In my first part of the Google Adsense introduction I talked about ad placement, ad blending and the importance of understanding the Adsense program policies. I just want to stress it one more time…make sure you play by the Adsense rules. If you try to push the envelope, you may make a decent amount of money in the short term, but in the long run you’re just hurting yourself. If you violate the Google Adsense TOS, you’re account will eventually get banned. So just play it safe and the profits will come. Be patient, monitor your advertising campaign and optimize it accordingly.

Ok, let’s continue where we left off. You’ve chosen your ad format, your ad color scheme and you’ve integrated the ads into you website. Now you can just sit back and watch the money come rolling it. WRONG! It would be nice if it we’re that simple, but it’s not. Adsense tracking is very important, you must monitor your ads and make adjustments to those that aren’t performing well. Luckily for us Adsense makes it easy to monitor ad performance via Channels. There are two types of reporting channels, URL and Custom.

URL channels allow you to track ad performance across a whole site, a specific page and even a specific directory. You can enable URL channels without modifying the actual Adsense code.

To create a URL channel:

1. Select the Adsense Setup tab and then Channels from the sub-tab
2. Choose the AdSense for content sub-tab and click the URL Channels link
3. Click Add new URL channel and enter the URL that you would like to track.
4. Click Add channels.

That was easy enough, now you have URL channels setup.

The second type of channel, Custom channels, are even more important in tracking your ad performance. Custom channels allow you to track individual ads within a page. For example, if you have three adsense blocks on a page, URL channel only displays the stats for the whole page, while custom channels allow you to track the performance of each ad within the page.

To create a Custom Channel:

1. Select the Adsense Setup tab and then Channels from the sub-tab
2. Choose the AdSense for content sub-tab and click the Custom Channels link
3. Click Add new Custom channel and enter the ad you want to track. (I find it best to name the ad like this — Site name, Page name, Ad unit….ex Mysite.com_SportsPage_468horizontalLinks
4. Click Add channels.

We’re not done yet. Unlike URL channels, Custom channels require changing the Adsense code.

To add the custom channel code to your webpage:

1. Creat a new Google Adsense unit
2. After you select the ad size, format, etc…you will see a final option to add a channel.
Select the custom channel you wish to track
3. Copy-and-paste the layout code into your web pages. Remember to place the ad code in the right place depending on which channel you selected.

Remember to repeat this for each ad you place. This will allow you to easily track each individual ad. All channel stats will be accessible through the Adsense reporting tab. Keep a close on eye it. If you notice a certain ad that isn’t doing well, try moving it to a new location on the page, changing the ad format, etc to maximize your adsense revenue.

– Are you a Firefox user? Try the “Adsense Notifier” plugin. It will display your Google Adsense earnings in the status bar. Currently several languages are supported. Pretty cool!

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