My first question to myself would be: "Is this email genuine?"

I would avail myself of the facility of contacting AdSense after logging in - assuming you are eligible.

I am fairly certain the email is legitimate. The reply and all the links go directly to google.com. And the pages look legitimate.

But I assume if this was an invite to premium I would see some type of notification in adsense. Which I assume I would see.

You can usually view the source of emails, to see the IP and domain where it was sent from. The steps vary from email client to email client and from platform to platform but often it is listed as "View Source" or "View Message Source". That way you can be certain whether it is genuine or whether it is a clever phishing scam.

I checked the source and it appears to be from google.

That said the more I look at it I don't think its connected to the premium program.

Google do send out these emails and yes, the strategic partnership team is the team that work with AdSense publishers.

"is this the premium adsense program "

I think that there is a lot of mis understanding around this. I was what they internally call a "tier 1 publisher". I then became an AdSense Certifified Publishing Partner and now a Google Certified Publishing Partner. We work closely with the strategic partnership team our of Ireland. "Premium publisher" is not a term that I hear Googlers use.

Publishers are definitely organised into tiers. At the lowest end it is hard to get support. Then you start getting access to email support, then an account manager etc. As your account becomes more valuable that support increases (the account manager actually starts making contact... then it gets more frequent... they you start meeting up etc). As you move up that pile you get more attention, support and access to more features and whitelisting. It's probably more useful to think of it that way than as all or nothing "premium publisher". The team making contact with you is definitely a step in the right direction.

Worth mentioning (I'd be daft not to), that Google Certified Publishing Partners can offer much of the same. It's a bit different in that you are still a step removed from that direct support, but GCPP support has the advantages of being more flexible, generally providing a higher level of contact and independence (working for the publisher rather than for Google). There is a commercial element though - most work on rev share.

Some third party firms (not GCPPs I think) like to benefit from the "premium publisher" idea and market their own services using that term. Clever really, as publishers contact them thinking that they are getting some secret Google programme turned on, but that isn't the case.

Well done though. If they are making contact you must either be doing better or have the potential to do so. I hope it brings gains for you.

Romerome, congrats! That's the first step.
From my personal experience: got placed in a high-potential pool with support (definitely not tier 1 back then), and *some* special treatment in a form of AdSense betas in addition to having a direct contact person. Don't expect them to actively help you though. They are there to answer your questions, but not actively tell you what to do.

After a certain period of time you might be placed in a tier 1 group with special access. That happens only if you can maintain a certain level of growth and continue to show potential as a "small" publisher.

Good luck!

I got an email from someone at Google. They have Google Strategic Partnerships in their tagline. It talked about improving ad revenue with google.

I would've guessed it was a solicitation for the Ezoic thing.

Matbennett and LuckyD. Thanks that was incredibly helpful.