Has anyone tried multiple ads and then aborted?

[ownerrim]

Just curious. I'm following my own advice on giving it till after the holiday weekend, but I certainly have my doubts.

[Rodney]

I'm also doing testing with an additional ad unit.

I was almost *sure* this one additional unit would increase revenue at least slightly.

Turns out that all important metrics are down (including the most important: actual earnings).

I'll give it until Sunday or Monday and then off it goes.

[freeflight2]

it really depends on the kind of site you put the 2nd ad unit on... one of my sites increased revenue 50% while it didn't make any difference for an other (very 'sticky' site).
Both times they ruined the sites layout / let it appear cheap ('flea market').

[qllonceagain]

Warning:

You have no idea what you are getting into by placing multi ads. If you understand how it works, you will understand, it is not favoring you.

[mike schmitz]

While I appreciate your blanket statement, it is obviously helping some people.

[Buddha]

I am currently testing it and Impressions are way up, CTR down a few points, EPC way down, # of clicks up, and overall daily earnings almost exactly the same.

It's a little early to say, but I get a feeling that the higher volume in clicks is being evenly offset by the lower EPC, resulting in almost the same earnings.

The smart pricing may give a lower payout for lower CTR.

I probably won't keep the multiple ad units unless revenues goes up by at least 20%.

[creepychris]

I'm finding the metrics are down for my sites (in the same time frame that everyone else is talking about here) and I haven't even put up the multiple units yet. It could be another adjustment like in April or it could just be the long weekend. I expect things to pick up by next monday.

[ownerrim]

"The smart pricing may give a lower payout for lower CTR."

This all goes back to---and I will admit it is pure conjecture---how smart pricing may possibly work.

What is effective cpm? Why does google list effective cpm in their stats reporting?

Because it is a measurement of the "bang you get for the buck"--or rather google gets for the buck. I think it is one way (and there are surely several) for the adsense algo to determine the performance of a site's pages. If a page can deliver 1.0x cpm with 1000 daily impressions, then a similar page that delivers only 0.5x cpm per the same number of impressions will not appear to perform as well and may merit a lower payout.

Unfortunately, this is what multiple ad placements seem to do: raise your impressions while (in most cases)only giving you a modest increase in ctr. So, your cpm goes down and to the smart pricing algo your pages appear to deliver less bang for google's buck and your payout gets cut.

Why would this make sense (though, insane, considering the rollout of multi ads)? Because advertisers want conversion. And pages that need to show more impressions to get the same number of clicks as pages that can do the same job with less impressions may be thought to have less conversion value.

I think multi ads may be inherently at odds with smart pricing. And if that's the case, google didn't think this one through.

[diamondgrl]

All my numbers are way up although I made a number of changes and it's too early to say precisely why since I'm still running some experiments with channels that require analysis. There seem to be a lot of naysayers and I'm not convinced that it's bad yet. I'll know more definitively in a couple of days.

[diamondgrl]

All my numbers are way up although I made a number of changes and it's too early to say precisely why since I'm still running some experiments with channels that require analysis. There seem to be a lot of naysayers and I'm not convinced that it's bad yet. I'll know more definitively in a couple of days.

[JuniorOptimizer]

I'm with you diamondgirl. Looks like more money. I like money.

[indigojo]

Big site - 2 Ad units - income fell by 40% for 5 days. Back to 1 Ad block - income back to normal.

I think desensitization can be caused with 2 much on the page

[Visit Thailand]

Ok we have had a couple of weeks to look at this. While I think it is next to impossible to get a good drip of what is going on due to so many external factors affecting revenue we decided to remove on of the ads.

This leaves us with 2 ad units.

The main reason for this change was that it seemed as if due to the layout the best ads were appearing in the least effective areas.

G needs to rectify this simply by allowing us to specify which ad placement has priority number 1,2,3 etc.

[howiejs]

"I think desensitization can be caused with 2 much on the page"

This is the key point -- visitors will become "blind" to it