If I read this right, you can now target advertiser ads to particular pages or individual ad units.

Sounds like an improvement to me!

From the Inside Adsense Team:

We wanted to let you know about two recent changes to oursite targeting feature.

As you may know, site targeting allowsadvertisers to select specific publisher sites on which to run their ads. Advertisers can target your site if they’ve determined a match between their offerings and the interests of visitors to your site.

The first change isthat we’ve renamed ’site targeting’ to ‘placement targeting’ to better reflect
the variety of targeting options we offer. Advertisers can still target theirads to an entire site, but they can now also target your individual ad units orgroups of pages based on how you’ve set up ad placements using custom channels.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be updating references to ’sitetargeting’ in your account and in our Help Center.The second change is thatadvertisers can bid on placement-targeted ads (formerly known as site-targetedads) on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.

Previously, advertisers could onlybid on these targeted ads on a cost-per-impression (CPM) basis. Just as withcontextually targeted CPC ads, you’ll generate earnings for valid clicks on placement-targeted CPC ads.

While you can also add the URLs of specificCPC placement-targeted ads to your filter list, please keep in mind that allplacement-targeted ads will participate in the ad auction with contextually
targeted ads. Allowing more ads into the auction will help increase competition and ultimately your revenue.

Finally, we’d like to leave you with a few reminders to help you maximize your revenue potential with placement targeting:

• placements will allow you to highlight specific sections of your site that may
  appeal to advertisers.
• Enable text and image ads for your ad units. By opting in to different ad types on your site, you’ll increase the competition in the ad auction, which can lead to additional revenue for your account over time.
  
• Use the 300×250 Medium Rectangle. This ad format is one of our best-performing ad units, and many advertisers use it when creating rich media (image and video) campaigns. Again, you’ll benefit from the increased competition for your ad space.

Turn your custom channels into ad placements. These ad

By Arlene Lee and Katie Mandel - AdSense Publisher
Support/Product Marketing
Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense
at 11/12/2007 05:40:00 PM

Has anyone tried the Adsense video units yet? Right now it looks a little rich for my budget, but maybe some of the bigger fish in the IM pond have some experience.

From the Inside Adsense Team 11/07/2007 …

Since launching video units to U.S. publishers with English-language websites, we’ve received quite a few emails about this new product. Here are the top 4 questions we’d like to address:

1. I selected “Automated Content” but the videos aren’t relevant to my site. What can I do?

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve implemented a feature to improve content relevance. Before, if you typed in [cars planes taxis], for example, only videos which matched all of
these keywords would be returned. If there were no videos which matched all of these keywords, we delivered a default set of videos from the most popular YouTube partner content.

We’ve modified this so that now [cars planes taxis] will deliver videos which have to do with cars or planes or taxis. This will greatly reduce the likelihood of default popular content being delivered to your units. In general, to refine video targeting with the “Automated Content” setting, you should try different keyword combinations to see what works best.

2. Can I select the individual videos that appear in my video unit?

It isn’t currently possible to select individual videos for your video units. If you’re choosing “Automated Content” for your video unit, you can further refine video targeting by testing different combinations of keywords.

3. I followed your instructions to link my AdSense and YouTube accounts, but my account still shows as “pending”. I haven’t gotten a confirmation email yet.

You might have to manually link your AdSense Account to your YouTube account. To do so please follow the steps below. - Log in to your AdSense account. - Click the “Account Access” link located under the “My Account” tab. - Under “sites”, find “www.youtube.com” and click the “grant access” link.Your AdSense account should now successfully be linked to your YouTube account.

4. Do you offer any other sizes for the video units?

Right now, we only offer the three sizes listed in your account when you generate the ad code — note that the ‘mini’ size is larger than what appears on your code generation
page. We’ll be sure to announce any new sizes and styles as they become available.Please keep in mind that video units are different from click-to-play video ads; while video units contain YouTube partner videos complemented by standard AdSense ads, click-to-play video ads are ads created by AdWords advertisers in video format. At this time, no in-stream video ads will show in your video units.To make changes to your video units or try them out for the first time, visit your AdSense Setup page.

Thanks again for your feedback, and stay tuned for more updates on video units.

Posted by Ryan Hayward - AdSense Product Marketing
– Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 11/07/2007 01:42:00 PM