preferring to stick with the default settings. Big mistake! From my own
experience I can tell you that it’s like swapping a hundred-dollar bill for a
ten-dollar one.
For almost one year I settled for just a tenth of what I could have been
making — just because I didn’t bother to control the looks and placement of
my AdSense ads.
The various ad formats, colors and their placement on th e web page can be
done in thousands of combinations. You can literally spend hours every day
experimenting with every possi ble combination. But you don’t want to, do
you?
Let me give you a few ‘ground rules’ that have sky-rocketed the CTRs on my
top-grossing pages:
3.2 Don't "Loo k" Like An Ad
People don't visit your website for ads. They w ant good content.
If you make the ads stick out w ith eye-popping colors, images or borders,
that makes them easy to recognize as ads — and people w ork extra hard to
avoid them.
The same goes for ads that are tucked away in the top, bottom or some
other far corner of the page. So easy to ignore!
If you want people to click, make the ads look like an integral part of your
content.
Today's visitors are blind to banners, mad at pop-ups, weary of ads and
skeptical of contests and giveaways. So how do you win their confidence?
Simple. Don't make your ads look like ads!
Let’s begin by reviewing each of the different types of ad available from
AdSense and explaining their uses... then I’ll introduce you to a few simple
choices that zoomed my CTRs to incredible heigh ts.
3.3 Meet the AdSe nse Family
Google serves its ads in several flavors, with each of those flavors coming in
a range of different shapes and sizes. It is very important to understand the
differences between each of these ads. Some are ideal for particular
locations. Some should never be used in certain locations. And some should
be used very rarel y—if at all.
The sample page at www.google.com/adsense/adformats
lets you see all of the different kinds of ads at once. It even has links to sample placements that demonstrate h ow the ads can be used.
For the most part, I’d recommend that you ignore those sample placements.
I’ll talk about l ocation in more detail later in the book, but for now just bear
in min d that many of the ads in the samples are just too out of the way to be
noticed.
You can use them as a starting point if you want but you’ll save yourself a lot
of time — and money — by taking advantage of the experience of myself and
others, and following the recommendation s here.
3.4 Text Ads — Google’s Finest
Text ads are probably the types of ad that you’re most familiar with. You get
a box containing one or a number of ads with a linked headline, a brief description and a URL . You also get the “Ads by Google” notice that appears
on all AdSense ads. (Google changed this notice recently and it now blends in
much better than it used to.)
There are eight different types of text ad. The most popular is probably the
leaderboard. At 728 x 90, it stretches pretty much across the screen and
while it can be placed anywhere, it’s mostly used at the top of the page,
above the main text.
That’s a great location. It’s the first thing the reader sees and it offers a good
selection of ads to choose from. When you’re just starting out and still
experimenting with the types of ads that work best with your users, it’s a
pretty good default to begin with.
Of course, you can put it in other places too. Putting a leaderboard ad
between forum entries for example can be a pretty good strategy sometimes
and definitely worth trying. On the whole though, I think you’ll probably find
that one of the smaller ads, such as a banner or half-banner might blend in
more there and bring better results.
And I think you can often forget about putting a l eaderboard at the bottom of
the page, despite what Google’s samples show you. It would certainly fit
there but you have to be certain that people are going to reach the bottom of
the page, especially a long page. You might find that only a small minority of
readers wou ld get that far, so you’re already reducing the percentage of
readers who would click through.
Overall, I’d say that leaderboards are most effective blended into the top of
the page beneath the navigation bar and sometimes placed between forum
entries.
Banne rs(468 x 60) and half-banners(234 x 60) are much more flexible.
Like leaderboards you can certainly put these sorts of ads at the top of the
page, and lots of sites do it. Again, that’s something worth trying. You can
put up a leaderboard for a week or so, swap it for a banner for another week
or so, and compare the results.
But at the top of the page, I’d expect the leaderboard to do better.
A banner or a half-banner w ould leave too much space on one side and make
the ad stand ou t. It would look li ke you’ve set aside an area of the page for
advertising instead of for content. That would alert the reader that that
section of the page is one that they can just ignore.
When you’re looking for an ad to put in the middle of the page though, a
half-banner can be just the ticket.
While a leaderboard will stretch over the sidebars of your site, just like the
navigation bar, a 2 34 x 60 half-banner w ill fit neatly into the text space on
most sites.
This sort of ad should be your default option for the en d of articles and the
bottom of blog entries.
But for the most part, stay away from the 468 x 60 banner ad block!
One of the first things people do wh en they sign up for AdSense is to grab a
468 x 60 ad block.
Big mistake.
I have a theory about why they do this. It’s the same theory that explains
why the 468 x 60 block does not entice clicks.
Most site owners have the mindset that when they put Google ads on their
site, they must place the code that conforms most to traditional web
advertising. And that would be...? Yup, the 468 x 60, the ubiquitous bann er
format that we have all come to know and love and... IGNORE.
Everyone is familiar with the 468 x 60. And that’s exactly why the click-
through rate on this size is very low , even among advertisers who use
images on their banners.
The 468 x 60 blocks screams, " Hey! I am an advertisement! Whatever you
do, DON'T click me. In fact, you should run from me as fast as you can!"
In all but a few special cases, I have found the 468 x 60 ad block to be
completely ineffective, and recommend ignoring it the same way your visitors
do.
Now, that doesn’t mean you can never use it. You just have to know w hat you’re doing and do it smartly. You have to do everything you can to make
sure that that ad block looks absolutely nothing like a traditional banner ad.
At my site, WorldVi llage.com, I’ve done that by su rrounding the ad with text.
Because there’s no border around the unit, th e ads blend into the text and
look almost as they’re a part of the article.
If I had left that unit in the middle of some empty space — at the top of the
page for example — it would have looked exactly like the sort of banner that
users have trained themselves to avoid. It wouldn’t have picked up any clicks
at all.
(Note, I could probably have used a half-banner here too but in general, I
like to give my users as wide a choice of ads to click as possible. )
While this use of a 468 x 60 works for me — and it can work for you too if
you blend it into the page properly — I’d stick to other formats, like the, half-
banner if you’re not 100 percent sure that you can pull it off.
When this ad unit fails, it can fail big.
Google also offers six different kinds of rectangular ads:
buttons(125 x 125), small rectangles (180 x 150), medium rectangles(300 x 250), large rectangles(336 x 280), and two sizes of squares 250 x 250 and 200 x 200.
In fact, all of th e rectangles can be slotted into the same spots on the page...
with the exception of the button.
Probably the most common use of rectangles is at the beginning of articles.
You can wrap the text around the ad, forcing the reader to look at it if he
wan ts to read the article. That’s very effective.
But you can really put these sorts of ads anywhere on the page. On my site,
DealOfDay.com, I’ve put tw o rectangular ads righ t at the top of the page so
that they take up the bulk of the space the user sees before he starts to
scroll. That’s a very aggressive approach that might not w ork on every site.
It’s w orth trying though because if it works for you , you can find that it
brings in great revenues.
If you’re wondering which size of ad wou ld be best for the position you’ve got
in mind, my advice is to start with the large rectangle, the 336 x 280.
Why should you choose the 336 x 280 ad block? Simple. It gets the most
clicks! My studies have show n that this format looks most like real content
added to a page. I’ve dabbled with every size Google offers and this is the
size that consi stently has the best results. Other people have told me the
exact same thing. Th at’s all I need to know!
Second best is the 300 x 250 rectangle.
This ad block si ze is really usefu l wh en you want to have two sets of ads side
by side. They fit on most web pages just perfectly.
Buttons should generally be used in a different way to other rectangles. Like the half-banners, they’re distinctive for their small size. Wh ile th at means you could slot them in anywhere, I think they work best when slipped into
the sidebars.
For example, you might have a list of links to frequently-read articles or
other sites on one side of your page. Putting a button ad at the end of a list
like that could help it to blend in well.
The final types of text ads are those that run verticall y. These come in three
sizes: skyscraper (120 x 600), wide skyscraper (160 x 600) and vertical banner (120 x 240).
Clearly, these are useful options for filling up the sides of the page.
I would also recommend using the 'w ide skyscraper', text-only ads on the
right hand edge of the screen — in conjunction with the 3-Way Matching I
discuss later in the book.
If you think about it, nearly al l PC users are right handed ( even left-handed
people li ke me control their mouse with th eir right hand because it's how we
were 'brought up' to use a mouse.) By placing the ads on the right han d
edge it's psychologically 'less distance' between your right hand and the
screen.
This 'closeness' in my opinion makes th e user feel more comfortable and
therefore more likely to click through to a link. They feel more in control of
their visit experience.
On the whole, you can often divide sites into those that have plenty of
content at the sides (especially on some blogs), and those that have nothing
on the sides (like at J oelComm.com).
I think putting vertical ads in space so that they form the border of the main
text makes the page look a lot cleaner. But that doesn’t necessarily mean
that they’re goin g to get more clicks. If you’re puttin g a vertical banner in an
area where you have other content then just make su re, as always, that you
blend them in well so that they look like the rest of your content.
3.5 Image Ads — Built To Be Ignored
Text ads should always be your first pick when you start to load up your site.
Image ads should always be your last choice.
A text ad offers many advantages over image ads:
A. With the right formatting, a text ad 'blends in' with your site
content. An image ad will not give you the same freedom w ith its
appearance, as the only thing you can play with is the size and
posi tioning.
B. You can squeeze more text ads into the space that a conventional banner takes. People love to have more choices!
C. Properly formatted text ads don't look like clutter. Bann ers do!
D. People hate banners and avoid them at sight. Many tests con firm that peopl e are much more receptive to text ads related with your content.
I just can’t think of a reason why anyone w ould want to take an image ad
from Google. Text ads perform so much better, in my opini on, you’re better
off sticking with those and ignoring image ads altogether.
3.1 Ad Formats: “Dress” your ads for success!
This banner ad stands out, but will it get clicked? Dave Taylor, best-sel li ng
technology writer and AdSense partner, stands up for text ads in this article at: http: / /ww w.free-web -money.com/000449.html You can read more of his AdSense articles on this page.
3.6 Video Ads
There is however, one type of image ad that you should welcome on your
website: Google’s video ads.
These are an excel lent addition to Google’s inventory and for si tes th at get
them, they can bring very impressive returns.
Instead of receivi ng the sort of stati c image that just gets ignored, you’ll
recei ve the opening still of an online video. The video is stored on Google’s
servers so your downl oad times won’t be affected, and it only plays when the
user clicks the Play button, minimizing distraction to the user.
That’s a good thin g. If a user’s eyes keep drifting to a moving image wh en
he’s trying to read your content, he’s going to get pretty frustrated and not
wan t to come back.
And it’s fine too i f you’re being paid on a CPM basis; you won’t care then how
often someone sees the video. But you’re not always paid on a CPM basis;
you might also be paid on a CPC basis.
Unlike Google’s other ad formats though, you won’t be paid for just one click.
Users first have to click the Play button—which won’t pay you a dime—and
then click either the screen while it’s playing or the link underneath the
screen before you’ll earn money.
In fact, you can’t even track the number of times the film is shown.
(Althou gh that does mean that you can watch the film yourself without
getting rude messages from Google, and it also means that CPC advertisers
are less likely to get free branding at the expense of your page space.)
That extra step might sound like it’s going to hit your clickthrough rate for
that ad u nit but I’m not sure that’s true.
As soon as someone sees a button anywhere, they want to click it. In fact,
I’m sure th at if you put a big notice next to the Pl ay button saying, “DO N OT
PU SH THIS BUTTON” you can be sure th at your clicks would go through the
roof. (But don’t try it; i t’s unlikely that Google will appreciate it.)
People will want to click that Play button, and many of them will want to
learn more about the company that created the ad. And even if your CTR
does drop for that unit, it’s likely that the click price for video ads will be
higher than for other units competing for that space.
Video ads are more expensive to create than text or image ads. That’s why
they tend to be created by big companies li ke car giants or Disney. They
might even be offering their televi sion ads. If those corporations have gone
to the trou ble creating an original video ad or formatting a televi sion ad for
the Web, there’s a great chance that they’ll go to the trouble of outbidding
their nearest rival for exposure.
If you’re getting a video ad, track how long it appears on that page
and compare the revenues it brings with the days on which no video
ad appeared. You should expect to see a spike in earnings.If you don’t
see that spike, you can always opt out.
Unlike text or image ads though, there’s no guarantee you’re going to get a
video ad. To qualify, you have to be opted in to receive image ads on an ad
unit in one of these sizes:
• Medium Rectangle (300x250)
• Large Rectangle (336x280 )
• Square (2 50x250)
• Small Squ are (2 00x200)
• Leaderboard (28x90)
• Skyscraper (120x600)
• Wide Skyscraper (160x600)
(It’s w orth noting that with video ads, the bigger the format, the better the
results).
If you’re recei ving those kinds of image ads and AdSense has a video ad to
match you r content, you might receive one.
But what if you don’t? You’ll be receiving the sort of image ads that earn a
poor clickthrough rate. That would cost you money.
There are two things that you can do to minimize any losses from fishi ng for
video ads and not gettin g them.
The first is to stop fishing fast. If a w eek has gone by and your image ad unit
hasn’t acquired a Play button, it’s probably not going to. So turn that image
ad back into a text ad.
The second is to follow the strategy I use at DealofDay.com. I’ve placed two rectangular ads at the top of the page to make the m unmissable but one of them is an image ad.
Google no longer allows publishers to place related images right next to ad
units to draw attention to them but you can put an i mage ad next to a text
ad. If that image ad becomes a video ad, you’re going to earn more money.
If it stays an image ad, it’s going to pull eyes into your ad zone.
This is about the only time I can think of when an image ad might be better
than a text ad.
And when you do get video ads, there are also a couple of things that you
can do to make the most of them...
Adding video to your Web pages for example, is a breeze. There are millions
of clips available for free use on the Web, and there’s nothing to stop you
from shooting your own short.
If your site regularly receives a video ad from AdSense, placing one
or two more videos on those pages would help the ad blend into the
site and increase clicks.
You could also encourage advertisers to build their own video ads specifically
for your site. In Chapter 6, I talk about Google’ s “Advertise on this site”
feature and recommend that you make use of the landing page to help
advertisers create effective ads for your site. You could also add a line or two
there about video ads.
Video ads are still fairly new on AdSense, but I’m real ly excited about them. I
think we’re going to be seein g a lot more of them in the future and they’re
going to really prove their worth.
3.7 Gadget Ads — Clever But Are They Effective?
I’m optimistic about video ads. I’m not sure yet about Gadget ads.
These are rich media ads that might contain animation, Flash games and
interactive content. At the moment advertisers are big brands li ke Coca-Cola
and I suspect it’s likely to stay that way. Ads like these cost a lot more to
design and program than a text ad, a graphic ad or even a home-made video
ad.
They can pay by impression or by click but I’m skeptical that you’ll get many
clicks. An early test showed that only a third of one percent of viewers
actually interacted with the ad.
The problem is that they just look too much like ads. Most users have learnt
to ignore them.
If you do want to test them though, you’ll need to opt in to receive image
ads. Apparently the most popular sizes for gadgets are rectangles,
leaderboards and skyscrapers.
Some ads might do well — such as those for movies or which have an
attractive built-in game — but on the whole, I expect you’ll find that a w ell-
blended text ad unit will do better.
3.8 Link Units — Great Little Stocking Fillers
An ad format that has already proved its worth, when used correctl y, is link
units.
If you’ ve ever bough t Christmas presents for children, you’ve probably
bought stocking fillers. You dole out hundreds of bucks on some state-of-the-
art electronic gizmo, toss in a couple of toy cars that cost a dollar each just
to fill up space and give the kid more to unwrap... then watch him spend 90
percent of his time pl aying with the car that cost 10 percent of your total gift
budget.
Ad Link units have the potential to be equally profitable.
They’re very small, almost unnoticeable... but when used well, they can be
extremely effective.
Ad Link units let you place a box on your site that contains four or five links.
They come in sizes ranging from 20 x 90 to 200 x 90, and are really meant
to be placed on a sidebar.
Because you can place both Ad L ink units as well as other ad units on th e
page, you might find that the choice helps: if a u ser doesn’t spot something
interesting in one type of ad block, he might spot it on another.
Where Ad Links differ from other types of ads is that they only display a list
of topics that Google believes are relevant to the con tent of your pages. They
don’t display the ads themselves. When a visitor clicks on a topic, Google
pops up a new window with targeted ads.
It can be argued that the Ad Links are ineffective becau se like video ads,
people have to go through two clicks in order for you to get paid. That’s
right, once again, you’re only getting pai d for the second click (but that does
mean you can check to see which ads your users are being served.)
How would you like your ads served? Banners? Skyscrapers? Rectangles? Squares? What about borders and background colors? But it can also be argued that if someone is
taking the time to click on a topic, then they are probably very in terested in the link, an d are likely to click an actual adverti sement on the resulting page. Some people h ave found that just about everyone who clicks on an Ad Link w ill click on the ads that appear on the next page. I have tested Ad Links on multiple sites and
have seen vast differences i n results. That makes it more difficult to say whether or not they are for you.
The results were nothing to write home about. Let's just say that you could just
about buy a large candy bar with the CPM I saw.
In the second case, I placed the Ad Links on a product specific site with a
narrow audience. The results were fantastic! We're talking about a CPM that
is greater than what someone might make flippi ng burgers in one day.
The conclusions should be obviou s. If you’re going to use an Ad Links un it
campaign. You need to put them:
1. On a site with a specific field of interest. A general site will give you general ads — and few clicks.
2. Above the fold with few other links.For Ad Links, this is crucial: If your users are going to click a link, it should be a link that gives you
money.
It’s also a good idea to keep your Ad L ink units for sites with high-paying
keywords. If someone comes to your site seeking out information or a
product on a top-notch keyword, they tend to be more likely to click as a result.
There are two kinds of link units: vertical units and horizontal units.
Vertical lin k units are great slotted into sidebars. They just look like a natural
extension of the link list.
But horizontal link units can be at least as effective. Since they were
introdu ced, they really have become an extremely useful tool.
Some users have reported in creases in CTR as high as 200 percent using
these units!
Instead of piling the links one on top of the other—which is great for putting
above lists of links but stand out too clearly when placed in text—the
horizontal ads blend i n perfectly when placed on pages with articles.
Horizontal Ad Link units are great for inserting into articles and show very
clearly which keywords your site is generating.
You can still on ly use one Ad Link unit per page and users still have to click
twice before you get paid but they’re definitely worth slipping into a long
arti cle. You probably shouldn’t put them at the bottom of a page where
they’ll be very easy to miss, but there are plenty of other places where these
sorts of ads can work very, very well.
For example, a horizontal ad unit can be a great alternative to a leaderboard.
It’s much more subtle and takes up less space on the page — definitely
something to experiment with to see whi ch of the two brings you the highest
revenues.
Or you could use them to separate forum or blog en tries. As a horizontal
unit, they can be very effective as frames that give people somewhere easy
to go when they reach the end of a text unit.
One great use for horizontal link units though is on directory pages. If you
have a Web page that contains tables of links, slipping a horizontal link unit
above or below them — or both — can make the ads look like a part of the
directory.
3.9 Expanded Text Ads — Shrinking Control Or Expanded
Income?
Take a look at the ad format samples on the AdSense site and you’ll see a bunch of squares and rectangles filled with ads. Most of those ad units will contain more than one ad. On those units that do contain just the one ad, like the button or the half-banner, the ad will fill the space neatly and look pretty subtle.
You might be surprised then to put a skyscraper or a leaderboard on your site and find just one giant ad,written in super-sized text.
All the effort you’ve put into picking th e right ad for your si te, testing to see
which formats work best and calculating which will give you the most clicks
will have gone ri ght out of the window.
You’ve prepared your site to serve multiple ads that l ook li ke content, and
instead you’re handing out a sin gle ad that just screams “Don’t click me!”
This can happen sometimes, but it’s not a reason to panic. It might even be
a reason to celebrate.
There are two possible reasons that Google is sending you these expanded
text ads.
The first possible reason is that you’ve been keyword-targeted. Google keeps
track of your results (just like you should be doing) and tries to serve up the
number of ads for your page that will bring in the h igh est amount of income.
That might be four ads in a unit. Or just the one.
Frankly, I’m a touch skeptical that showing one ad is going to brin g me more
revenues than showing several. But I’m prepared to give AdSense the benefit
of the doubt.
If I see that Google i s giving me one ad, I’ll compare the results for that one
ad to the previous results that I’ve had serving multiple ads in the same unit.
If I find that my revenues have dropped I can either block that ad using my
filters or just ask AdSense not to give me any more single ads.
But if I find that the expanded text ad is giving me more money, I migh t still
be worried. I know that users are more likely to click ads that look like
content. I also know that they prefer to have a choice of ads rather than ju st
one option.
If I’m getting more clicks then with just one ad, it could well be that I have
been doing something w rong with that ad unit in the past. I w ould want to
look at how well it’s been optimized and whether it’s in the right place to
bring in the best income.
It could well be th at this single ad is a high-payer and works better with little
competition. But it could also be that getting that one ad is a warnin g that
something was wrong with the way you ’ve laid out that ad unit on your site.
You might want to try some different strategies to see if they’ll increase your
revenues when the multiple ads come back.
There is another possibility though. You migh t have been placement-targeted.
This is a whole different ball game. It means that an advertiser has spotted
your si te and asked Google to run thei r ads on it.
In the past, they could onl y do that on a cost-per-mille(CPM) basi s. You
received a set fee for every thousand impressions.
Because you were no longer dealing with tempting people to click, you didn’t
care how much your ad looks like an ad. In fact you might even want it to
look like an ad, if that’s what will keep the advertiser happy.
That’s no longer the case. Now advertisers can also place ads on cost-per-
click basis. That means you sh ould still blend your units into the page so that
they don’t look like ads.
The most important point to bear in mind here i s that you want to make sure
that you’re not losing mon ey. It might be very nice for the advertiser to have
exclusive control over a particular spot on your page but if you can make
more money serving CPC ads in that space, then you need to make sure that
your si te is working for you and not for the advertiser.
Again, watch your stats for a week and see if the revenues you receive for
your impressions are higher than those you receive for your clicks.
Most publishers do find that ads that placement targeted ads — even those
that pay on a CPM basis — pay better, especially sites with h igh traffic rates.
After al l, you’re getting paid for every vi sitor who comes to your site rather
than ju st those that click, so all you have to do to increase your revenue is
increase your traffic. As long as each impression pays more than you’re
paying for the traffic, you’re going to be making a profit. That should be easy
to calculate.
If you find the revenues are lower though, then you’ll want to boot that ad
off and go back to serving conventional ads. You can do that by opting out of
showing placement-targeted ads (you’re automati cally opted in) or even
better, use the Review Center to block selected advertisers.
In general, the biggest probl em with these sorts of campaigns is not lower
revenues; it’s that you’ve got no idea how long they’re going to last, which
makes it difficult for you to take advantage of them. If you knew, for
example, that you were going to get paid per impression for the next tw o
weeks, then you ’d want to buy in as much traffic as possible for that period,
provided that you were paying l ess than you were earning.
And because you wouldn’t care about CTR for those CPM campaigns, You
could also lay off the optimization and focus on making your site more
attractive to users.
But you can’t tell w hen your site is going to be used for a CPM campaign and
you can’t tell how long it’s going to last either. That means th ere’s little point
in making major changes to your optimization; you might have to rebuild it
the next day.
The best strategy then w hen you spot a placement-targeted ad on your site
is to keep a close eye on the cash flows. Buy in more traffic if you can do it
profitably but for the most part, just enjoy the extra income!
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