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".)

[NoLimits]

Somebody must be making some money on this.. or you'd think they would have pulled it by now. It makes a big difference what format your site is layed out in, but the impact can be very adverse on some sites.

Happy new year. My resolution is to get through this post with no typos... drunk.

[bether2]

I have a few 336x250's on my site - some have two ads and some have four. I've only had clicks today on the ones with two ads (slow day), however earnings are showing as $0.00. Hope this is just a temporary glitch in the reporting.

[thegreatpretender]

Has anyone found a way to have square ads show 4 units? My ctr cut to half across all of my sites, and the epc is not helping. I have been ignoring this for few days, hoping it would return to normal, but it seems permanent now. I guess something has to be done now, any idea?

[BaseVinyl]

When I spoke with a friend of a "rep" at a Christmas party she said Google was doing it on purpose as a punishment. Was she joking? I Hope so! Maybe she was just messing my head!

[maxgoldie]

Was she joking?

If it was a joke, it is about as funny as a gut full of pinworms. My CTR is down by 40%.

[BaseVinyl]

Yeah...I thought it was rather a strange reply...after some prodding she basically said that "the publishers get what they deserve"...and I was shocked! Like, I'm not a biblical person but that sort of get what you sow stuff is hard to take especially from someone who is dating a 25 year old millionaire!

[jomaxx]

Doesn't really make much sense, given that

(a) it only seems to be rectangles that are affected, which are one of the less commonly used formats, and

(b) most of us aren't actually suffering much anyways. My eCPM has actually been somewhat higher than average, although that often happens when traffic is low. Hard to extrapolate anything based on the period between Christmas and New Year's.

[maxgoldie]

It might not be as commonly used a format as, say a leaderboard, but Google even acknowledges that it is one of the best paying formats.

I have to wonder how this is affecting advertisers also, as would likely be fewer ad spaces out there. (assuming that all sqaure blocks are showing two instead of four ads. And all of the ones I have seen over the past three days only seem to be showing two ads.)

[maxgoldie]

Ok, so here is a paraphrased response from G, found on another forum, where, it seems other people are noticing this too:

To increase monetization and improve the relevance of ads, we now vary the
number of text ads that appear in an ad unit. When we determine that
increasing the size of the most relevant ads will improve performance,
we'll drop the lowest-performing ad or ads and expand the remaining ones
to fill the entire unit. Showing fewer ads works to your advantage,
allowing the better-performing ads to draw more user attention and
click-throughs.

Ok. If so, then, how come:

a) Google has somehow determined the relevance of ads on all the sites of those who uses any large rectangle, all at once?

b) I am not sure if I buy the line about showing "fewer ads works to your advantage, allowing the better-performing ads to draw more user attention and click-throughs." as if this were true, then all of us would likely make the most money off of a 125x125 or half banner, provided it was as optimally placed/deployed. Plus, if CTR would improve, then how come there isn't a flood of "My CTR has gone through the roof with my large rectangle posts"?

[annej]

I really thought this was a temporary thing but since it's still showing today I carefully analyzed the difference between the 2 ad days and an equal number of 4 ad days. I can't see any difference. If anything there is a very slight improvement but it's hard to tell looking at just a few days.

I guess I'll leave them up for now and see how it goes. Overall I'm doing better but that may just be because I'm getting a lot more visitors now that the holidays are over.