On Bosozokustyle.com we have several advertisement campaigns running and when we don't have anything to show we use Google Adsense to fill up the space. Apparently is does not always work out okay:

Advertising gone wrong on Bosozokustyle.com
I wonder what those Bosozoku would actually think when they saw that particular advertisement next to their zokusha posing picture! ;)

I'm using OpenX (used to be called OpenAds in the past) for months now and just upgraded to the lastest version (OpenX 2.6).
One of the new features is Single Page Call which can improve page load times enormous!

As you can see I use two banners on my blog: a 120x240 in the right sidebar and a 468x15 underneath every first item on each page. This means in the past two invocations should be done to show both ads, one for each ad. Apart from that the loading is done inline: this means the browser will load the banner only at the moment it will reach the point where the banner needs to be on the page and stop rendering the page untill it has loaded everything.

With the Single Page Call all banners on the page will be preloaded in the head of the page, so before showing anything at all. Then when the browser hits the spot where the banner should be it will display the preloaded banner through a short JavaScript. This means the browser will load only one file instead of two and continue rendering the page at spots where ads should be. Of course: if you have more than two banners the effect will be even bigger!

There is only one problem in the setup I use: I use OpenX to manage my Google Analytics ads. So for example: I use a Google Adsense ad under every first item. The OpenX code will be preloaded, but not the Adsense code! This means I will only speed up OpenX and not Google Adsense. Lucky enough that only applies to the 468x15 banner because the 120x240 is my own handiwork. ;)

Today I found this great tool:
http://www.labnol.org/google-adsense-sandbox/

It enables you to view which Adsense banners are shown in certain countries.

The great thing about that is that you can see different targeting per country. For instance: I'm living in The Netherlands which means that my targeting is in the best case some link to Nissan or Toyota dealers. Not a really good targeting IMO.

However if I'm looking at what people from the US receive makes me a bit more happy: "Initial D ringtones", "Nissan Skyline R34 for sale", "Nitrox RC cars". :)

And I just removed the larger Google Adsense banner two days ago in favor for Yesasia.com banners... :(