What is Google Adsense? (for beginners)

Google Adsense is an Ad service owned by Google. If you own a website or have a blog, you can apply for the Adsense program. If approved, the Adsense program can be used to display Advertisements on your site or blog (for example the Ads on the left corner). Adsense helps you to make revenue from your website or blog. I myself make well over $1000 per month with Google Adsense program (at the time of writing this post). This introduction to Adsense will give a brief idea of how Adsense works and how you can use it to earn money from your blog or website.

The ads served by Google Adsense are either text, image or sometimes video ads. All ads fall in one of the following two categories.

1. CPC Ads - CPC stands for Cost Per Click. i.e. Webmasters get money whenever users click on the Ads. If visitors don't click, then you do not make any money.
2. CPM Ads - CPM stands for Cost per Impressions. These are ads where you can earn money whenever the webpage where the ad is displayed is viewed, irrespective of whether the visitors click it or not. The CPM is usually calculated as Cost per 1000 impressions.

Whether to show CPC or CPM Ads is a decision entirely made by Google Adsense. However, you as a webmaster have the option of choosing to show either only Text Ads or Image Ads or both. The Video Ads of Adsense technically fall in the category of Image Ads and there is no way to force Google to show only video ads. Interested in learning more about Adsense? Continue reading.

The best way to get a quick overview of Adsense is to take this Adsense tour designed by Google Adsense itself. Or you may watch the following Video (i think the tour better explains the ideas though). or continue reading.

Types of Ads

You can use Adsense to display the following types of Ads.

1. Adsense for Content: These are Google Ads which are displayed based on the content of the page on which they appear.
   
2. Adsense for Search: You can put a Google Custom Search button on your webpage which will allow your visitors to search for topics and articles. Once a search is carried out, Adsense Ads are shown on the top of search results. If the visitor clicks on those ads, you earn money.
3. Adsense for Feed: Ads which appear and help you monetize your site feed.
4. Adsense for domains: If you have a domain on which you have no content, but people visit it directly by typing the name of the domain name, then you can use Adsense for Domains which will display ads on this domain based on the name of that domain.

Adsense Revenue Share

Advertisers pay Google for displaying their Ads. Google keeps a share of the revenue and gives the remaining majority to the publishers. Although Google does not disclose how much revenue it shares with publishers, it is widely believed that Google keep about 22% and gives 78% to publishers.