What’s new? If you want to monetize a site with AdSense advertising, it will need to be added to your AdSense account for review. Before this change, AdSense users could simply add their existing AdSense code to a site without having to set it up as a separate site in their AdSense accounts.
Now, every new site will go through a verification process to check that you own the domain or have the ability to modify its content and to review the site for AdSense policy compliance. When a site gets approved, it will be marked as “ready” in the account and can start displaying AdSense ads. The change applies to new and existing AdSense account holders.
With this update, the My Sites tab in the AdSense interface is getting renamed Sites and will be more prominent in a spot further up the navigation menu.
What you need to do. Most users won’t have to take any action. Some publishers may need to confirm the correct ad code when adding a new site. In those cases, Google says, it will contact account holders via email, so just be sure you’ve got the correct email listed in your account.
Why it matters to marketers. With all the focus on brand safety and Google’s Better Ads Standards participation and implementation over the past couple of years, it’s surprising publishers didn’t already have to go through this verification and review process when adding code to new sites.
The AdSense team says publishers should stay tuned for more updates.
About The Author
Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.