Here’s a quick tip for Google AdSense users: Make sure to specify an alternate ad to be used in case Google can’t find an ad that matches your content. If Google can’t find appropriate ads to show on your site based on the context, what will appear are public service ads or PSA’s. These are fine if you’re okay with that, but if you’d like to more fully monetize your site, consider using alternate ads.

To set up alternate ads, you have to specify a web address or URL when setting up your AdSense ads. Try to match the size of the alternate ad to the size of your AdSense ad. This will make sure the layout of your page doesn’t get messed up if it has to be displayed.

Keep in mind that Google requires an absolute URL for this link. You may have to create an html page with just one advertisement of the correct size on it. This is easy. All you have to do is create a text document with an extension of .htm or .html and then cut and paste the ad code into it.

One last important thing to remember: Don’t use another type of contextual advertising as your alternate ad. You most likely have more than one Google AdSense ad on your page and it would violate Google’s Terms of Service to have any other contextual advertising on the same page.