2 ads vs. 5 ads

Any tests out there?

[Undead Hunter]

Am I off on this logic: in the vertical banners, that the top 2 ads are worth more, thus give us a better payout than the bottom 3 ads.

Therefore, maybe we should stop running the vertical 5 ad banners and run FEWER ads that would generate more revenue, even though its sure to bring in fewer clicks?

I know there's no substitute for experimenting, I'm just curious if anyone has faced down this question and/or tested it out?

[jino]

I would theorise that a 2 ad banner would bring in less income than a 5 ad banner for the following reason.

Adwords pricing is based on a bidding system. If you have a 2 ad banner, the lowest placed ad always be priced at 5 cents and the one above would be priced at the next highest minimum bid based on a formula of CTR and maximum CPC.

This is based on the presumption of the minimum bid for any ads is always 5 cents. Then again, I may be wrong.. :) The other possibility is that if you have 10 potential advertisers, the top 2 winning ads will have that position.

Would love to know for sure...

[Undead Hunter]

Hi Jino:

Interesting - assuming Google had more than 2 ads to run, why do you think they'd run the *lowest* priced ad in second spot?

To maximize their revenue, I'd assume they'd always run the *highest* priced ads?

Again, I guess we'll have to test it to be sure. There must be some variables I'm missing. (Coffee not hitting home yet.)

[europeforvisitors]

Running fewer ads might work if the ads in any given AdSense block were virtually identical--e.g., five ads for purple widgets or Elbonian hotels.

In the leaderboards on my pages, I often see a mix of ads, such as:

- Fly to Elbonia
- Elbonian hotels
- Elbonia rail passes
- Elbonia cruises

So, if I were to cut back to two ads, the person who might be interested in "Elbonia rail passes" or "Elbonia cruises" is less likely to click.

In my experience, the four-ad leaderboards do noticeably better than two-ad banners (at a guess, by 50% or more).

[Undead Hunter]

Hi Europe:

Right - I forgot about the catagories where there are more than 1 TYPE of ad running.

But I suppose, theoretically, if you had a very targetted page you might consider running just the two highest paying ads. Then again, ad campaigns change quite consistently...

I'm just trying to figure out why some days the same amount of click-throughs can make double the monthly average... and if there's anything we can do to optimize that. Of course, the site in question is a "general" site, so we don't have that tight a control over everything.

If you did see this happening on a niche site serving the same ads day in and day out, I think it would be worth pursuing as a test.

[ken_b]

When I switched from a 2 ad block (468x60) to a 4 ad block (300x250) in the same location on the page my CTR and income went up about 30%. Nothing else on the pages was changed when I switched ad blocks, and I used the same ad color schemes.

The larger block doesn't look nearly as good on my pages, but it seems to perform better.