Wondering whether a certain ad placement, format or colour will be effective on your pages? Run a test to find out. Experimenting with AdSense can help you discover what will work best for your site and channels are the perfect tool for your experiments. Each time you make changes to your site, take advantage of channels to measure and observe the effects. Whether you want to track a specific type of ad placement or an entire site, custom and URL channels will help you determine what will be most successful.

Testing will also help you make smart decisions about your ads. If you are considering implementing one of our other optimisation tips, we encourage you to test it out with channels. The more you test, the better you know the effects of the ads. The better you know the effects of the ads, the faster you will realise your revenue potential.

Tip for channel users: When you create a custom channel, give it a detailed name so that you can easily identify it later in your reports. For example, "ArticleRightWideSkyscraperOpenAir" could represent your wide skyscraper ad unit with the Open Air palette, located on the right-hand side of your article pages.