AdSense Launches Matched Content – Complete Guide

Have you seen recommended articles after post on a blog, which links to other sites on web?

Yeah, that’s a new way to monetize your blog, & quite familiar in many niches.  Earlier I talked about Ayboll (Which is a native advertisement program) and seemed like Google AdSense is planning to launch their native ad network. Undoubtedly native ad networks like Outbrain, Adblade is working great for Publishers like you & me, and also for advertisers.   Let me share with you about latest Matched content ad from Google AdSense.

What is AdSense Matched Content & Would you make money from it?

In Simple word AdSense matched content are related posts after blog post. It’s a free recommendation tool, and it will let you quickly add related post from your domain.

Before you jump with joy, the bad news is: Matched content is not available for everyone. Right now, it’s available for only selected AdSense publishers. Here are the official wordings:

The Matched content feature is not available to all publishers. To be eligible, you must have a site that meets our minimum requirements for traffic volume and number of unique pages. We’ve put these requirements in place to ensure that Matched content provides a great experience for you and your site visitors. Once your site is approved, you’ll have access to the Matched content feature in your AdSense account. Source

I will share the way using it you can check if your site is eligible for this new ad type or not, later in this article.

You might be wondering why I’m calling it as an ad type when it’s just a free content recommendation tool. A reason being is, this started as a recommendation tool, but soon AdSense will let you show ads (Recommended content from other domains) in your own recommended channel. Here is an official Metrics in the Matched content metric family that reveals the same thing:

I have all the reasons to believe, this new ad type will outperform banner ads in many cases in coming days. For now, this is just a free tool as I mentioned above, but if you are eligible, go ahead and try it. You can replace your existing related post widget & start using one offered by AdSense.

Here is how the recommended article would appear:

Important things to know about AdSense recommendation tool:

• Your Site needs to be eligible to place matched content ad types.
• This ad type doesn’t count towards existing ad limit (You can check AdSense ad limit here)
• Matched content supports mobile, web & tablet.

How to Check if your site is eligible for AdSense Matched Content type?

If you want to check your site for Matched content eligibility, follow these simple steps.

• Login to your AdSense account.
• Click on Gear icon at the top & select settings.
• In the sidebar click on Site management.

Here you will see your all owned sites, or you can add sites that you own & is not listed here. Here is a screenshot from my AdSense account.

You might see a column for “Matched content”, click on it and check if your site status is approved or not approved. If your site is not listed under owner tab, click on the unclaimed tab to claim your site. (For this AdSense ads should be live on your site).

If you are lucky one to have matched content approved for your site, you can start with creating new ads. Just select “Matched content” in the ad type. Here are few things to make sure Matched content type words for you:

• Place the ads after blog post.
• Make sure you have an image with every blog post.
• Ensure you are utilizing open graph tag on your blog. (WordPress SEO by Yoast have this feature).

Last words:

It would take few months before this new ad type would be available for everyone. This is the first time AdSense is experimenting with new ad type, and this will undoubtedly add a new revenue stream for bloggers & content producer.

Especially all those viral sites, they are making a huge ton of money using this kind of ads. With AdSense, the best thing I’m hoping to have is quality measures. I will have more data once I will start using it on one of my sites. For now, I would like to know if Matched content AdSense ads are enabled for your site or not? If yes, do share your initial experience & review of this new ad type.