Forum Moderators: martinibuster
But I wonder what other types of impact there might be of having no ads on the home page. One side of me thinks that visitors will follow the site map to pages of interest. But another side of me thinks that if a visitor has gone to the home page then what I've offered so far hasn't met their needs, so perhaps ads might be a good offering.
What has been your experience of ads on home pages? Are they a good or bad thing?
I run a magazine site, so the homepage just consists of stories and articles that are found behind it. Users hit the homepage, see what articles are featured, then click the links to go deeper into the site.
Within the site, there are (of course) links to each page, and links back to the homepage. I've learned that once folks go below my homepage, they tend to stay below it (hovering around within the dozens of article pages)
The article pages is where I keep ads.
About three months ago, I added a few ads to the homepage, but haven't noticed any sharp increases in CTR or revenue.
Taking them off only cost a few dollars a month in revenues.
My index pages are set up to draw people into the site, the only way out is the back button or to click on one of my higher paying internal pages.
I don't think having the ads there makes any difference to what the visitors look at as most of them are there for the information. Nor do I think that having ads on a home page reflects badly on a site. Basically, visitors are used to seeing ads on most web pages they view - home pages, content pages - all of them.
However, I do believe in not showing ads on every page. I'm sure it leads to ad-blindness and lower revenues because of it. Therefore ads should go where they work best. If they don't work on the home page then that's a good page to have as ad free.
I think it works for me because the home page is not only the page with the most traffic, but a page which has always had a very high exit rate. I think many people come to the site via links or searches, decide it isn't exactly what they want, and leave. Before that adlinks block was there, I just lost those visitors. Now I earn some money from some of them, because they find an adlinks phrase that's closer to what they were looking for than what they see on the page.
And other visitors still travel on into the site--income from other pages hasn't been affected.
I'd kind of like to be able to leave the ads off of my homepage but it would hurt income wise. I don't know if people who click on the ads would go deeper into the site if there were no ads.
But to contrast that idea, I have been running a tracker intermittantly, and one of the stiking things I found was that those who clicked ads often had the highest number of page views. I.E. they cleary clicked back. I'd like to think that the reason for this is the relevance of ads to the topic. Specifically, real ads not MFA's. Not trying to go off topic here btw, just making a point.
I have an adlinks unit at the bottom which does surprisingly well. I'm now wondering if it's worth trying adlinks at the bottom of some of the pages. Once the visitor has scrolled down and scanned (even read :) ) the page they get a list of other places to go. Maybe that's where adlinks work best for that reason anyway?
those who clicked ads often had the highest number of page views. I.E. they cleary clicked back.
There may be a smartprice penalty for this - one more click back for you may mean one less conversion for the advertiser?
I also moved my 160x600 tower on the right to a large rectangle dead center, above the fold and my income increased 3X in one day ($75>$225). I am still pinching myself and had to check today just to make sure. I was kind of positive because the YPN results went right with it proportionally.
It is a great thing but I could have done it months ago, still kicking myself as I celebrate.
also moved my 160x600 tower on the right to a large rectangle dead center, above the fold
On the homepage or secondary pages?
TJ
Overall, therefore, there seems to be little short term impact of having ads or not. I think I'm inclined to leave ads off the page, because of the other benefits that people have cited. I'll look at redesigning the page to try and reduce the 32% exit rate.
I think many people come to the site via links or searches, decide it isn't exactly what they want, and leave.
This would explain why my homepage gets a lot of ad clicks while my second level index pages go essentially unclicked. If people don't leave the HP but instead go to that second level index page The are really interested in the topic. There they find a list of articles on exactly what they are interested in so are more likely to move on to an article instead of an ad.
