As you've no doubt seen elsewhere, Google has started to include textual descriptions of the channel tracking IDs in the generated JavaScript for AdSense. This raises a number of privacy concerns for publishers. Since the channel IDs were private before, many publishers have used very descriptive names for the channels, names that all of a sudden they may not want exposed. If you're concerned by this new data exposure, my advice is to simply remove the offending line from the generated code. Yes, technically this would break the AdSense terms and conditions, but I can't see why they'd go after publishers who do this. After all, pre-existing AdSense code without the channel description is perfectly valid. I don't always go to the control panel to generate my code, after all, I often just copy over previously-generated code and make a few alterations by hand — with the end result always being valid, could-be-generated code. This situation is very similar.

Of course, most publishers probably use fairly innocent tracking IDs, so they may not care. There are already some privacy issues surrounding the publisher ID itself that if the search engines ever start searching JavaScript will make it very easy to link sites together that would otherwise be apparently unrelated. And if you use other ad programs like Chitika that expose plain-text tracking IDs then this is all old hat to you already.

Please don't think I've abandoned you, but my family and I are in New Brunswick, where we are sorely distracted. Waiting for someone to die is not fun, and it's not something you want to wish on anyone.

Not to mention that I'm relegated to a 56K connection, making it hard to do all those simple Internet things I'm used to doing. Right now my mail program is on message 469 out of 2263 waiting to be downloaded… should be done in another hour! So if you sent me mail, don't expect to hear back from me for a while…

It's been a while since a new ad format's been introduced, but if you login to your console today you'll see a message announcing a new format. Unfortunately, the link they give you doesn't work, and the ad formats page hasn't been updated yet, but look in the drop-down list of formats and you'll see the new “200 x 200 Small Square” format. If you manually change your AdSense code, this is what you change:

google_ad_width = 200;
google_ad_height = 200;
google_ad_format = "200x200_as";

The small square format supports images and videos or shows two text ads (and hopefully always two text ads). To see what it looks like, visit this page — it's half-way down the page. I like the look of this new ad unit because it's just the right width, it reminds me of the 234 x 60 half-banner that way.

Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?