How Does Google AdSense Payment Work?

How Does Google AdSense Payment Work?

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How to Earn Money With Google Adsense

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Publift

September 13, 2023

How to Earn Money With Google Adsense

Google AdSense is a relatively straightforward way for digital publishers to generate additional revenue by outsourcing their advertising operations to Google.

If you’re a website owner, content creator or online publisher, you can quickly start earning ad revenue by linking your website to Google's ad network, alleviating the need to find and bill individual advertisers.

This short guide gives you a primer on how to earn money with AdSense.

Table of Contents

• Digital vs. Traditional Advertising

• How Big Is Google AdSense?

• Benefits of Using Google AdSense

• Google AdSense Requirements

• 6 Types of Google AdSense Ads

• How to Apply for an AdSense Account?

• Final Thoughts

• FAQs

Digital vs. Traditional Advertising

The main difference between digital advertising and traditional advertising is the former allows for greater automation in the ad sales process.

In the print era advertisers had to negotiate directly with media owners to display ads either on boards at busy traffic intersections or in the pages of popular print media. The advent of the digital era, however, saw both advertisers and media owners leverage ad tech platforms to automate the vast majority of ad unit sales on websites, YouTube channels or apps.

Google AdSense, for example, allows publishers to monetize their content by selling ad units that contextually match advertisers’ ad campaigns needs.

Google facilitates these transactions and takes a 32% cut of display ad revenue and 49% of search ad revenue.

How Big Is Google AdSense?

Around 47 millions websites use Google AdSense, with major clients including the likes of the BBC and Forbes.

Although Google is considered the world's preeminent search engine, it might be better described as the world's largest digital advertising agency. Close to 84% of Google's $250 billion revenue in 2021 came from ads.

Out of every $3 spent globally on digital advertisements, Google earned $1.

In 2021, Google's ad revenue stream generated $210 billion worth of income.

Benefits of Using Google AdSense 

Some key benefits of using Google AdSense are:

Benefits of Using Google AdSense

Access to the largest search database in the world, with over 50 billion indexed web pages.

Google's industry leading search rankings algorithms keep users hooked to the platform. Almost 85% of the internet users prefer Google search.

Google's vast ecosystem caters to the various needs of a user—email, cloud sharing, mobile OS, navigation and even wearable technology such as Fitbit.

It uses comprehensively collected data to provide contextual targeting to advertisers.

Complete control—you can choose the kind of ads on your site, decide how many ads are too many, the least jarring ad style, the allocation of ad spaces, ad types, etc. You can also completely automate it and opt for auto ads, that is a “set it and forget it” option.

Google AdSense has a simple onboarding process with even simpler operations. 

AdSense publishers gain access to the immense reach and scale of Google's ad network

Google Ads’ Keyword Planner tool can help identify the most profitable niches for your website. It provides an analysis of search trends.

Google AdSense Requirements

Now that we know how Google AdSense can help you monetize your content, we need to understand Google Adsense eligibility requirements.

You need a “Yes” to all nine of the following questions to be eligible for Adsense.

Are you over 18 years of age?

Are you a website owner and control your website?

Does your website have unique content?

Is your website easily navigable?

Is your website only receiving genuine traffic?

Does the content of your website align with Google's content policies—centering on user safety and content legality?

Does your website host original content, devoid of any copyright infringements?

Do you use at least one of the Google supported languages on your website?

Does your site provide a user experience free of abuse?

Additional Requirements

Apart from the above criteria, there are additional unofficial requirements that can be crucial to your Google Adsense approval. These criteria are more in the nature of SEO best practices that ensure that your website is trusted.

These include: 

Be trustworthy: Host technical pages that include but are not limited to “privacy policy”, “about us”, and “contact us”.

Not too new: You should have been operational for at least six months. This allows both Google and your readers to have more trust in your website. 

Have sufficient traffic: Advertisers don’t want ad inventory on websites that have too few regular visitors.

6 Types of Google AdSense Ads

Each of your ad units is backed by an individual piece of code. Google AdSense offers various ad types and formats optimized for your website content, placement location, and user flow.

1. Display Ads

The most common forms of online ads are display ads with ad sizes ranging from large 728x90 to a small button of 125x125. They run ads with rich media, image ads, texts, flash, or video ads.

These could also be in the form of sticky ads, which are ad placements where the ad units remain frozen on a section of the screen and are always visible irrespective of where you scroll.

Display ads are what are generally recognised as the most common form of multimedia ads on most websites.

2. Native Ads

Native ad units display in-content ads which blend fluently with the aesthetics and structure of your website, providing the reader with a non-disruptive experience.

Native ads can be of three sub varieties:

In-article ads

Optimized for readers skimming through an article, these ad units use a layout that fits the width of placement location on the page and does not interrupt the user's reading flow. You can control the font and color of these ads or allow Google to optimally utilize the space.

In-article ads don't seem out of place when reading an article, gently melting into the visual aesthetics of the article.

In-feed ads

Just as a news feed allows users to scroll through a stream of stories, your website may use feeds for various pages and purposes, such as a live Twitter feed during an event.

In-feed ads blend with the rest of the feed and are formatted just like the rest of the content that makes up the feed.

Infeed ads from Google Adsense meld along your webpage's feed section.

Multiplex Ads

Google AdSense rebranded “matched content” ads as “multiplex” ads in March 2022. 

While matched content ads showed other similar content from the same website and displayed it as matching ads, multiplex ads display thumbnail-sized AdSense ads for the user to find what's most relevant to them. They are usually relegated to the end of the content or the sidebar of the webpage and run multiple ads under one large ad unit.

Ads from multiple websites are displayed as Multiplex ads as a side bar or at the end of your page.

3. Search Engine Ads

You can add a custom Google search box to your website that visitors can use to find relevant content from your website.

Similar to the sponsored ads visible on the first few rows of the Google search engine results pages (SERPs), you can use Adsense to show sponsored ads in the results of your website's custom search box. You can add this ad unit format, called Search engine ads, to your ad inventory.

Adsense displays 'search ads' from the internet when a user searches for something on your website's google bar.

4. AMP Ads

Google created the Advanced Mobile Pages (AMP) HTML framework to help improve mobile browsing speeds. The AMP ads displayed on pages designed with AMP HTML require a special, AMP specific ad code.

AMP ads load faster on mobile web and are based on special Advanced Mobile Pages (AMP) HTML code.

How to Apply for an AdSense Account

Here’s a quick guide to the key prerequisites and steps you’ll need to cover to set up a Google AdSense account.

Prerequisites

A Working Google Account

Chances are that you've already got one if you're a user of any one of the multiple Google services such as Gmail, YouTube, Android OS, etc. Since only one Adsense account can be connected to each Google account, you can't re-use a Google account that’s already been used to create an Adsense account. 

Original Web Content With Regular Visitors

Your own blog, website or YouTube channel, has content you built from scratch, and has regular visitors.

An Address and Phone Number to Activate Payments

You’ll need to provide an address and phone number associated with the bank account through which you wish to receive payment.

Step 1. Link Google Adsense to Your Google Account

The process begins by adding Google AdSense to your Google account.

Go to Adsense.

Click on the “Get Started” button.

Sign in with your Google account.

Step 2. Add Your Website to Google Adsense

Upon signing up for Google AdSense, it will ask you to enter the URL of the website where you want to display ads.

Note: You can also leave this field blank and select "I don't have a site yet” option to add it later.

If you want to display Google Ads on your YouTube channel then you need to first join the YouTube Partner program and initiate monetization of your YouTube videos.

Note: You’ll need at least 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 public watch hours, no community guidelines strikes, and a two-step authentication active to be eligible for video monetization.

Google host partner websites (such as Blogger) follow a different, much faster process for AdSense onboarding. Click “Go To” after entering the URL to begin this process.

Step 3. Provide Payment Details

Select the country and/or geographic territory where you wish to receive your payments from Google AdSense generated revenue.

Make sure you select a location where you currently reside and will be able to receive a PIN code via postal mail for processing future payments. Since this location cannot be changed later, you need to avoid any mistakes.

Review and accept the AdSense Terms and Conditions, and click “Start Using Adsense”.

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How Does Google AdSense Payment Work?

Google AdSense pays publishers a commission for the number of clicks or impressions on the ads hosted on their website. The Google AdSense working model is simple—Google charges advertisers a certain amount every time a user clicks on their ads.

Publishers, in turn, get 68% of the amount Google receives from advertisers per click. In the case of AdSense for search, this commission goes down to 51%.

Google pays you via direct transfer or check every month when your revenue totals $100 or more. Anything short of $100 is rolled over to the next month.

Once you’ve applied for the Google AdSense program, it may take up to two weeks for your AdSense application to be approved. You will receive a confirmation email along with the HTML code that will need to be incorporated into your website to begin displaying your first ad unit.

You can generate and add multiple codes for multiple ad units and add it to the pages on which you want ad placements. Alternatively, you can also just add one auto ads code and it will take care of ad placements all over your website.

If you own more than one website then you can use the same ads code on all of them for increased AdSense ad revenue.