Tag Archives: AdSense

Software

Custom Color Palette for Google AdSense Referrals Ads

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Google AdSense for Content and AdSense for Search allow you to create a custom color palette so that the ads can blend or contrast with your page’s color scheme. However, for some reason, the custom color palette can’t be selected for Referrals ads. So, I added the color definitions to the ad code manually.

  1. After creating the Referrals ad, copy and paste the ad code as you normally would. For example, your code might look like the following 
    <script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_width = 250;
google_ad_height = 250;
google_ad_format = "250x250_as";
google_cpa_choice = "CAEadPE0aicm8BvfUaU";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>
  2. Next, add the color codes in the section where all the “google_ad_” variables are. Here’s the same example with the colors added: 
    <script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxx";
google_ad_width = 250;
google_ad_height = 250;
google_ad_format = "250x250_as";
google_cpa_choice = "CAEadPE0aicm8BvfUaU";

/*** Custom colors ***/
google_color_border = "FFFFFF";
google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";
google_color_link = "336699";
google_color_text = "333333";
google_color_url = "336699";
//--></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>
  3. Edit the google_color_border (ad border), google_color_bg (background), google_color_link (link/ad title), google_color_text (ad description) and google_color_url (URL text below description) values to the desired colors.

Note that these color codes exist for Content and Search ads. I don’t know why the Referrals ad generator left them out. A person posted on the AdSense Help group that a few months ago, he/she was able to select a custom palette from the generator and asked why it no longer worked. There was no answer yet, so I did this workaround to make the Content and Referrals ads look the same.

Software

Show AdSense Only on Post Pages

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If your blog covers a variety of topics, the relevance of Google AdSense ads on the main/index page suffers as it tries to figure out what to display. To minimize this problem, you can restrict the ads to the post pages only where the content is more focused. Here’s how to do it on Blogger.

  1. Log into your blog
  2. Click the Template tab
  3. If you don’t already have an AdSense widget on your blog, add one on the Page Elements page
  4. Make a backup of your template by clicking on the Download Full Template link
  5. On the Edit HTML page, select the Expand Widget Templates checkbox
  6. Scroll down to about the bottom quarter of the template contents (the position will vary based on the template you’re using and number of widgets in your blog)
  7. Look for the following widget code (if you have more than one AdSense widget, there will be more than one of these code blocks, each with a different id)
    <b:widget id=’AdSense1′ locked=’false’ title=” type=’AdSense’>
    <b:includable id=’main’>
    <div class=’widget-content’>
    <data:adCode/>
    </div>
    </b:includable>
    </b:widget>
  8. Add the following <b:if> and </b:if> tags so that the widget looks like the one below
    <b:widget id=’AdSense1′ locked=’false’ title=” type=’AdSense’>
    <b:includable id=’main’>
    <b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘>
    <div class=’widget-content’>
    <data:adCode/>
    </div>
    </b:if>
    </b:includable>
    </b:widget>
  9. Repeat for any other ad widgets you have on your blog
  10. Save the template and then view your blog

The contents of the ad widget should now only appear when viewing an individual post.

Note that the Blogger help topic, Page Elements Tags for Layouts, indicates that a widget tag can have a pageType attribute that, when set to “item”, is supposed to display that widget only on post pages. However, it didn’t work for the AdSense widget. So, I added an if condition to the widget’s contents instead.

I’m not sure if pageType was intended not to work on the AdSense widget but, since this technique helps the relevance of the ads, hopefully no one will complain. If you know a better way to handle this or how to get the pageType attribute to work properly for this widget, leave a comment.