Jumping right into the next square offering from Google Adsense, we have the 200×200 – Small Square. If you’re sidebar or content area is to small to accommodate the 250×250 – Square or the 300×250 – Medium Rectangle, your next option is the 200 x 200 – Small Square. The 200 x 200 – Square is multifaceted and can be placed in many areas of your page. Additionally, with some testing as to placement and design, this ad unit can produce a respectable amount of clicks. However, just like the 250×250 Ad Unit, the 200 x 200 has been relegated to the disapproved list by Microsoft Advertising, as well as the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), in favor of the 300×250 rectangle.
Posting From WordPress to Google+
I’ve been working for the last few weeks to try and figure out an easy way to automatically add posts from my WordPress blog to my Google+ page. Hoping that someone else had already created a plugin, I searched in vain both in the WordPress plugins directory, as well as other WordPress sites and forums. I thought I had finally found a way, however, convoluted to be able to semi-automatically add a blog post to my Google plus page. However, it seems like every time I almost figure it out, there’s still one piece missing.A cool thing, though, is that if you use the Google+ badge on your site, you can +1 your post (which you should do anyway for all of your posts, right?) which then allows you to share the post on your wall. It’s an extra step, but it makes it easy for you to easily share your latest post on your Google+ page.
Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 120×600 Skyscraper
Next up in the series of posts on Google AdSense ad sizes are the ads in the Google Adsense “Other – Vertical” banner category, starting with the 120×600 skyscraper. The reason the ad unit is called a skyscraper is because it is tall and thin and can dominate the space, like an actual, physical skyscraper. This ad unit is not in the AdSense top 4 recommended sizes and is listed in the Delisted Standard Ad Units category of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Ad Unit Guidelines. Microsoft Advertising, however, continues to list the 120 x 600 – Skyscraper as part of its standard ad unit sizes, both for marketers and agencies, as well for small and medium businesses.
The original skyscraper was thinner than the current commonly used version of the skyscraper, to accommodate the small side rails in the layouts of many web sites. As site design has changed and elements, including sidebars, of site layouts have gotten larger, the Google AdSense 160×600 Wide Skyscraper has become the more prominently used ad unit.
Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 336 x 280 – Large Rectangle
Google’s second recommended ad unit size for AdSense is the 336 x 280 – Large Rectangle. This ad unit size is not listed in the most popular sizes on the Yahoo! Ad Network, but is on the listed in the Microsoft Advertising PubCenter for ad publishers for small businesses, but not in the Standard Ad Creative Acceptance Policy for Marketers & Agencies. On the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Ad Unit Guidelines, this size is listed in the Delisted Standard Ad Units as of February 28, 2011.
While this size is available in AdSense for both text and image/rich media ads, it seems that this size is used mainly for small publishers and due to it’s size, is commonly used to take up a large area of the content. Google offer examples of the 336×380 Large Rectangle and they are all embedded in or below the content.
Google Fraud or Another Nigerian Scam?
A story blowing up in the news today is Google‘s use of Mocality‘s crowdsourced business listings in Kenya. Mocality did a great job of tracking the issue and finding out what was going on and even includes a transcript of the fraudulent calls on its blog. Apparently, someone identifying themselves as Google Kenya is trying to sell web sites to businesses that Mocality has worked hard to get on the Internet via its business listings product, by saying that they are partnering with Mocality and even denigrating Mocality’s business listings product on the calls.
Google may be in the wrong or it may be a company they have outsourced to run Google Kenya. However, has anyone considered the fact that it might be the same people doing this who have $5 million they have to get out of the country from the Nigerian ex-President? Seriously, how many Internet scams come out of Africa? Of course, they’ve never been known to scam those on their own continent, but maybe the scam email market is drying up!
Android Market Reaches 10,000,000,000 Downloads
The Android Market has surpassed 10 billion downloads and to celebrate, they are offering some great premium apps for 10 cents each, but only for 24 hours.
I just downloaded Endomondo Pro and Soundhound Pro for $.10 each. The 10 cent Android apps available as of this writing are the following:
- SoundHound
- Minecraft – Pocket Edition
- SwiftKey X Keyboard
- Endomondo Sports Tracker PRO
- Great Little War Game
- SketchBook Mobile
- Fieldrunners HD
- Color & Draw for kids: phone edition
- Paper Camera
I have never seen such an array of really good apps offered at such a low price and you won’t find a price this low on iTunes, because apparently the minimum price for an app on iTunes is 99 cents. However, some of the app developers are offering their iPhone apps for $.99 to celebrate the Android market event. Kind of ironic, don’t you think?
Related articles
- 10 Billion Android Market Downloads and Counting (android-developers.blogspot.com)
Awesome or Scary?
A lot of really cool things have been coming out of the Google I/O conference this week, one of which is zero-touch near field communication (NFC) in the upcoming version of Android (name Ice Cream Sandwich). Engadget.com has a video of the demonstration where two Android Nexus phones share things with each other without having to press anything or start an app.
On the surface, that’s really cool. You don’t have to wait to fire up an app or wait for someone else to approve your request. However, how easy is it going to be to “pocket share” a web site or your contact information with someone you’re standing next to in line at the store. Or once NFC payments are a reality, how easy is it going to be to accidentally pay for someone else’s purchase or have your credit card information unwittingly shared?