to generate income online. To start earning revenue from your online content you can use AdSense to show highly relevant ads on your website. 

With AdSense, advertisers will bid against each other to show their ads next to your content. The ads that appear are highly targeted, so they’re likely to be interesting to your visitors. AdSense also offers a number of great features including customization options to control the appearance, placement and type of ads that will show up on your site, as well as the ability to restrict the subject matter of the ads. 

If you’re not already an AdSense publisher, sign up for a free AdSense account. 

Step 3)  Use house ads in AdMob to drive users to your new website

One of the most difficult pieces of building a successful website is attracting visitors. As a game developer, you have the benefit of an existing and engaged audience -- your users. By taking advantage of this built-in audience you can quickly generate demand for your new web content...you just have to point them in the right direction.

You can do this by using AdMob’s house ad feature, which lets you display your own promotions to your users at no cost. By creating a “house ad”  promotion for your new website and displaying it in an appropriate section of your game (i.e., on the home screen, or in-between game play, etc.), you can easily generate awareness for your web content while preserving a good experience for your users. The great part is, you won’t need to push a new version of your app since the house ad can be updated directly within the AdMob interface.

Sign up for an AdMob account here**. It’s free.

Be sure to make the most of the app usage increase that comes with the holiday season by trying this strategy. Have these tips worked for you?  Do you have other tips to share? Let us know in the comments!

**Update: There is a known issue for users who currently have a new AdMob account, that restricts them from signing up for AdSense. A solution is being worked on and is expected in the new year.

In the mean time, if you are currently using the new AdMob and would like to sign up for AdSense, please fill out this form and after reviewing your request we will enable AdSense on your account.

Please note: if you are an existing AdMob user and your account has not yet been migrated to the new version of AdMob, you will still be able to sign yourself up for AdSense. If you do not yet have an AdSense or AdMob account, please sign up for AdSense first, before signing up for AdMob.

Posted by Max Sack - Publisher Advocate

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*Mobile Apps Consumer Study, AdMob and Parks Associates, Oct 2013

Over the past few months, we’ve regularly talked about the growing number of users accessing publisher content via mobile devices, and the importance of creating a positive user experience across all devices. In this same spirit, we’re happy to let you know about mobile anchor ads for smartphones, a new feature we’re starting to make available that’s focused on giving users a better experience with ads on mobile devices. 

Mobile anchor ads work by allowing a 320x50 banner ad unit to be anchored to the bottom of the smartphone screen, staying there when your users scroll up or down the page. At the same time, users remain in control -- they can dismiss an ad when they find it’s not relevant or want to free up the screen space, simply by swiping the ad left or right. When this happens, the anchor ad will fade and be dismissed and no other anchor ad will display unless the user reloads or visits another page.

The mobile anchor ads experience reflects our continued focus on providing users with control. As we’ve seen from our TrueView video ads and Mute this ad feature, users prefer having choice and control when it comes to viewing ads. In addition, the prominence of mobile anchor ads will give advertisers enhanced visibility while helping improve performance for you, and also remove the need to overload your mobile pages with ads. 

We’ve started enabling this feature for a select group of publishers today, and will gradually roll it out to everyone over the coming months. 

Thanks for all of the feedback you’ve provided to date on adapting to the multi-screen environment. Please do continue to share your suggestions so we can keep improving AdSense for you. Watch this space for more news and updates in the near future!

Posted by Pasha Nahass - AdSense Product Manager

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As a part of the multi-device series, we previously looked at the importance of going multi-device as well as three different structures for building multi-screen websites. Regardless of which approach you choose there’s a monetization solution to help you optimize revenues through your digital content. 

Google AdSense is the main Google product for monetizing mobile sites, while AdMob is the Google product for monetizing mobile apps. Today we will focus on using AdSense for content, (AFC) and Custom Search Ads, (CSA) to fit your mobile solution. Both AFC mobile and CSA mobile can be implemented inside your existing AdSense account. Mobile websites that supports older, feature phones still using WAP will need to use the older solution, AdSense for mobile. However, it’s more likely that your site has been designed for iPhone, Android, or another high-end device, in which case you simply use standard AFC ad units that fit your mobile site. 

The AFC ad code you use with your desktop site is the same code used for your mobile site, the only difference is that you’ll want to choose ad sizes optimized for mobile. As you can see here, the ad-size we've selected is ‘320 x 50’ Mobile banner:

What’s even easier is that most of the same optimization tips used for desktop, also apply with mobile. We’ve found that the 320x50 and 300x250 tend to monetize best on mobile. Here we’ve listed some initial optimization tips to get you started: 

• Try different ad sizes (320x50, 300x250, 200x200, 250x250) and note that you can now also create ad units to fit your responsive site.
• Try different ad positioning 
• Change the look and feel of the ad (color, font, borders)
• Implement up to three ad units 

If your site contains a proprietary search functionality, you’ll be able to monetize with CSA mobile. However, if you use the Google search bar then this won’t be the solution for you. Some verticals that tend to be good candidates for CSA are job search, classifieds, travel, real estate, and e-commerce sites. Along with the monetization benefits, CSA ads are highly customizable so it’s very easy to modify the look and feel of these ads, to align them to your mobile site.

Next week we’ll look more at AdMob, our mobile solution for apps. In the meantime, don’t forget to keep an eye on our Google+ page to find out what’s going on as well as staying up to date with product enhancements in our Help Center. If you missed the first posts in the multi-device series, you can find them here: 1. Get your multi-device strategy off the ground, 2. What’s the best mobile solution for you?.

Posted by Federico Gomez Kodela - Mobile Specialist
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Last week we looked at how to analyze your traffic to get an understanding of which platforms your audience is using to reach you. By comparing the content that your users are accessing via desktop, mobile, and tablet, you'll gain insights into which implementation will best suit your business. In today’s post, we’ll look at the three most common ways of doing this. We’ll explore building a responsively designed site, dynamic serving solutions, and lastly, a separate mobile site.

Responsive Web Design (RWD):

A responsively built site automatically rearranges and resizes content to fit the screen of any device used to access the site. This allows you to optimize the user experience across different devices - without needing to create redirects or make unique pages that cater to each platform. For the user, this means a smooth user journey, and for a content manager, it means content only needs to be updated once. From a developer viewpoint, RWD may require rebuilding your site framework with flexible templates, grids, style sheets and JavaScript but with very rewarding results. Take a look at this case study to see how TowerGate Insurance adapted RWD to increase mobile and tablet users by over 200%.

Dynamic Serving of Content:

Another solution is to dynamically serve content. Similar to RWD, with this approach the web server detects the type of device the visitor is using and presents a custom page on the same URL. This allows for a fully customised device experience, but also means that your content will need to be maintained separately for each platform. To ensure your users have a smooth navigational experience, prioritize building dynamic content for the most popular pages that users are accessing through mobile, and similarly apply the same for tablet.

Separate Mobile Site:

The final implementation you might want to consider is creating a separate mobile site, where smartphone users will be directed to a mobile-optimized version of your site. This implementation allows you fully customise your content for a mobile audience, since it’s often an independently hosted solution. Similar to creating dynamic serving content, this means you need to make separate updates for content or styling pieces to ensure a smooth user experience. Take a look at how Adidas reached a winning formula with their dedicated mobile solution.

To read more about what we’ve discussed today or to find a list of recommended vendors that can help you to develop your mobile solution, check out this article by the Google Think Insights team. Also, join us next week when we’re going to take a look at how you can best use AdSense to monetize your mobile sites.

Posted by Federico Gomez Kodela - Mobile Specialist
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