Is putting Ads in the middle of content any good?

Work - or just PO vistors?

[webmastertexas]

Having read this board for a while now, I know most of you guys are light years ahead of me when it comes to using Adsense to make money. To that, I can only bow to your greatness.

But I just have to share this tip, just in case someone out there still doesn't know:

Recently (last week, actually) I got this package from Google (I guess they send it out to all their affilaites) that has these simiple 8 tipes on how to improve your earnings with Adsense. I was flipping through it, when I came to Tip #3, which tells you to place the ad smack dab in the middle of your site's content text. I suddenly realized I wasn't doing this! Even though I've seen it on other sites. What I was doing was putting my Adsense on the side, next to my article's text. Needless to say, my earnings were abysmal. Then I did what the tip suggested, and put a banner in the middle of my article (nothing too clumsy or cumbersome, but now the article wraps AROUND the banner!

The result? I made more in 5 days than I did all month for the last 3 months!

Wow, if I had only done this a long time ago! And the best thing is, it doesn't obscure my article at all.

I just thought I should share this, in case some of you out there are still not doing this yes.

[Jesse_Smith]

Yep! They should of only sent that out to people that currently make less than $100.00 a month. Those are the people who need the tips.

[chrisnrae]

I never got one of these things. While I make decent money from Adsense for the exposure I give it, I'm always open to tips on anything in regards to increasing income. I wonder if they are doing them in batches, have a "if your earnings are below $whatever per month" cutoff or simply randomly picking who gets them?

[jino]

Great result. However I dont think that putting the ads that close would generate higher paying ads that pays that many fold. I would assume that you probably generated more targeted ads plus the ads are right in the readers face when they are readig the article and I bet your CTR has increased tremendously.

Regardless, great response. Please keep us updated on your average results after 2 weeks to even out the results. I am sure it will still be good.

[alika]

We use the rectangles right smack in our articles - and the CTR as well as revenues more than quadrupled than the leaderboards and tripled that of the skys. The key is just to experiment and see what placement, what colors and combination of other factors work best in your site. There is always room for improvement ...

[HughMungus]

Did you get more-targeted ads? I wonder if putting the adsense code closer to the content that should be targeted results in more-targeted ads...

[alika]

For us, in some pages, yes we got better targeted ads but in many pages the ads shown are based on the theme of the site. In some instances, though, targeting backfired as it picks up mostly the topic of the next paragraph - which may or may not use the keywords of the page.

But CTR really jumped up when the ads were placed after the first paragraph of the article.

[webmastertexas]

Yes, I'll come back and post the result after 2 weeks, and then the month, as per request. But in less than a week, the results are pretty amazing.

I use both skyscraper and leaderboards, but for my pages with articles, I use their big skyscraper. I place it AFTER the first paragraph, and the rest of the article wraps around the right side of the skyscraper. So when you read the article, the adsense does stand out, but it's just to one side, and doesn't obscure the article at all. It's such a simple thing, too. And yes, I think it does pick up on the article's content more, and the displayed results are very much more targeted.

[louai]

great results,
very happy for you :)

Maybe you should post the tips that you got from google up, kinda of curious what they sent.

[dhaliwal]

thats good

but i think people did this many months before, of course i did it in february.

I wish best of luck to newbies

dhaliwal

[Prash_seo]

Hiya Webmastertexas,

Have sent ya a sticky. Please do have a look @ ur inbox.

regards,

Prashant.

[ari11210]

Does putting the ad after some content really help it get better targeted ads? I would have thought it looked at the page as a whole before determining ads. Can anyone verify that it helps?

Thanks
Aaron

[alika]

See my earlier post (#7) --

We use rectangles in our article pages usually after the first paragraph. We find that sometimes it helps the targeting, and sometimes it does not. As we all know here, there seems to be no set rules as to where the mediabot really picks up the keywords of the page (sometimes the title, sometimes the text nearest the ad).

In putting the ad right smack in the content, we sometimes find that it picks up the keywords in the paragraph preceding it. Sometimes it works beautifully -- ads previously placed as skys in the side when moved in the article gets better targeted ads.

The problem is that sometimes the paragraph before or after the ad does not contain the keyword of the page -- so Adsense serves up ads related to the theme of the site instead. No complaints here, though, as the general theme of the site attracts good EPC.

But in answer to your question -- there is no assurance that putting the ad in the center of the article can result in better targeted ads. Nonetheless, we still decided to put the ads as rectangles in the center of the article because the CTR is 4-5 times higher than what we get from leaderboards and about 2-3 times more than what we get from skys. We carefully tested this for a couple of months before we shifted the leaderboards and skys in the article pages to rectangles in the center. Our CTR -- and revenues -- increased by 100% when we made this move.

[jmbishop]

I have a feeling the increased CTR is due to the visitors thinking the links are part of the content of the page.

I too got the 8 Tips guide from Google. It's a little spiral notebook on heavy cardstock and when you flip through it each page gives a tip.

You can view the expanded content at www.google.com/8tips/

[thaedge]

Funny I just got this yesterday. Guess if I got off my lazy tush and put it in a better location id get those few extra $$ and get over the 100 mark :)

Maybe next month :)

[akogo]

webmastertexas

Thanks for starting this post!

alika

Thanks for the additional details!

After reading these posts, I put the ads in the middle of my content and bam, the CTR increased 4x last Friday.

I hope someone else reads your post and trys the same idea so they can make more. This tip comes at a time when my site's traffic is down, so every bit of additional Adsense revenue I can extract will help.

Does anyone notice Channel updates lag about a day?

[alika]

What we do to distinguish the ad from the article is to put a phrase "article continued after the box ad" to help the users distinguish the article content from the ad.

[europeforvisitors]

One thing to keep in mind is whether placing the ads in the middle of the content will make your site less attractive to visitors. If the ads become annoying, or if they give the impression that ads are more important than the content, visitors may not come back. That may be okay if you're just going for the quick buck from users who land on the page from search, but it could be a problem if you want repeat traffic.

Example: I've got a travel-planning site where the typical user may come to:

1) Research a destination

2) Plan the trip in more detail

3) Book a car or buy a railpass through my affiliate links

4) Book hotel rooms through my affiliate links

Each visit represents an opportunity to make money from ad clicks or affiliate sales, so I'm very careful not to let the ads overshadow the content as some of the big corporate-owned sites are forced to do because of their higher overhead.

My strategy won't work for everyone, but it's worth thinking about if you've got an information site that can profit from repeat visits.

[howiejs]

The point about repeat visitors is very interesting --- --- Since Adsense is themed for the page content - if the page theme is static the ads will be the same - and repeat visitors will not bother clicking visit after visit.

[david_uk]

OK - call me "Mr. Thicky", but in my experimenting with placing the ads in the centre left of the page, I can't get the text to wrap around the ads! I'd like to have the text paragraph on the right hand side adjacent to the ads, with the text of the paragraph wrapping where the ad box finishes as per the google example.

How do I get the text to align with the top of the ad box, then wrap round the adsense code please? All I've managed to do is get the first line of the paragraph lined up with the bottom of the ad box and the rest of the paragraph wraps after that.

Thanks

[willybfriendly]

Since Adsense is themed for the page content - if the page theme is static the ads will be the same - and repeat visitors will not bother clicking visit after visit.

No, adwords users are constantly changing. Different, copy, different bidders, opting in and out of content ads, etc. And, there appears to be some randomness to what G serves up, not to mention that they seem to continue to improve, or at least change, the algo that ID's what ads to serve.

WBF

[Brooklynese]

>>How do I get the text to align with the top of the ad box, then wrap round the adsense code please? All I've managed to do is get the first line of the paragraph lined up with the bottom of the ad box and the rest of the paragraph wraps after that. <<

I place the ad code in a table and align the table left or right, that wraps the text around the adsense ads. Here is an example;

<table width="340" border="0" align="right" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="336">
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
google_ad_client = "pub-************x";
google_ad_width = 336;
google_ad_height = 280;
google_ad_format = "336x280_as";
google_ad_channel ="********xxxx";
google_color_border = "FFFFFF";
google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";
google_color_link = "000000";
google_color_url = "666666";
google_color_text = "333333";
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>&nbsp;
</td>
</tr>
</table>

[paulrollo]

How do I get the text to align with the top of the ad box, then wrap round the adsense code please?

david_uk, I wrap the adsense code in a div block, i.e.

<div class="adsense">adsense_code_here</div>

and place this immediately prior to the first line of text.
Then use CSS to define

.adsense

with

float:right

or

align:right

- can't remember which off the top of my head.

Works well for me.

[richmondsteve]

EFV wrote:

One thing to keep in mind is whether placing the ads in the middle of the content will make your site less attractive to visitors. If the ads become annoying, or if they give the impression that ads are more important than the content, visitors may not come back.

I agree. Another consideration is how ad placement will affect the perception of those who would consider linking to your site's pages. I want other webmasters to link to my pages and I don't want them to pass my sites' pages by because they think it looks like it's ads first, content second.

[alika]

Since putting the ads in the middle of the content of our articles pages, we have not seen a drop in traffic. Nor did our return visitors decrease. No impact at all.

It also has not affected the decision of who wants to link to the site. Absolutely no impact.

Yes, it is about presentation, and there are ways you can present the ad without negatively impacting the look of the site. Our layout -- like many other websites who uses rectangles (whether adsense or image ads) in the middle of the article -- is designed to accommodate this very ad format. Afterall, box ads in the middle of the article is not something new -- it's been used by many big websites since this ad format was launched (even before Adsense).

We keep our site very fresh - with several new original articles every day. And that is what keeps our users coming back again and again.

What we do is to use different types of ads for different pages. Our homepage uses leaderboards. Our main subtopics pages uses skys. Some uses leaderboards. Our articles uses the rectangles in the center. The diversity of the ad format used helps in preventing ad blindness, when users expect ads on the same place in every single page.

But ads in the middle of the content really work. And it's keeping our CTR high and revenues very healthy.

[trader]

Brooklynese said this about > How to get text to wrap round the adsense? "I place the ad code in a table and align the table left or right, that wraps the text around the adsense ads."

I copied your example code and tried 3 experiments by aligning table left center and also right. Left and Right alignment did not work as the text did not wrap around the adsense (250x250 box) but only wrapped around either the left side or right side. When I aligned center that was even worse as the text did not wrap around at all, but only above and below the adsense box.

We are looking for a way to truly wrap text all the way around the adsense on top bottom left and right (which I assume must use align=center), so either your code is wrong or you misunderstood the issue. Anyone else know how? Thanks.

[Brooklynese]

I think I answered the question that was asked. The example I gave wraps the text around the ads in an 'L' shape and aligns it with the top of the ad.

I have never seen text wrapped around three sides of any object using HTML, try using the CSS example that was given for that. CSS lets you position things exactly on a page.

[trader]

Sorry, I thought to wrap text around the adsense meant that literally around ALL sides, left right top bottom. Did not know it could not be done using htm. Thought to have seen many such examples of true wrapping around all sides but could be mistaken of course.

Anyway, I implemented your "L" shape example code using align=right and it is pretty cool but not quite as good as wrapping it around both left and right sides would be. Thanks for the code.

Regarding paulrollo CSS solution I have no idea what CSS is as in his example, i.e. "Then use CSS to define .adsense with float:"

[gtmash]

Boy, trader! You must be really pissed at your visitors to try to annoy them like that, breaking up text with ads right in the center.

[Brooklynese]

>>Anyway, I implemented your "L" shape example code using align=right and it is pretty cool but not quite as good as wrapping it around both left and right sides would be. Thanks for the code. <<

You are welcome. I thought about this some more and I do not think that text wrapped around 3 or 4 sides of an object would be readable... Which way would the order of the text flow, right or left? I think it has to be one or the other. I could be wrong though. If you used tables with multiple rows and columns to layout the page, you might be able to achieve this effect.

>>Boy, trader! You must be really pissed at your visitors to try to annoy them like that, breaking up text with ads right in the center. <<

I think this is an unfair judgement to make, you do not know his customer, his website topic or the particular context in which he is implementing this strategy. Pop-ups and commercials are annoying because we cannot control those.

The visitor still has control of whether to click on these ads. Besides I have seen numerous website publications including big name sites using this same method we are discussing. Vistors wanting information on a particluar topic are not going to be annoyed by small text ads offering information on just what they are looking for, if they notice them at all.