AdSense is an advertising program from Google, also known as Google AdSense. What this program does is match the providers’ need for advertising with the consumers’ need to see. As Internet usage grows at a rapid pace and more and more commerce moves online, there are hungry advertisers who are simply willing to get their promotions in front of the right people.

Basically, there are two types of traffic available on the Internet, untargeted and targeted. Untargeted traffic is just a waste of time, there are no two ways about it. These are people who simply stumbled upon your promotion while searching for something unrelated to what you offer. They may just look at it and just move on.

Targeted traffic, on the other hand, is what every advertiser and marketer dreams of and seeks. This traffic is actually looking for what you have to offer and when they come across your promotion, they are very likely to follow through by clicking and taking further action.

Google AdSense shows ads on websites that have signed up for the program and then turned on AdSense. These ads are text, image, video or rich media based. So how does this really work?

Let’s say you want to search for something on Google and you type your keyword/keyphrase in the search box. A site appears that you think contains what you’re looking for. If this site has AdSense turned on, as soon as you open it, you’ll see ads, usually on the side panels of the website or even at the bottom of posts, which are surprisingly apt for you.

The content of these square or rectangular shaped ads is determined by a number of factors including your location and browsing history. This ad targeting is what makes them so smart.

This form of promotion is also known as contextual advertising, as it will display content that is in the context of what interests you. It is also the form of advertising that advertisers are really looking for, as it matches the right content with the right target consumer, that is, it gets targeted traffic for the provider. When this happens, both the seller and the consumer are happy because they have both found what they were looking for.

AdSense is big business for Google. In 2011, it accounted for 28% of Google’s revenue, which is $2.43 billion.

You too can take advantage of this huge market by applying for an AdSense account for your website. Once approved, all you need to do is choose which ad dimension you’d like to display and ‘voila!’ your ads will start appearing shortly after. You will be paid by performance, which is the number of clicks made on these ads. Google determines how much is converted to monetary value, but you can see all your performance statistics on the Google AdSense website.

The earning potential of Google AdSense is huge, but you need a relatively high traffic site(s). It has been reported that some people gain access to $100,000 a year from AdSense alone.

Don’t be tempted to cheat the system by clicking on your AdSense ad multiple times in the hope of accelerating your earnings. Google is smart and has systems in place to identify exactly this form of click fraud. If you are found out, you will likely get banned and then it will be hard for you to get back on the show.

I have prepared a mini course on AdSense that is free. See my resource box below for more details.

Google AdSense campaigns are a great addition to your online home-based business. For the success of your AdSense campaign!