Long Awaited Google AdSense for Bahasa Indonesia Finally Launched

Google has recently launched its Bahasa-language option under the AdSense advertising network. Currently under beta, the new language option was launched in Febraury 2, and now publishers running websites and mobile sites can reach out to their audience through contextually-targeted advertisements in Bahasa Indonesia.

Indonesia has the biggest number of AdSense publishers in the Asia Pacific region, and yet  support for Indonesian-language content has been long awaited . With the launch, an expected 150,000 advertisers and advertising networks are expected to advertise their products and services in Bahasa. Google says this effort’s intended results are twofold .First, AdSense-supported sites in the local language will have more appeal with local advertisers and visitors, as well. The move is also expected to increase Googles’s advertising revenue from the region.

Rapid Growth in Indonesia

Among the factors that pushed Google to support Bahasa Indonesia is the rapid growth of advertisers — as well as publishers — in the country. Bahasa Indonesia is the fifth localized language supported in the Asia Pacific region, after Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai. Obviously, ads in the vernacular will be more relevant for website users in the region. Likewise, publishers and marketers will be able to focus on the local audience by displaying ads in their own language.

This is the second major move that Google AdSense made for the Indonesia market, after launching its Indonesian Twitter account in June last year. The account pushes updates where publishers can find out best practices and optimization techniques in maximizing their revenue. There is a special week every month where Twitter users can ask questions about certain topics being discussed.

With AdWords and AdSense, publishers get paid by displaying targeted and contextual Google ads on custom search results pages or their own websites. The ads can be easily customized to match with the sites’ look-and-feel. Meanwhile, revenues and campaigns can be tracked with user-friendly online reports. To tackle unwanted ads, Google has an experienced editorial team, and filtering technology is also provided.

While initially launched as an English-onlys service, publishers of all sizes can now select their sites’ primary language during the application process. If approved, AdSense will serve relevant ads to their pages in the appropriate language, even if the site contains multiple supported languages. Be mindful that placing AdSense code on pages with content primarily in an unsupported language is not permitted by their program policies.

Local Competition

Since not many local-language sites were being approved prior to the launch of AdSense in Bahasa Indonesia, local companies have decided to venture into the industry. Nuffnang is now one of the leading Asian advertisement networks heavily targeting Asian countries like Malaysia, Singapore, China, the Philippines, Australia and Hong Kong. The blog advertisement community has gained traction from two million Malaysian users earning ad revenue on a daily basis. For many Asians, Nuffnang is a recognized name especially among bloggers and webmasters, and seen as the next Google Adsense alternative. Those bloggers and webmasters who have huge traffic from Asian countries are faintly recommended to use it.

Last but not least, even though Google does not say how much share its AdSense partners will receive and we can’t determine the payout rates of the advertisements, it is still one of the best tools for publishers and advertisers wanting to monetize their websites and promoting their products and services.