My Lazy Adsense Auto Ads Profit Rocket

June 24, 2018 profitpants

I logged into my Google Adsense account a few weeks ago to be met with a pop-up message, it said something along the lines of “Try Auto Ads”. I’m not really being overdramatic either when I say the old phrase of “it changed everything”. Maybe the word “everything” is going a bit too far, but making this change ended up meaning massive profit increases to the tune of 40-50%! Sometimes in order to understand the value of what is new, you need to go back to the beginning. So that is where we will venture.

Where do you start when you are on the topic of Google Adsense? I can’t even remember how long I have had an account. At a guess it is most likely somewhere around the 10 year mark, maybe even as long as 12 years. I was locked out of my original account and needed to start on over, as I had changed my email addresses too, but that is a story for another time. Over this time the platform has proven to be a consistent, low maintenance, you could even call it lazy, option for me to earn passive income from my content. They pay out when they say they will and in general, from my extremely minimal testing of a couple of other providers including Chitika, their ad rates are essentially best in class. You’d be lucky if Chitika paid out enough to buy a souvenir spoon.

Life trying to monetise a WordPress based website with Google Adsense has varied over the years. My memory may be somewhat hazy, but the first iteration I can remember involved choosing exactly which sized ads I would be using via the Adsense portal, I would then need to copy the ad script either directly into the WordPress theme or test my luck with a 3rd party WordPress Plugin …often an ugly widget, hunting pythons in the Everglades sounded like an easier task. The system worked though and that’s all that most people, including myself, really cared about. I was suddenly being paid by the Internet! I still get a kick even today knowing that the Internet is paying me money every month. Your ads were in place, but their form factor was fixed, you had to test, test, test and hope that your ad placement was optimised. That was the situation 10ish years ago.

Revenue-Google-Autoads-Profit-Internet-Money — Magical Internet Money

My timelines may be completely ruined, but when you fast forward around 5 years to what we shall imagine was 2012-2013 there was a plugin released by Google. This plugin felt like magic to me, you opened it up and a scan was performed on your key pages and Google would suggest locations where your ads could be placed. This was easy, there was minimal messing around with choosing ad types and at least now you were installing and working with a plugin that was released by Google, so any real concerns about losing your hard earned money to corrupt plugin developers were relieved. Money kept flowing, the situation was easier than it used to be a few years earlier, so I was still happy. Bring on that sweet lazy passive income and set me on the path to one billion dollars.

Did I fail to mention that in all the years up until this time we had been limited to 3 ads per page? Yes, you heard that correctly. This is one thing that never made sense to me, no matter whether your page consisted of 300 words or 30,000 words, the rules were always stating that you could at most publish 3 ads on any single page. Bit of a pain in the ass really and an incentive to break long articles across many pages, however then you will likely suffer in Google page ranking metrics. I digress yet again. Somewhere around 2016 this 3-ad rule was removed and you could then place as many ads as was deemed reasonable. I played around with this a little bit at the time, however as the old Google Adsense WordPress plugin was outdated it didn’t allow me to automatically place additional ad units. Profit Pants was lazy back then, and still am, so for the most part just left things as they were, with the 3 approved ad units being placed by my Google Adsense plugin, I always throw in a few Amazon Associates placements where it makes sense too, for some extra pocket money. Read more about my Amazon Associates delicious cookie adventures.

We shift the time machine to modern day and here I am logging in to Adsense account where I see that our supreme overlord, Google, is offering to deliver Google Adsense Auto Ads. But what are they? This was the first step, as I assumed that it was going to be something that was going to take a bit of effort to implement, and generally effort isn’t something that I enjoy exerting unless there is food or instant gratification at the other end. But alas, this didn’t look too bad at all.

Revenue-Google-Autoads-Profit-Teamwork — This is not how I build websites. I sit on a lounge in tracksuit pants …alone.

Auto Ads are essentially exactly what the name implies, advertisements by Google Adsense that are designed and placed on your site automatically. Another word I would like to use here is “automagically”, purely because I wanted to use the word (and if I get a giggle out of it then that is all that matters).

There are 3 very basic steps that you take to set up Adsense Auto Ads:

To start the setup you log into the Adsense portal and Google Adsense will run you through a few simple setup questions, these are basically just asking you what types of ads you would like to be displayed on your site, this is a 30 second process. I was happy for all of the ad formats to be placed, I expect that most people will feel the same way. This can be a one time fits all deal that covers all sites that you own if you wish …and yes, I do believe I will choose that options, unless someone can prove that I am leaving a lot of money on the table somewhere down the track and convince me to make a change.
The output of step #1 will be a small block of code that you need to embed on every page of your site where you desire ads to appear. Remembering that I am running these on WordPress, I use the every-popular and reliable “Ad Inserter” plugin. Your mileage may vary, but I have been using Ad Inserter for years without a problem and am in no way affiliated with the developer. You then just tick the boxes for which types of pages you want the ad to appear on and select the option for the script to appear “before paragraph”, although some other settings may work for you too.
One other place where you need to place Google’s “automagic” code from step #1 is in the Header of every page. This one threw me off at first, as I don’t often like tweaking my themes and files in order to place things in the header. Once again though after some Google research (and really, is there any other sort of research?) I found a plugin named “Header, Footer & Post Injections”. Similar to the Ad Inserter plugin the Header, Footer & Post Injections plugin was highly rated, has been around for quite a while and is no way affiliated with me. The same code from step #1 is pasted into a box labelled “on every page” and then you click “save”.
That’s it. There is no step #4.
Or step #5.

Steps #1 through #3 (and optional steps #4 and #5 if you choose *hehe*), take all of a few minutes to set up. The most time consuming part for me was that I needed to research a solution for the Header and then install the Header, Footer & Post Injections plugin. But I have given you the solution, so go forth my children and succeed quickly following my tried and true method.

Now once you have completed the above steps Google will place optimised ads on every single one of your pages. They will choose the locations and place as many ads as they deem acceptable. There is nothing else to worry about, and this is why after only a few weeks playing with Auto Ads I am totally sold, it is just the Profit Pants lazy dream. Set and forget and let Google worry about and optimise placement for me. If Google release new ad formats I assume that there is a strong chance they will be covered under this program too.

But wait, there’s more. Let me tell you about one more bonus (I feel like I am selling steak knives on late night tv), if you already have Google ads running on your page that you are happy with, maybe you have optimised them over years of testing, you don’t need to remove them. These new auto ads are going to see your other ads and work around them, just throwing in more ads where they see fit. This was the case for me, I already had some banners that had done well for me in recent years, so I left them there, being placed by my trust ol’ Google Adsense plugin of 2013 …or whichever year I said it was further up in this article.

Now for a caveat, if “site beauty” is a passion of yours, then it is worth noting that you do lose some creative control here and maybe this isn’t the solution for you. Keep in mind though that Google have never liked you running loads and loads of ads on a page, just think back to a few paragraphs up where I talked about the 3-ad-rule that they had in place for many years as an example that they aren’t likely to completely flood your page with ads. Now let’s go over what is important to me:

I enjoy creating high quality content
I enjoy money, although I occasionally follow down paths of false economy
I enjoy being lazy. I enjoy doing the things I enjoy, and I don’t enjoy doing others. Those things I don’t enjoy I try to avoid completely, or at the very least look for the path of least resistance.

I’ll sacrifice a tad of site beauty if #2 and #3 are still chugging along like a frat boy.

Revenue-Google-Autoads-Profit-Drinking — Irresponsible drinking habits shouldn’t be restricted to just frat boys.

And chug it sure did.

It was a beer swilling mofo.

Let us move our focus onto the results of optimised laziness.

I hoped that I may see an increase in profits from the extra ads. I really hoped that my site wouldn’t tank.

Revenue-Google-Auto-ads-Profit — Adsense Revenue

If we look at the graph above we can see my weekly site revenue from March until present, with the Auto Ads being implemented at the beginning of June. While I have cropped out the actual numbers, the bottom of the graph is $0, so my side hustle revenue has increased by 50-80%!

A few important points to state, which are questions that I would be asking with my critical eyes of anyone else providing these magical numbers:

Site traffic volumes remained relatively constant over the period in the graph.
No major site changes were made, such as design/themes etc.

Granted that we have just gone into the USA Summer holiday period, so possibly ad pay rates have increased slightly. However my revenue increased at the exact same point in time when I implemented the Auto Ads. I’m willing to be generous, we could slash the 80% down to just the 50% and I think that we will all still be able to agree that the increase was dramatic.

Clicks-Google-Auto-ads-Profit — Adsense Clicks

The number of clicks on advertisements showed a similar, although not as massive, increase when implementing Auto Ads.

Views-Google-Auto-ads-Profit — Adsense Views

There are the two elements that make up Google Adsense revenue, the clicks on ads but also the amount of views that are received on each of the ads, there are payments for both. My views increased at the point of implementing Auto Ads and the exciting news is that for some reason they are continuing to increase even now. Possibly this is the Google engine doing magic in the background and optimising the ad placement for my site as it learns where people are clicking. Creepy in a way, but delicious revenue for me. What’s the tech saying? If you aren’t paying for the product then you ARE the product?

A couple of other observations:

The price I am being paid per click hasn’t really varied at all.
My click through rate on a per-ad basis hasn’t really varied either.
I’m not seeing any differences in bounce rates.
I’m not seeing any difference in Google page rankings. I would hope that Google Search wouldn’t be penalising my site based on an increased number of Google Adsense ads which have been placed by a Google Adsense bot, but you never know. Definitely keep an eye on this space.

From my lazy analysis, my gains seem to have come for the following reasons:

My pages are generally somewhat long, 1000 words or more. 2000 words + is not unusual.
The length of my pages means that more ads can be placed than the “3 ad” standard would previously allow.
I have never put too much effort into ad placement. An automated Google method does a lot better job.
More ads, even if they individually only have low click through rates, results in more views and more clicks.

If you fall into the same “long form” lazy category as I do then I would naively suggest that it is likely that you should also receive somewhat similar gains. You should absolutely give this a shot.

If you don’t fall into the same category as me, maybe your pages are shorter and you have invested a lot of time and effort into your ad layouts with optimised hotspots, then you should probably give this a shot anyway too. You don’t need to remove or adjust your existing ad placements, just add in the new auto ads script onto each of your pages and in the header.