Wes Cutshall

I just got some of my websites set up in Google Ad Manager and it’s pretty cool what you can do. Previously I had all of my ad networks running directly on the websites, simple cut and paste of the network’s code. If the ad block was Google AdSense, I had the ability to load alternate ads if Google couldn’t find ads for the keywords on the page. This increased the number of ads being run, but I didn’t have a lot of options for really maximizing my ad revenue. For example, one of the networks, Advertising.com (owned by AOL), only pays for impressions / clicks from U.S. visitors. Without subscribing to an IP geolocation database, which I’ve found to not be accurate – at least at the city level, I didn’t have a way (or reason) to limit ads to displaying to U.S. visitors only. So although I was registered with ad networks that allow me to monetize non-U.S. traffic (CPX Interactive), if my ad block is for a U.S.-only ad network I was showing ads to thousands of people a day who I cannot make money off of. With Google Ad Manager I have the ability to set certain ads, which can be ad network JavaScript code, to only show for certain geo-targeting settings, and when these values are not met other ads can show in the same ad slot. And in a reverse scenario of what I described earlier, if the goe-targeting settings (for example) restrict an ad network’s ad from showing for a user you can allow AdSense to show ads in its place.

The main purpose of Ad Manager is to allow you to accept direct ads from advertisers and run them on your websites, among your ad network ads. This too is a feature I want to take advantage of, but even without utilizing this (yet), using Ad Manager for managing your ad networks is a pretty awesome if you want to maximize your ad revenue.