Adsense vs Google Ad Manager – Everything You Need to Know

It can be confusing when you are trying to understand Google products for your publishing needs. The confusion can be attributed to very similar sounding names of the products or overlapping functionalities of different products. For instance, Adsense and Ad Manager, they both deliver ads, they are both connected to demand sources, they can be used together and they can also be used without each other. Why is that the case? In this blog, we’ll try to understand the difference between the two.

What is AdSense?

Adsense is an ad network. It is a “plug and play” solution for small publishers where you just have to paste a code on your website and the ads start to deliver. There is no minimum traffic requirement for Adsense and therefore almost every publisher can access it with a website and a few articles.

In Adsense, the demand mostly comes from Google Ads and other Google Certified Ad Networks(GCAN). Google Ads is an advertising platform mostly used by small and mid-sized businesses. These businesses have smaller budgets and very narrow, keyword-based contextual targeting, in short, their demand is minuscule when compared to global advertisers. This is why Adsense allows you to enroll in its program even when you’ve very little supply of inventory.

What is Google Ad Manager?

To understand the Google Ad Manager, you’ve to see it through two different perspectives:

• As an Ad Server
• As a Supply Side Platform

Google Ad Manager as an Ad Server

An ad server is a piece of technology that is responsible for managing and serving the ads to the user. The decision to serve the ads is done in real-time. As an Ad Server, Google Ad Manager helps publishers choose and deliver the appropriate ads based on various targeting criteria set for different campaigns.

But, delivering ads isn’t the only function of an ad server. As we said earlier, publishers can manage and control the campaigns with it. The publishers and advertisers want to know how the campaigns are performing, therefore,The ad server also provides insights into ad performance via its reporting features. Google Ad Manager performs these functions as well.

Google Ad Manager as a Supply Side Platform

Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) are intermediary platforms that connect publishers to multiple demand partners simultaneously. Google Ad Manager functions similarly to an SSP, it goes beyond just serving ads and managing campaigns. It allows publishers to open their inventory to multiple ad networks and ad exchanges, including AdSense, creating a competitive environment among demand sources that ultimately drives up revenue.

This competition works through an auction system. When an ad impression becomes available, demand partners bid on it based on how likely it is to result in a conversion, whether that's a sale, signup, lead generation, or another goal. Each bidder is incentivized to outbid the others, which drives bids higher and means the publisher earns more for each impression.

To further maximize revenue, Google Ad Manager offers additional yield optimization tools such as Dynamic Allocation, First Look, and Optimised Competition.

AdSense Vs Ad Manager

Based on their primary functionalities, the differences between Adsense and Google Ad Manager are evident:

Suitability
AdSense is best suited for smaller publishers who are just starting out and don't yet need granular control over ad delivery. If your site is pulling in somewhere between 100K–500K pageviews, AdSense is likely enough. Ad Manager, on the other hand, is built for publishers who need to manage multiple campaigns and demand sources across their site.

Multiple Networks
AdSense works as a standalone solution; publishers can simply add its code to their site and be up and running. But if you want to bring in demand from sources beyond AdSense, you'll need Ad Manager. In that setup, AdSense becomes just one of several ad networks integrated into your site.

Direct Deals
If advertisers haven't started approaching you directly yet, AdSense is perfectly adequate. Once you begin receiving direct campaign requests, however, Ad Manager becomes necessary to manage and serve those deals properly.

Reporting
Publishers in the early stages who aren't working with direct demand partners can get by with AdSense's basic reporting. For publishers generating meaningful revenue, though, Ad Manager's granular reporting becomes essential — at that scale, even small performance improvements can translate into significant income gains.

Inventory Type
AdSense only supports standard web ads, so it works fine for publishers running ads on websites alone. If your inventory spans web, apps, connected TV, or other platforms, you'll need Ad Manager to handle that range.

Google Ad Manager with an AdX account

What we discussed above were just the basic differences between AdSense and Google Ad Manager. But when you have an AdX account then the capabilities of GAM increase further:

Programmatic Direct Deals
You can use GAM to send and receive proposals for direct deals programmatically. You can check, approve, or reject the proposals coming from advertisers at a single place. There are no such arrangements in Google Adsense.

Real-time Bidding
Most of the demand from Adsense is based on pre-set criteria by the advertisers, through Google Ads. Whereas GAM can help you connect with demand sources that use real-time bidding.

Real-time bids come from trading desks that are more advanced than Google Ads. The bids are based on real-time data of the users, hence the ads are more relevant with higher conversion rates. The advertisers using the trading desks are also large-scale buyers. Due to the bigger demand and targeted ads the revenue is higher when advertisers are bidding for your inventory in real-time.

Private Auctions
After signing the direct deals with the advertisers, you can hold private auctions among them to sell your premium inventory at premium rates. Since Adsense doesn’t conduct real-time bidding, private auctions aren’t possible with it.

Floor Price
Google Ad Manager allows you to set a minimum price of your inventory. By setting a floor price, you can improve your revenue and maintain the quality of ads on your site. When the floor price is set, you restrict the advertisers to stop buying the ad inventories at lower costs. By doing so, you also stop the low-quality ads that are generally targeted at sub-par inventory. Whereas with Adsense, you’ve to accept whatever rates you are getting.

Don’t have AdX access? We can help you.

Google Ad Manager with Header Bidding

As we mentioned earlier, while Google Ad Manager can be used to integrate demand from multiple demand partners, it can also be used with header bidding. A Header Bidding wrapper can be configured with Google Ad Manager to receive real-time bids from various supply-side platforms to increase your revenue. 

The two variants of Google Ad Manager

There are two versions of GAM. The first is the free version with no minimum traffic requirements, and the other one is called Ad Manager 360. The premium version requires you to have a minimum traffic of 90M. Billing is done on an impression basis. The premium version provides you additional features on top of the free version. Here are some of those features:

• Tracking the user activity with the ads to track conversions.
• Creation of audience segments based on first-party data.
• Creation of Master/companion roadblocks to control which creative appears first in your content.
• Forecasting under-delivery of ads due to lack of inventory.
• 5 level ad unit hierarchy, the free version supports only 2 levels.
• Autosuggestion for ad units to help you increase your revenue.
• The ability to create special ad units so that they are targeted only by the explicit line-items chosen by you.

In a Nutshell:

Conclusion

AdSense and Ad Manager each serve a different stage of a publisher's growth. AdSense is the right starting point, there's no minimum traffic requirement, making it accessible to virtually any publisher. Once your site grows to the point where you're working with multiple demand partners or receiving direct deals, it's time to move to Ad Manager. Ad Manager works seamlessly alongside AdSense, AdX, and Header Bidding, so you don't have to give up any existing demand sources as you scale. And when your monthly impressions exceed the free tier limit (90 million for publishers in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, or 200 million for publishers in Europe and Asia) you'll graduate to Ad Manager 360, Google's enterprise-level solution.