At present, Google AdSense does not support ads in password-protected areas. There is hope however that this limitation or restriction would go away.

According to Dave Taylor, the AdSense team is testing out a new capability called Site Authentication. A colleague of his received this invitation from the AdSense team:

You are one of a select group of publishers that has been chosen to try out our new Site Authentication feature. Site Authentication allows publishers to give our crawler access to login-protected content so that users can receive targeted ads. While there is no obligation for you to try out this new feature, you may find it helpful if you have pages of your site protected behind a login screen.

As an example, an online newspaper site may protect content behind a login for premium readers. Without Site Authentication, the publisher can’t show readers targeted ads on those premium pages because our crawler has not been able to access the content. Using Site Authentication, the publisher can now specify details for our crawler to pass the login screen and reach the protected content, allowing AdSense to serve relevant ads to the readers.

I’d think this would be great news for publishers of subscription-based or premium-content sites.

Related posts:

1. Google Wants Feedback on How to Improve Measuring AdSense Success using Google Analytics
2. Create a Google Custom Search Engine and Connect to AdSense
3. The AdSense Code is Amazon.com Bestseller
4. Firefox 2.0 Not Supported by Google AdSense Referrals?
5. New Pricing Structure for AdSense and AdWords Referrals

• Previous Entry: MySpace Bans Affiliate Marketing
• Next Entry: How Much is a Text Link Worth?