Section 5.4. Placing CPC Ads on Your Site


5.4. Placing CPC Ads on Your Site

You'll need to take the following fairly simple steps to place CPC ads on your site:

  • Sign up with a program.

  • Select the ad format that works best with your site.

  • Add the code generated by the program to your pages.

5.4.1. Signing Up

Most CPC ad programs provide a mechanism for you to sign up online using a straightforward mechanism such as the one used by the AdBrite program, shown in Figure 5-2.

Figure 5-2. Simple contact information plus a tax ID number is all you need to enroll in a CPC program


You'll also need to provide contact information, who you want checks made out to, and a tax identification number (either a social security number or an employer identification number).

Many programs also require that you complete and submit a W-9 tax form .


In addition, major programs such as Google will want at least one web site URL. They will manually vet the site for compliance with program content policies before accepting you into the program.

5.4.2. Selecting Ad Formats

Once you've been accepted, you can go ahead and choose ad formats meaning size of the ad unit and number of adsand colors for your site.

Some programs allow you to control adult content by specifying at the beginning whether it is unacceptable (and even what level of explicitness is permissible on your site). This is not an issue with Google's AdSense, since the AdSense program does not display adult ads at all or accept adult content sites into the program. In addition, some programs allow you to designate initial content areas, which is used until the contextual engine completes its job.


Most programs provide many sizes of ad units to choose from and a wide variety of preselected color schemes. Figure 5-3 shows the AdPoint program ad generator.

Figure 5-3. Most ad generators, like the ones provided by AdPoint, provide you with a great many ad format and color choices


The design choices you make in relationship to ad format and color are quite important. See Chapter 1 for some discussion of ad placement. In addition, you should consider two possible, but incompatible, strategies: making ads seem like they are part of a site's content, and making ads different, so they really stick out.


5.4.3. Adding Code to Your Pages

Once you've selected your ad format and colors, simply copy the code provided into your web pages where you'd like the ad units to appear.

It's important to place ad code in include files, as I explain in Chapter 1, so that your ad settings can easily be modified sitewide.


Ad unit code consists of settings, which depend on your choice of format and color, and a JavaScript call to the program on the ad server that actually displays the ad on your site (see "Serving Ads," earlier in this chapter, for an explanation of this mechanism).

For example, an AdBrite ad unit looks like this in code:

     <! Begin: AdBrite -->     <style type="text/css">     .adHeadline {font: bold 10pt Arial; text-decoration: underline; color: blue;}     .adText {font: normal 10pt Arial; text-decoration: none; color: black;}     </style>     <script type="text/javascript" src="/books/2/226/1/html/2/http://3.adbrite.com/mb/text_group.     php?sid=XXXXX&amp;newwin=1&br=1"></script>     <!-- End: AdBrite -->

You can tweak the settings in the ad code easily enough to change the format and, in some cases, the colors of the ads displayed. Although working directly with the generated code is prohibited by some programs (including AdSense), no one will mind if you are just adjusting things to fit in with your site's look and feel.


With the code copied into your web pages, and the web pages placed on your server, the CPC ad units are displayed, like the AdBrite unit shown in Figure 5-4.

Figure 5-4. If this ad group in AdBrite's default style doesn't go with the look of your site, you can edit the styles to change its appearance




Google Advertising Tools. Cashing in with AdSense, AdWords, and the Google APIs
Google Advertising Tools: Cashing in with Adsense, Adwords, and the Google APIs
ISBN: 0596101082
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 145
Authors: Harold Davis

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