Positioning adlinks for exit traffic

[david_uk]

Of course we don't want our visitors to leave, but the reaility is that they do. Following some recent discussion on optimum numbers of blocks on a page I've been experimenting on placing adlinks units of some key pages. These pages are historically ones that don't work well with Adsense, and currently are ad-free. What I've done is to place the adlinks unit at the bottom of the page purposely to get some of the exit traffic.

I know that putting them on just in time for my traditionally worst day of the week, along with adsense being down was not a smart move, and I need more data before coming to any firm conclusions, but the results seem promising. One page (the topic FAQ) is well visited, but never worked with adsense. The new link unit at the bottom had the highest ctr, and the highest eCPM of the site, and was the 3rd biggest earner.

I'll keep an eye on this and report back, but the question for all of you is where do you place your adlinks blocks, and by their placement are you trying to grab specific groups of visitors such as exit traffic ect.?

[Marcia]

I've been re-thinking that whole thing also - beginning or end. Will people click off a page onto an ad as soon as they hit it if it looks like the page is relevant with heading and first text, or will they scroll down to see what's on the page and if they don't find what they want, then click on an ad.

One one site I left the ads above the fold almost at the beginning of the pages, and took the one toward the bottom off, to see what would happen. As with you, it's a bad time to do it right at the slowest days, but the CTR has totally tanked.

These are regular ads, not adlink blocks.

[incrediBILL]

You're thinking about it all wrong.

People exit websites for any old reason, nobody cares about your content.

Line all exits with links to Google and sit back and watch the money roll in.

[Marcia]

>>People exit websites for any old reason, nobody cares about your content.

Bill, I'm not thinking about "content" as such, I'm thinking about people shopping and seriously looking for a specific product, or type of product and hitting a site that's got their stuff.

If the page title, <H1> and the first text they see tells them that it's about what they're looking for, then why wouldn't they look through the page to see if it's got something they might buy? I know about the "above the fold" thing, but I've had a good number of conversions from what was at the end of the page (including the biggest sale I've ever had), telling me that they did look at the whole thing.

Actually, one section of the site that just tanked with CTR usually gets the most on that site (more than the rest all put together), so I should probably put the bottom ones back on and test between them. What's peculiar though, is that it's an affiliate site, and while Adsense CTR dropped horrendously, the clicks for the merchant *skyrocketed* - which could be because of it being updated and improved, or may be a combination of both.

>>Line all exits with links to Google and sit back and watch the money roll in.

That could well be the key to the whole thing. Regardless of supposedly higher per click value with less ads on a page, it might just well be that it's the bottom of product-type pages that are the exits to Google.

[incrediBILL]

What's peculiar though, is that it's an affiliate site, and while Adsense CTR dropped horrendously, the clicks for the merchant *skyrocketed* - which could be because of it being updated and improved, or may be a combination of both.

I don't find that peculiar as my wife runs a pure affiliate play with AdSense just for exits and she always makes a bunch off the affiliates and a trickle on Google, as was expected as the affiliates are the centerpiece and the draw for the site.

[berto]

On one of my sites, on about 1/3 of the pages, horizontal adlinks in a prime "hot spot" (front and center, at the beginning of main page content) were totally non-performing. On those pages, I moved the adlinks to the bottom of page content, below the fold, and visually separated from each page's wide skyscraper in the left sidebar (looks less spammy if the site visitor sees only one Adsense ad at a time). Too early to tell if this will do any good, but what do I have to lose?

Incidentally, on one of my most visited pages, I had retired horizontal adlinks, because the Adsense "AI" insisted on displaying just one link category. After moving that link unit to page bottom, I am now seeing the full complement of four link categories, and all of them better targeted.

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Marcia --

One tip you might want to try is placing AdSense -- either link units or AdSense for content units -- on 'Thank you!' pages after the completion of a sale. This way, you've already earned money through your bread and butter business and once your users has completed shopping, it gives them an option to continue learning about topics they're interested in.

-ASA

[kempozone]

Whoa! Stop the press.

One tip you might want to try is placing AdSense -- either link units or AdSense for content units -- on 'Thank you!' pages after the completion of a sale.

I thought publishers are not allowed to place ads on these types of pages.

[farmboy]

Right now, while you're reading this, scroll down so you can see all the way to the bottom. Your cursor ends up in the bottom right corner of the page.

And if you're like many people and decide to scroll back up, your eyes also go to the bottom right corner to check the position of your cursor.

I noticed this a while back and started putting vertical AdLinks displays way down there at the bottom and all the way to the right. It's been working well.

FarmBoy