Google Advertising Tools, 2nd Edition

AdSense for Feeds

As I explained in Chapter 3, a syndication feed is a mechanism for widely distributing your content in a standardized XML format. If you create an AdSense for Feeds ad unit, and associate one or more syndication feeds with it, then contextual AdSense ads will appear in your feeds. The object, of course, is for you to make money from these ads.

To start, on the AdSense Setup page, click the AdSense for Feeds link. Create a unit as shown in Figure 8-38, specifying whether it should display text ads only or text and image ads, how often the ads should appear, and where the ads should be positioned.

Figure 8-38. To start placing ads in your feeds, you need to add an AdSense for Feeds unit

An AdSense for Feeds unit without an associated feed doesn’t do anything; the next step is to associate a feed with the ad unit.

FeedBurner, part of Google as I mentioned in Chapter 7, provides a service where any valid syndication feed is “burnt”—meaning hosted and made available for redistribution. If you already have a feed burnt in FeedBurner, clicking the Move FeedBurner feeds to your Google account link makes it easy to move the feed as shown in Figure 8-39 to add it to your AdSense unit.

Figure 8-39. The easiest way to move a feed is to use one already registered at FeedBurner

If you ...