WebProNews

Google wants to lower the barrier to entry for new bloggers who want to place contextual ads on their blogs.

Google has placed a new tool in their Blogger offering. A new option under the Template tab will let bloggers click on it to place AdSense within their sites. New users can sign up from within Blogger while existing AdSense account holders can just sign in from there.

Once the sign-in process has been completed, a preview of the site showing how it will look with ads appears. Users can select from different ad formats via a dropdown box at the top of the page.

The color of the AdSense block can be changed. It defaults to matching the site's template, an option most people will probably keep since it makes the ads resemble the site's content, and that could lead to more clicks. Users can choose to "blend" the color scheme with the template, or select or create distinct color schemes.

It's a sensible change for Google to include this option. Users don't have to manually place the AdSense code, which can be a bit tricky for those who don't know basic HTML. And Google gets more ads placed, which can only help its revenue stream in the future.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.