336x250 only showing two ads?

[maxgoldie]

For the first time I see only two ads in my 336x250, where there normally should be four. Plus the fonts are almost twice as big as normal.

It looks terrible. Any ideas how to get it to show four ads?

(I have opted out of CPM and "advertise on this site".)

[annej]

Maybe they're doing this to discourage MFA sites and keep them from draining the ad pool?

My thought exactly!

[maxgoldie]

It looks like we might never see adblocks filled to capacity again, regardless of ad inventory.

[maxgoldie]

Another thing:

If the whole idea of this was to filter out junk MFA ads, then wouldnt it have been better to just let publishers filter out the lowest paying ads -- thus letting the organic process of supply/demand fix things?

[drall]

I dunno what the overall effect is but our ctr and epc across thousands of verticals has risen rather nicely since this started, also we do not use that ad format which we may be seeing the end result of more inventory for us.

[Nitrous]

I have no idea what verticals are but my income is up by about ten percent on real genuine useful content since this all started.

[annej]

Well I spent a good part of today redesigning so I can convert to tower ads. (I think that is what the person a couple of messages back means by verticles)

It would have been a lot worse but I finally thought of a solution that would work for all pages.

Now it will take me less time to convert all the pages over than the redesign did, but you can't really slap an ad unit with a new shape just anywhere. So it's been a pain.

The frustrating thing is it's probably been a lot easier for the MFA people to convert than it is for us with articles and graphics on the pages. So I'm not sure who is getting punished here.

[elsewhen]

by 'verticals' i think that drall was referring to 'vertical markets' which are particular industries or categories - he was not referring to vertical ad blocks.

[elsewhen]

although the change doesn't look too great on my site, i am experiencing higher earnings. slightly lower CTR is being offset by higher CPC.

[Wiley]

I think we need to realize that Google wants to make money too. I am not crazy about how it looks but if it means more revenue for most of us then so be it.

[21_blue]

The reduced-number ads have stopped appearing on most of my pages (though they occasionally appear on some) and income appears to have recovered. Perhaps the Google algo has 'caught up' after a week or two and realised that it is generating less revenue.