Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I'm playing with the idea of redesigning a few sites to incorporate skyscrapers.
What's your latest experience with? Are they paying better?
Percentages of increase or decrease would be great.
Thanks
Shak
1) The visibility and positioning of the banner or skyscraper. On my site, banners are displayed right above the editorial content in a band of white space, which makes them more visible than, say, a banner that's up in the top right corner next to a logo or some other type of advertising.
2) How effectively the ads are targeted to the page's content. Four irrelevant ads aren't going to perform any better than two irrelevant ads, IMHO--and a skyscraper with only two relevant ads out of four may not perform as well as a banner that shows only two relevant ads. On pages or sites where relevant AdWords are in short supply, a banner may be a better bet than a skyscraper.
Having said that, I'd be interested in trying a "4 up" ad format, but not at the expense of deleting my column of highly relevant (and productive) affiliate links. I'm hoping AdSense will offer a "4-up" leaderboard (768x90) format like the AdWords leaderboards that Tribal Fusion and FastClick are serving on their ad networks. The sooner, the better!
My internal debate is that I want my AdSense box as high up on the page as possible (better visibility) in my three-column'd site, but can't see removing relevant navigation and announcement info from the top sections of my left and right columns.
So I'm reduced to either having skyscraper ads about halfway down the first page or on to the second on the sides, or a horizontal ad across the top. Sure wish I could have both! :)
Whilst I agree tht it is very time consuming to re-lay a site to take advantage of skyscraper format, AdSense is (presently) working so well that it may be worth the effort.
I am taking one site, re-designing, putting on sky-scrapers, and comparing with another similar site without (Google does let you have more than one account!)
Sure there are no problems with this?
Whilst I agree tht it is very time consuming to re-lay a site to take advantage of skyscraper format, AdSense is (presently) working so well that it may be worth the effort.
Cornwall, I certainly COULD do this, but IMHO, it would violate one of the cardinal rules of the Web (and of Google): make things intuitive and useful for your visitors.
I honestly believe that a nav menu should always trump ads. And in my case, I use the top space on the other panel to invite people to sign up for my e-mail newsletter or to participate in my site's discussion groups... both goals which, IMHO, are more 'important' in the usability and value of my site.
Of course, it's all an equation isn't it, just like the broader issues of ad/content ratio and prominence. We could all put our ads front and center surrounded by bright red stripes and catchy tables and what not, and undoubtedly our AdSense revenues would increase.
But would we really be serving our visitors?
On some of my other, travel-oriented, pages, I'm using skyscrapers. My limited testing shows that they are generating a higher CTR (2x to 3x), but that may be because they're closer to the top of the page - and possibly because travel is more "clicky" than academic/literary material.
The AdSense FAQs says that they usually let a publisher have only one account. But will allow a publisher to have two accounts "if they manage sites that require separate payments."
Beth
It also has far higher pay per click! More competitive, more money in the industry, private entrerprise vs predominantly gov funded..
PPC is predominated it seems by consumer goods, online sales sites, and web-related services. I see b-b abd brick-morter categories becoming more competitive as time goes on, therefore meaning higher costs per click, as PPC becomes more mainstream and accepted as a credible form of online advertising for high-quality business services.
In the meantime we are relying on our travel section for the high CPC's i think.
However if the placement is consipicous it is suggesting that the advertisers are much more important than your own content. So in the end you may get mainly one time users but not many loyal return visitors. Depends on the business model of the site. Left for opportunist one time visitor- site where hits are delivered from SE's or cheap PPC, in the right for a site with a brand of its own that stands on it's own.
got to be skyscrapers for me ... but left or right? .. left seems to be the best placement IMHO .. what about you guys?
Placing navigation links on the left and advertising or affiliate links on the right is almost a Web standard. Why risk confusing users? Unless you have a very small site or your navigation is handled by a horizontal band of drop-down menus, I'd suggest placing the AdSense skyscraper on the right.
BTW, to get back to the banner vs. skyscraper topic, I took the plunge and switched from banners to skyscrapers last night. Today, my clickthrough rate is running 40% ahead of my long-term average and about 30% ahead of the highest day's clickthrough rate since I became an AdSense participant on June 19. It's a bit early to draw a firm conclusion about the effectiveness of skyscrapers vs. banners on my site, but even a 10% or 20% improvement would mean a significant boost to my monthly revenues.
You can only really draw that conclusion if you have run the test on a reasonable number of impressions served, and run it over a number of days.
Click through rates can vary by day of the week, time of the day, whether GoogleGuy's ulcer is playing up.....
As presumably the placer of the ads pays twice the price, one would like to hope that the content supplier gets credited for 2 clicks ...
...but who knows :(
SN
The past two days has seen a consistant but small increase in clickthrough rate (due to the skyscrapers?) but many of the ads are very low paying.
The end result, revenue about the same on 10,000 impressions per day.
You may get more clicks with the skyscraper but at much lower cost per ad.
I run the banner ads because it blends better with my site and I assume that I am showing only the two highest paying ads available. Less clicks, more money per click.
I am very happy with the program. I hope it remains forever or until a better one comes along.
Just my opinion......That and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee in most states.
Interesting point that. When you think about it stands to reason that they will be graded in that way. If the premis is true, it therefore depends on what the spread of bids is on those keywords, and at that particular point in time.
The spread can be anything from practically zero to a number of dollars; and could vary between now and an hours time between the extremes. Interesting concept!
I agree the top position is not always the highest paying but their ad is written well which brings more clicks and raises their ranking.
Either higher paying ads or well written lower paying ads that get more clicks are welcome. A win, win situation I think.
