According to a note sent to publishers based in mainland China, Google has announced that Adsense ads when clicked on will open the advertiser’s site in a new window. As a move that appears to bring the Adsense program along the specific particularities of the Chinese market (where it is usual for popular portals to open new pages on new windows, and where pop ups continue to be widely used), the reason provided was to allow users to remain on publishers sites even after clicking an ad (which will therefore appear in a new windows), not forcing them to use the Back button as it has been the case previously (and still the case out of China, I assume).

The new function should definitely benefit publishers in two ways:
1-There should be an increase of clicks to different ads from a single page.
2-The system may have been not counting as valid some of the clicks which were immediately followed by a “Back” button click to the initial page. It should not be the case now.
3-The rate of users accidentally leaving the publisher’s site should go down as well

Users experience should improve as well as they can take more time to visit advertisers sites if interested, not worrying about the site they came from since it is still available in the original window.

Advertisers may see a declining ROI under the new scheme, but overall if the users are happy and click more it should bring a higher volume of visits to their sites.

Below a copy of the email (which we received as Adsense publisher on January 10th)

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