Updated AdSense Manager Plugin: Ad Slot IDs and Rounded Corners

Kaspars — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 06:50:52 +0000

The latest version (2.5) of the very popular and useful AdSense Manager plugin for WordPress by Martin Fitzpatrick doesn’t allow you to use the new ad management features that were recently implemented by Google. Previously you could track the ad performance only by their channel IDs.

Since the November 2007 an additional identifier is available for each of the ad units to which you can assign an explanatory title (for example, 200×200 ads, below article, etc.). These slots are also automatically given a 10 digit ID (like 6567667845) which is assigned to a new variable google_ad_slot inside the ad code.

Theoretically, for displaying an ad you now have to know only your publisher ID and the slot ID, while the rest of the ad’s look and feel can be adjusted through your AdSense account without ever touching the JavaScript which you have placed inside the HTML.

AdSense Manager plugin generates the necessary code for an ad, while you can specify the details of an ad, like text color, border and background color. It is important to mention that using a slot ID doesn’t allow you to change the ad dimensions once you have created it. However, you can always create a new ad unit with desired dimensions through the Adsense account and use the new ID instead.

To summarize the recent changes — you are now able to alter the look & feel of the ads through your AdSense account without touching the ad code. There is also a new visual feature — rounded ad corners.

To use these features also on my blog, I have updated AdSense Manager plugin to include these updates, and release it as an unofficial 2.6 version of this amazing plugin.

AdSense Manager 2.6

I have updated the original 2.5 version of Adsense Manager with the following features:

Ability to use ad unit slot ID instead of channel ID, and thus make better use of recent AdSense Ad Management improvements.
Added support for the new user interface features — rounded corners: square corners, slightly rounded corners, and very rounded corners

Download AdSense Manager 2.6

Download adsense-manager.zip (95 KB). For installation instructions please see the corresponding WordPress plugin page.

Useful information

Read the Google Help Center information: Managing AdSense Units. Here is a suggested use for AdSense Manager and your AdSense account:

Google AdSense Account

Create new ad units (ad slots)
Assign channels for each ad unit (slot)
Adjust ad style of an existing unit.
You will not be able to adjust the dimensions (and type) of an ad that has been previously created. Simply create a new one and specify the new slot ID in your AdSense Manager.

AdSense Manager

Configure the look&feel of the ads through AdSense Manager, but create the ads through AdSense Account (to get the Ad Slot ID).
Use only the channel feature (no ad unit slots) for tracking your ad performance, and thus have full control over the look&feel and the size of your ads through the AdSense Manager plugin.

Found a bug, got suggestions?

Please, leave your bug reports that could be possibly related to the functionality changes described above in the comments. Your suggestions are always welcome.

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