Move Over Adsense: How to Build Your Own Adsense Program
- Image by Telendro via Flickr
Google’s Adsense program is a great introduction to contextual advertising, but there are times when it can be a cumbersome feature to maintain. It can even be completely irrelevant to a website’s purpose. Sometimes the program’s code fails to deliver promised advertisements, and worse, when they do show up, the advertisements could very well advertise a website’s competitors. It’s this lack of control that turns some people off from using Adsense, but it doesn’t spell the death of contextual advertising as an idea.
What if you could use the same advertising format that Adsense uses on your site, but instead of advertising other people’s stuff, you could advertise your own? You wouldn’t earn any money from clicks through this setup, but you would definitely maintain control over the type of ads your site displayed. And depending on what you advertise, you might actually make a sale!
Here’s how you can code and display your own Adsense type program on your website.
First, copy, paste, and save the following code into a file named “myads.js.” Replace each instance of “My Product” with a different item you’re selling, “My Description” with that product’s description, and “My Link” with that product’s webpage URL. Change “My URL” with your domain name and “My Site Name” with your site’s name. Upload “myads.js.” to your web server.
Download the Be Your Own Adsense Script
Next, paste the following onto the page or pages in which you want your new Adsense-like ads to show: <script src=”http://WWW.YOURWEBSITE.COM/myads.js”></script>. Replace “WWW.YOURWEBSITE.COM” with your website’s address and then save your changes. Load up your pages containing this code and voila! You’ve got your own Adsense-like program on your site.
You can change the colors, fonts, and anything you want by tweaking the parameters in the myads.js file. The sample code above displays a 786 x 90 sized banner ad. For other sizes, play around with the table settings in the code. There’s no limit to what you can do because this is *your* code — not Google’s! You can even add images or video if you want. So have fun!
13 Responses to “Move Over Adsense: How to Build Your Own Adsense Program”
RonLeyba on October 27, 2010
My recent post Free Printable Pumpkin Carving Stencils – JackOLantern Templates
BeninB on October 27, 2010
Thanks for the kind words. Actually, this piece was penned by someone else. To be honest I'm not 100% sure if that would violate their policies but I know ad networks allow publishers to use his/her own adsense code as a back up code that kicks in if the networks ad rotations get too sparse.
Have a good one, Ron. Will be in touch…
Nicole Miller on October 27, 2010
I'm the author of the article above. Since Google's adsense policy lets you advertise other contextual ad programs alongside theirs (assuming those programs use different fonts/colors/etc)., there's no real violation here. However to be safe, you may want to use it on pages that don't display any adsense code at all.
-Nicole
RonLeyba on October 27, 2010
I think I will take your advice not to use it along wit adsense to be much more safer.
Thanks again!
My recent post Free Printable Pumpkin Carving Stencils – JackOLantern Templates
BeninB on October 27, 2010
Otherwise, hope you have a wonderful eve.
Nicole Miller on October 27, 2010
You've got an awesome site here. Keep up the great work
-Nicole
DiTesco on October 28, 2010
On a side note, I am a strong advocate and make a decent earning with AdSense. It is one of those programs that you just have to put a little extra work as it will never work by simply cutting and pasting the code like many people say. There are many ways in which you can control your AdSense ads by using channels, target placement, blocking ads, category filtering and even benefiting from ad planner. Thing is, you must know how to use them to your benefit and trust me, it does.
My recent post Establish An Ongoing Relationship With Your Advertisers
Nicole Miller on October 28, 2010
I unfortunately don't have any experience with ad rotation programs. But if a rotation program allows you to insert a javascript source file as an ad program, then it might work.
Please note that I'm not completely knocking Adsense. It was successful for me too until I decided to switch focus. I changed focus from databases to outsourcing, and Adsense was dead on every time. It served relevant ads and everything. The problem is, it kept advertising competitors, so I had to drop it. That's when I came up with this scheme.
BeninB on October 28, 2010
Nicole Miller on October 28, 2010
Consider yourself a lucky dog!
I've been fighting these things (competitor ads) for eons. Has Google upgraded it's program? The last time I checked, which is admittedly a long time ago, I could only block competitors by domain name. And the problem with that is the field I cover has as many competitors as there are stars, it seems. Please let me know if Google has enhanced its blocking function, as I might enable Adsense on my site again.
-Nicole
BeninB on October 28, 2010
BeninB on October 28, 2010
You know, its funny that you asked I was wondering the same thing-as far as the rotator goes. As far as AdSense in general I'm more of an advocate for competition-if that makes any sense. But hey…as long as one's figured out what's best for monetizing their website then they're good either way.
Otherwise, perhaps Nicole will answer this question for us. Thanks again for stopping by!
konut ilanlari on April 28, 2011