By the time you are reading this, you've probably already logged in your account and, if you had by any means clicked "AdSense Setup" tab, you got totally different image, although it looks the same at first.

Now, above there are two "Sub tabs". One is "Get ads" and the other is "Manage ads".

Huh, what the heck does those mean?

Well, it's a brand new feature introduced by Google on November 05 2007, and which finally got out of beta testing (if you are using GMail, tell me, for how long has it been in beta?). So, what does "Get Ads" and "Manage Ads" do?

"Get Ads" is most likely the same as previous "AdSense setup" wizard. You pick size, color, corner shape etc and finally create an ad. However, the code looks different right now. Why is that?

Please click "Read More" to continue reading.

Instead of having all ad properties implemented in code, Google now assigns Slot ID to every ad unit we create. We are also to save that ad unit (you will see later why is that). Now code has smaller number of lines.

Will you finally tell me why is that? 

Take it easy, I was about to do that :) Well, suppose that you've created a new website. And you're about to place AdSense in it. You can't determine the perfect properties instantly - you need to experiment, select different colors, corner roundness etc. When you wanted to change some property, you had to go back through AdSense wizard, change the property, go forward now, copy the code, and replace the old code with new one. It is not as difficult as it is boring. Especially if you do it several times a day - i.e. until you find perfect ad blending.

Things have now changed. Instead of going back through wizard, changing the property and repeating the procedure all over again, you just go to "Manage Ads" sub-tab, select the particular ad you want to manage, click "Change properties" and voila! In some time, the ad unit will change without a need to re-copy and re-paste the code!

This is indeed a useful feature. It saves us, publishers, a lot of time. And time is money :)

However, there are two disadvantages of this: the first one is that it takes 10 minutes for ads to initially appear (for the first time). The second (big one) is that you cannot change ad size - you need to go to "Get Ads" tab if you want to change the size of an ad unit.

An advantage is naming ads. Something like channels, just not tracking-used. Name some ad unit "Forum, 250x250, below first post" and you'll be easier to navigate when you want to change the property of it.