I have a question. To use auto ads, do we remove all of our old ads completely? Also, if our ads were in div tags, do we remove those also?

I have a question. To use auto ads, do we remove all of our old ads completely? Also, if our ads were in div tags, do we remove those also?

My question too. I guess its time to experiment. I have a header spot and sidebar spot - not sure this can guess those opportunities. Hopefully, though auto ads will increase RPMs for publishers... its getting pretty bad

I removed all ads except chicory from my WP site this morning and added auto ads. I'm seeing much better ads and more coverage than I've seen in a long time.

@ByronM - I left my div tags in. I've tested on my static site, and the ads are appearing at the top and on the right rail.

thanks - just saw this when i created my new ad code "How: Auto ads appear automatically on your page and take into account any manual ads you already have. It usually takes 10–20 minutes for ads to appear on the page. See our code implementation guide for more details." so it looks like i can leave specific blocks in. (which i may try taking out and see if its smart enough to fill)

I must say, pleasantly surprised at how easy that was and how fast ads load now. Not using code to invoke ads and adsense is doing good at filling in my rather long posts pretty well. not using images as paragraphs and fitting the ads in nicely for Mobile and desktop.

i am not doing amp yet, still managing that direclty.

Google's reply:

There’s no need to remove them if you don’t want to. Auto ads will take into account all existing Google ads on your pages.

[adsense.googleblog.com...]

I have been using ONE AD per page since 2003. Made over $900,000 that way.
If I implement this, then I will be "Ad stuffed" with 6 to 8 ads. Right?
Users may get piffed because of all the ads.
Google search may decide to kick my a$$, for poor "user experience", and being an ad hoare.

NO. I DON'T WANT THIS. No way. Thank you very much.
.

[edited by: Sally_Stitts at 6:44 pm (utc) on Feb 21, 2018]

Sally, I doubt Google would do that. This feature is out from beta after a long testing, their aim is to reduce number of ads without affecting your revenue.

@all is it possible to find out how many ads, Auto Ads is serving? Manual check won't help.

"reduce number of ads"

Can't get better than ONE, if ad reduction is the goal.

Just for kicks, JUST HOW MANY ADDITIONAL ADS do they automatically install? 3, 4, 5, more?
NOPE. 10. Ten. Check this out - [webmasterworld.com...]

I had to stop Auto Ads just now - counted no fewer than TEN adblocks on a page (some were stacked) that I usually kept no more than three on. That's a huge difference and quite the eye sore. I care enough about my visitors to not want that many ads on a page and I wouldn't stay on a site with that many ads-per-article for one second. It's like a blind hacker got a hold of my code and went crazy with it.

WHY WON'T THEY SAY?
The fact that they won't say, AUTOMATICALLY means TOO MANY, to me.

One more example of increased lack of control.
Just throw everything up in the air, WTH?
.

[edited by: Sally_Stitts at 6:43 pm (utc) on Feb 21, 2018]

Call me a cynic - but I've been in this game long enough to be VERY WARY about this.

>Using machine learning, Auto ads show ads only when they are likely to perform well and provide a good user experience.

We all know that the AdSense and Search teams don't talk - the left hand definitely doesn't know what the right hand is doing - and what the AdSense team might consider a "good user experience", the Search team might give you a penalty for.

We also know that Google's search team (whose priority is returning high quality search results) is pretty sensitive about how many ads you can have, and where you can put them. To hand those vital decisions over to software developed by the AdSense team, (whose priority is maximising revenue) is a pretty brave (not to say risky) proposition.

Sorry, but the AdSense team have form in recommending ad placements that could get you penalised.

Don't forget - if this goes pear-shaped - it's YOU that gets penalised - not them - they don't care, there are plenty of other sites out there.

Having said all that - it looks really interesting, and I'd be fascinated to see where it would put ads, and how revenue would compare to my own placements.

But I'd want to try it on a site I don't care about.

Cynic #1, meet cynic #2.

Left hand, right hand ... absolutely. WE must be the criteria, not conflicting algorithms.
.

Valid points, Cynics! :P

I'm not going to put Auto ads for now, thanks ;)

One more example of increased lack of control.
Just throw everything up in the air, WTH?

If you don't want to use it, don't use it. Not sure what the point of hating it is. They're not forcing you into anything. On the flipside, not all change is bad, Maybe You could have made 1.8 million instead of 900k

[edited by: ByronM at 6:51 pm (utc) on Feb 21, 2018]

I won't.

You are mistaking thinking for hating. A little extreme.

I've enabled the auto ads last night. Tested on 10% of the site. I woke up and noticed that there was only one footer ad on a page containing 3 pages of content. I re-added the manual ads and left the auto block in for more testing.

So far, there's no way to track placement and performance per placement.

I haven't had a footer ad since I re-designed the site to responsive 4 years ago. So that's interesting.

The other thing that was surprising was the amount of ads. I had a long page with 4 ads. Auto ads decided it would be a good idea to place 2 more ads at the bottom of the page. 2 horizontal ads 200 pixels apart, it looked spammy as hell. I refreshed and that design went away.

Whatever you do, don't enable Auto ads site wide. There's no control on placement and quantity of ads. Crucially, there's no way to track where the ads appeared and their performance.

You are mistaking thinking for hating. A little extreme.

Why does everyone have to voice their opinion when they're not going to use something? Can't we have a good discussion about the performance, implementation and success / failure of this vs someones personal beef with it?

If you don't want to use it, don't use it. Not sure what the point of hating it is. They're not forcing you into anything.

Amen, ByronM. They haven't even used it and have made up their minds that they don't like it. LOL So far I'm loving it, and I haven't seen more than three ads on a page. I'm seeing way more ads overall than when I filled the ad blocks myself.

There's just nothing like providing information from when auto ads was in beta testing. It's come a long way since then. :)

My experience with Auto Ads wasn't good - I gave it a shot on two separate attempts network-wide but it places WAY too many ads on a page; it just looked terrible (there were casings of ad double-stacking(!) and up to eight ads served on a page). Even stripping my existing hard-coded ads from the page I thought would help but the existing algorithm is heartless when it comes to the user experience. I'd rather keep that kind of control over my properties because, I'd like to think, I know my visitors better than Google does despite their mountains of data on us.

I noticed Adsense pushing their Auto Ads really hard recently (via their increased emails and mentions) but I just don't think the majority of publishers will go for it in its current state - until, as has been mentioned above, there is better transparent tracking over what locations do what and why with testing options to boot.

I gave it a shot on two separate attempts network-wide but it places WAY too many ads on a page...

Were you using it when it was still in beta? It's out of beta now or they would not have released it. I'm confident that corrections were made in its beta stage. (Or perhaps I'm over-confident?) But I cannot fathom Google releasing something when it would conflict with BAS.

@Azlinda do you see more ads in long content?

do you see more ads in long content?

For me it's erratic. Some pieces have more ads in long content - but all focused in the upper section and others have no content ads. I'm going to give it a few days to settle. I see media bot hitting my site like crazy today - wonder if that's what is updating placement?

@Azlinda do you see more ads in long content?

Yes, I have not seen one ad in shorter content, but in longer articles, I am seeing one or two ads, and they're very well targeted. As of this moment, I'm loving auto ads! I'm not listening to the naysayers who haven't tried it since it was in beta.

First off, I would like say that if Ezoic owes you anything, like a payment or services I would collect quick because this feature roll-out will sink the company.

I definitely see the benefits to using this type of a feature. I'm not certain, but I assume that they are better able to match ad delivery to demand. So if there is an inflow of interest for 300 x 250 ad units, the system can adapt the Auto-ad inventory to show more 300 x 250 units thus matching more buyers with sellers. This can really provide a benefit to all market players within the AdSense eco-system. This may also make it more difficult for third party networks to compete.

That said, my feeling is that this will likely work great for plain vanilla implementations, like a simple blog or wordpress site. Sites where the content is static or at least predictable. But I would be concerned for sites that have more exotic designs, like ones that use ajax and other means of displaying dynamics content.

My other concerns are how does this pair with other AdSense features and policies. What impact does the ad-balancer have on this? What about back-up ads? What happens in the case that one is impacted by "Brand Safety"? And for those using third party networks like Media.net, does this feature play nice?

I am taking a wait and see approach.

Other questions:
How is reporting impacted? The concept of ad-unit, or creative-size will be lost.
How is AVV impacted, will this feature load all ads on page load or only if the ad is likely to be seen?

I was part of the beta testing and overall sure it increased the earning by some 20% but overall I can't see how my users could possibly like what they were doing with the layout of the website. Too many ads, banners placed right one after another and overall the RPM, CPC and even traffic declined. I can't of course blame it all on auto ads but on a long run I think it is a dangerous game, use caution. Others already warned that the adsense and search teams have completely different goals in mind, it is important to keep the balance. So try it out, see how it works for me. For me the auto ads did not work for amp pages and most of my mobile traffic is on amp so they kind of became pointless anyway.

There now is an amp implementation, from the docs:

If you have AMP pages
Note that if you'd like Google to automatically place ads on your AMP pages, you'll need to use our AMP Auto ads, which are currently available as an AdSense Lab. Learn more about the AMP Auto Text and display ads Lab.

Seems like its more targeted/optimized on mobile right now. Desktop pages are inconsistent in how ads are done. Keeping a close eye on it while it runs. I'm hoping this will help reduce clawback - so that will be the big measure for me.

Thank you, that never worked for my site. I was told to wait. But I am glad I think it did not work. With auto ads I am going to wait a little. Overall, my ads were always converting much much better than the auto ads.

Nit picking here .... but seems like their screenshot (second one in their blog does not match the code being generated).

(<ins> tags would be invalid in headers...)

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