Google Rolls Out 'Advertise' Link to AdSense

Google is officially launching what it calls "Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up," letting AdSense publishers encourage advertisers to deploy campaigns on their sites.

The feature, which was tested as early as September, automatically adds an "Advertise on this site" link to the ad units that AdSense publishers display. When potential advertisers click, they're taken to a Google-hosted page that can be customized by the publisher. That page lets advertisers either sign up for a new AdWords account or add a site-targeted campaign to their existing account. Site-targeted campaigns can use image ads and are sold on a CPM basis.

"Both of them [new and existing advertisers] can, though a streamlined process, create a campaign specifically for that publisher's site," Satya Patel, product manager at Google, told ClickZ. "We expect that for publishers it will increase the number of advertisers that are competing at auction for their inventory and drive incremental revenue to them."

Publishers can opt out of displaying the "Advertise on this site" link if they so choose. Currently, they can only customize one landing page per AdSense account even if they operate several sites.

The new feature comes as Google's AdSense program begins to compete with Yahoo's publisher network offering for smaller sites.