How Do You Make An Adsense Ad Active?

 
My Adsense Ad appears with a status
of new. This is frustrating. How
do you go from New to Active?

Obviously there must be a way to do this.
I've done it before. I must have made
the ad I'm currently running active in
some way because it now has a status
of active.

It seems to me that there is an approval
process but I've forgotten what it is.
I've been waiting over an hour for my ad
to be approved. It is now 5:37 PM on
a Friday and I first created my ad around
4 PM.

Here's someone with the same problem:

ad status does not change
from new to active

OK. It is now 6:24 PM. I think I may
have my answer. It has to do with
medium rectangle versus large rectangle.

I choose the large rectangle because I
thought it would be a better choice.
However, I then did some research to
see what Google itself has chosen for
by Blogger Blog.

It turns out Google has chosen a medium
rectangle even though it would seem that
there is plenty of room for a large
rectangle. Why would they do this?
Must be because medium rectangles are
more effective.

Admittedly, I'm going on very little
evidence here. However, the fact that
Google itself has made this choice of
a medium rectangle instead of a large
rectangle means something to me.

Here's more evidence. I just visited
this page:

Adsense Sandbox

Wow! What a revelation! The sandbox
indicates that the large rectangle is
all grayed out. The medium rectangle
has an ad to display. Does this mean
that large rectangles will not work
on my page given the keywords there?

Possibly. The more I think about it,
the more I think this may be true.
Since my page is only relevant for a
very target-specific keyword, maybe
there are no large rectangle ads that
are ready-to-run and good-to-go. This
is what the above Adsense Sandbox would
seem to indicate.

Here's an opinion to add to the mix.
This guy seems to think that large
rectangles are better. Large rectangles
are 336 by 280:

Best Performing Adsense Ad Size

The above article-writer seems to like
large rectangles best but the guy who
posts a comment below the article seems
to like medium rectangles (300 X 250)
best.

The more I learn, the more inclined I
am to try the medium rectangle. I still
haven't been able to get the large
rectangle to go to an active status.

I think I'll try running both ads on the
same page, one on top of the other. If
the medium-sized rectangle becomes active
but the large-sized rectangle stays inactive,
this will confirm my theory that one of them
has ads to serve and the other does not.

OK. I'm back. It is 8:04 PM. I'm convinced
that the large rectangle ads are not going
to show up.

I've looked at the choices of ads again. I
think I'll forget about rectangles and go
with the square. Why? Because the 250 X 250
square seems to offer the most relevant ad.

I'm learning something new here: Use the
Adsense Sandbox shown above to figure out
which adsize gives the most relevant ads
in terms of the keywords on my page. Will
this translate into higher revenue? I hope
so.

It is now 8:24 PM. I've chosen a new ad
format. I'm going with the square. Let's
see if ads show up for the square.

An odd thing has happened. The square shows
up as an empty square whereas the large rectangle
never showed up with the proper dimensions. Did I
copy the code wrong? I'm not sure. This makes
no sense to me.

How do I know the square is a square? Because I
placed a border around it. The large rectangle
also showed up with the border I placed around it
but the content was collapsed and was not the
correct height but squashed to zero-height content
instead.

OK. It is 8:37 PM. The square ad (250 X 250)
has shown up almost immediately. Not sure if I
did something wrong or if it was the choice of
ad format. In any case, the switch to the square
ad has made it start working almost immediately.

Ed Abbott