How to Create an AdSense Ad Unit?

Getting approved for Google AdSense program does not mean that you have succeeded with starting an online income from your content. The success of your online presence depends on patiently understanding things and following appropriate guidelines. With AdSense, the major factor of the revenue is the click through rate which directly depends on where and how your ads are displayed. Creating a correct ad suitable for your site’s layout ensures higher revenue besides an appropriate placement.

In this article we will discuss how to create an AdSense ad unit and the various possibilities of customizing it to suit your site’s design.

How to Create an AdSense Ad Unit?

1. Create a new ad unit
2. Selecting an ad type
3. Choosing appropriate ad size
4. Customize text ad style
5. Adding custom channel
6. Having a backup ad
7. Getting ad code
8. Inserting on your site

Step 1 – Creating Ad Unit

Login to your AdSense account and navigate to “My Ads” tab. Click on “Ad units” option available under “Content” section and then click on the “+ New ad unit” button to create a new AdSense ad unit.

Step 2 – Choosing Basic Type

AdSense offers four types of ads – Text and Display (image) ads, matched content ads, in-feed ads and in-article ads.

You can select one of the ad types based on your need. In this article we will explain by choosing “Text & display ads” option. You can get more details about recommended ads and native ads in separate articles.

Step 3 – Choosing Ad Size

Choose the size of your AdSense ad based on your available ad space size. There are recommended ads by default showing for you to choose, if you are not happy with those sizes then choose it from the dropdown. Read our article on how to choose better ad size for your AdSense ads.

When creating display ads ensure to choose the ad type as “Text and display ads”. Remember the default option is selected from the list based on your account settings under “Settings > Ad display”. You may loose revenue by only choosing text or display ads only option.

Step 4 – Choose Text Ad Style

This is the most important part in AdSense ad creation process where you can actually influence without any base recommendation from Google. This essentially means individual publishers need to customize the ad style based on their site design. Choose the style which you think is more suitable for your site.

If the default available styles are not suiting your need then creates a new ad style and customize it for your need.

Step 5 – Adding Custom Channel

Channels are used to track the performance of an individual or group of ads. For example, if you have two ad units placed on top and bottom of the page, it is easy to get the performance report of each individual ad. But if you want to check the performance of two ads together in a single report then create a custom channel and this channel to both the ads.

Other scenario could be using ads on multiple sites. When you have two different ads on two different sites then channel will help to track the performance of those two ads together in a single report.

Besides tracking your own ads performance the major purpose of channels is for advertisers who are looking for targetable ad placements. For example, assume an advertiser is looking for an ad placement at a sidebar with an ad size of 300×600 large skyscraper. If you have a custom channel with the name as “large skyscraper ads on sidebar” with ads of 300×600 in the channel then the possibility of the advertiser choosing your site is more.

Select the “Targeting” checkbox if you want the advertisers to view your custom channels for targeted ad placements.

Step 6 – Choose Backup Ads

It is not necessarily Google should always show an AdSense ad whenever a page with an ad code is loaded. There are lots of possibilities for not displaying ad on a page. One reason could be your ad blocking settings where you don’t allow many networks and categories resulting in no ad inventory at that point of request. This factor is indicated as “Coverage” and low coverage indicates that ads not displayed on your site on all the time. Besides working on improving your coverage it is important to choose what to display on the ad space if Google can’t find ads at any point of time. You have three options to choose here:

• Show empty blank space of that ad size.
• Show a solid space of that ad size.
• Alternate ad to show. Here you can choose your alternate URL for example an affiliate image link URL from your own site or from any external sites.

Step 7 – Getting AdSense Ad Code

The final step in creating AdSense ad unit is to get the JavaScript code for the ad you created. Just click on “Save and get code” to see the code and ensure the “Asynchronous” code type is selected by default.

Copy the ad code and paste on your site to start making money from your online content. Most of the time ads will start displaying immediately, if not the backup ad (based on your customization in step 6) will be displayed till the time AdSensebot grasp your content and the actual ads can be auctioned for the keywords on your page.

Step 8 – Inserting Ad Code on Your Site

The last step is to insert the created ad code on your site. This is a manual process and you can insert on any places on the sites complying AdSense policies.

How to Edit an AdSense Ad Unit?

It is common practice among webmasters to change the existing AdSense unit codes to experiment the pattern in revenue change. Google also recommends to test various ad units suitable for your content to find out the best match.

Ad style and ad types are two important reasons for webmasters to update their existing ad units. For example, you have a website consists of 200 pages and you pasted your text ad code in each page of your site. After sometimes you realize that you are loosing revenue because of text ads and you want to change the ad type to image ads.

It is a cumbersome process to create a new image ad unit and replace the ad codes in each of 200 pages. Google offers an auto update mechanism where you can just edit your existing ad to change the ad type to image without the necessity of replacing ad codes in all 200 pages. Once you saved the ad unit within your AdSense account all the ad units will be auto updated and start displaying image ads in all your webpages.

Options for Updating an Existing Ad Unit

Google offers two options for the publishers to edit their existing ads.

1. Only changing the ad type
2. Completely changing the ad units other than size

1. Changing Ad Type

Follow the below step by step process to change one ad type format to another one. You can toggle between “Text & display ads”, “Text ads only” and “Display ads only”.

• Login to you AdSense account and go to “My Ads” tab.
• Navigate to “Ad units” option available under “Content” section.
• You can see all your “AdSense for Content” ads are displayed and use “Advanced Filters” option to filter the appropriate ad you want to edit.
• Click on the “Edit ad type” link under the ad unit you want to change. (You also have the same “Edit ad type” option under the “Actions” drop down button).
• Change the ad type and click on “Apply ad type” button.

• All your existing ad units will auto updated based on your new selection.

Completely Customizing Your Existing AdSense Units

• Click on the ad name in order to change other attributes like ad style of your existing ad unit.
• You will see a page similar to generating a new ad code.
• Change the required attribute of your ad units and click on “Save” button.
• All the existing ad units will be updated based on the new attributes you selected.

Points to Remember

Creating Ad Unit

The process of creating AdSense ad unit is very easy, but remember the following important points.

• All available ad units under your account can be viewed under “My ads > Content > Ad units” and edited later at any point of time.
• Any changes done on the ad unit will be automatically reflected on all the placed where the code was placed on your site automatically. You need not to go and replace or edit the ad code on your code after initial placement.
• Once an AdSense ad unit is created there is no possibility of deleting it from your account. It can only be hidden from the listed display.
• Ad units received impressions within last 7 days will be shown with the “Active” status.
• Ad units that did not received any impression for the past 7 days will be shown with “Idle” status.
• Hidden are displayed with the status as “Hidden”.
• Same ad unit code can be placed multiple places on a same or different pages of a site and also on different sites.

Editing Ad Unit

• It typically takes about 10 minutes for all Google servers to be informed of the changes and reflect it on your pages.
• You can’t change the size of the ads once created.
• You can’t delete the ads but hide it from the list by clicking on the “Hide” link displayed below the ad name.
• Once you check the box against any of your ad unit then the “Actions” tab will get activated.
• All the options Hide, View Report, Get Code and Edit Ad Type showing under the ad name are also available under the “Actions” tab drop down list.