Google Adsense: Rules Surrounding Invalid Clicks and Being in Control

What Is So Important About An Invalid Click and How Will It Affect Me?

More than anything, an invalid click is a big no-no and it will get your account terminated faster than anything else.  Having said that, an invalid click is when a publisher clicks on their own ads to add to their earning potential .  It’s also when a publisher asks others to click on their ads just to raise their revenue.  It also raises the advertiser’s costs and Google won’t tolerate this.  Google Adsense has state of the art technology and they know what’s going on.

Invalid clicks also happen when someone uses robots to click on ads or automated software.  It is any deceptive practice used to click on ads.

Invalid clicks are also unnecessary as there are plenty of money-making opportunities with valid clicks.  With an optimized website, useful content, and attractive ads, there’s no reason for anybody to even entertain the idea of using invalid clicks.

Having Control Over Your Adsense Account

You the publisher, have complete control over the advertisement that runs on your site.  You can choose to run only image ads, only text ads, or a combination of both.  Google recommends that you choose a combination of both to maximize your earning potential, but the decision is yours.

When making your ad decision, you also have the freedom to choose which type of ads run across your entire account (image or text) or you can narrow that decision to what type of ad might run on a particular page. 

As of right now, you are not able to differentiate your image ad click rate from your text ad click rate.  You can of course, differentiate your click rate from one site as opposed to another site.  Say, for example, you run only image ads on one site and only text ads on another site.  By setting up channels to track both sites, you can see which site has the better click rate.  Of course, you have to take into consideration there would be more factors than whether you were running text or image ads.  The content, the placement of the ads in general, even the color could make a difference.

Refer to the Google Adsense Support Site for specific instructions on how to enable or disable image ads.  Remember, it’s all up to you!   

Google AdSense: Understanding Alternate Ads and PSAs

We all know that Google AdSense works by serving targeted Ads to the websites that are enrolled with the Google AdSense program. However, there are instances when no targeted Ads are available for a website e.g. the website might be catering to such a topic or subject for which no relevant Ads/advertisers are available. In such a case, Google serves alternate Ads i.e. content of your choice. If you have not specified any content as Alternate Ads, Google AdSense program treats PSAs i.e. public service Ads as alternate Ads and serves them on your website. These PSAs are charitable Ads that don’t contribute to your revenue. So, unless you are looking to do charity (which could mean lessening of revenue for you), you must specify Alternate Ads upfront.
Here are the options that you have for alternate Ads (your choice of content):

Color: A number of people use color for alternate Ads. This involves specifying a valid hexadecimal color code (or you can choose from the color palette provided by Google) for the alternate ad. The choice of color would be such that the ad becomes invisible. This is easily achieved by setting the color of the ad same as the background color of the page.

Image: An image can also be used as an alternate ad. You can either have this image link to some other web page (in such a case you will need to specify an html as alternate ad) or you may just use it as such (for, maybe, enhancing the beauty of your web page).
Another good option is to use ‘Collapsing ad units’. ‘Collapsing ad units’ code will squeeze the ad units that are not utilized (instead of showing the PSAs) on your website. This approach helps in giving a cleaner look to the web page (since the blank areas or non-ad-based images are done away with). It also helps in bringing more emphasis to the AdSense Ads that are displayed on the website.