The Adsense Experiment

Undoubtedly, you have noticed the obnoxious Google Ads sprinkled about the site. I must explain.

1. Though nearly all legitimate bloggers have sites plastered with Ads, this is not my attempt to conform and become a real blogger overnight.

2. This is not a shameless attempt to make a few pennies each month. Granted, some individuals have made money through AdSense, but their blogs actually have a steady flow of traffic. Of course, nobody (except for you) reads this blog and I can’t in good conscience start clicking these links myself.

3. This is not a quick way to clutter up an otherwise clean site.

No, this is merely an experiment. Google Ads are all over the place and I wanted to know just how easy (or hard) they are to implement. As it ends up, they are easy. Even a guy like me can figure them out.

Account Setup – Yes, I actually setup an account though it isn’t active yet. After providing my contact information and my domain, I was informed that it takes 1-2 days to complete the registration/authorization process. I’m sure once the account is activated, I’ll have the opportunity to select which type of ads are appropriate for my site, but that’s it for now.

Web Updates – About 10 minutes into the 2-day waiting period, I got a little antsy so I started to look around for clues on how to incorporate the Ads on this site. As it turns out, viewing the source of a page hosting an Ad provided all the information I needed. Ads are included using only a few lines of Javascript code:

<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
google_ad_client = “MY_ID_GOES_HERE”;
google_ad_width = 200;
google_ad_height = 90;
google_ad_format = “200—90_0ads_al_s”;
google_ad_channel =”";
google_color_border = “F9F9F9″;
google_color_bg = “F9F9F9″;
google_color_link = “55AAE1″;
google_color_url = “333333″;
google_color_text = “333333″;
//></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”
xsrc=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js“>
</script>

So, I modified some of the formatting options (size, style), borrowed someone else's AdSense ID and dropped the code on my page. It worked (after a couple of additional formatting tweaks) and now I'm just waiting for my own ID to show up in 1-2 days. (I wonder if I will still want the Ads up by then...)