Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Anyone with experience?
Thanks.
Site X might have higher profit with 300*250 but it could be that site Y has better results with 336*280.
However, I happened to see my site on a pc away from home yesterday. That pc had a much smaller screen than I use and the resolution was much larger than I use. At the time I had the 336x280 rectangle at the top of my content and beneath my site header. It was most definitely "in your face" and so much so that it was required to scroll down to find my content. I'm not sure I care for that effect as it is a nuisance IMHO. Today I'm trying a 468x60 banner instead as a test, but so far it isn't performing anywhere near as well as either the 336x280 or the 300x250 rectangle.
Testing continues.....
At the top of the site I use a 468x60, do you guys think that when I use a 300x250 at the top, it would be too extreem for the visitors?
I did a 250x250 which has one ad less but which fits much more tastily in the context of the page; aesthetic appreciation of layout is something to be considered :)
I just went back to 250x250 from a 300 width for that reason.
With my 3 column layout the 300 completely mashed my article when viewing with 800x640.
336x280 performs significantly better than any other format, especially if you put whitespace on either side of it. Give it a try and see the results.
Well, I'm going to give it a go. I don't think the change from small rectangle to the bigger size makes a difference to the layout of the page.
Problem being I've done a few other changes in the last few days, so I might not be able to ascertain if it's made a difference. How much whitespace do you put round the adverts on your pages?
The rectangular ad formats are popular because they're relatively novel compared to the banner and also because theyre easier to place in the attention of the visitor.
Also experimenting with colours is important; try colours that draw people's attention and also try to make the ad blend in with your page; see what gets the better clicks. I had one site which had a light yellow adsense border to attract attention; when I removed the light yellow and replaced it with the site's own background colours CTR on that site doubled.
I think layout should be your second concern. Money should be your first concern, because with more revenue you can invest more features and content into your site. Your visitors care about the content, and the nuances of layout don't really matter to them.
Not sure I agree with this. I've spent a lot of time tuning my site to look good on all screen resolutions and browsers. The reason being that if the layout looks uniformly good it will be of benefit to the visitors so they will hopefully stay and browse. From that comes the improved adsense revenue.
I personally hate it when webmasters don't bother to consider that people often use a screen resolution of 800*600 and I have to scroll left and right to read the content. I've got a few other pet hates too, but I won't expand.
I think that content and appearance is the prime concern. You can fit any of the banners onto a site, and it will still look good as long as time and effort is taken to make it look good.
For example the skyscraper ad doesn't work well at all but thats because most place it right where people expect ads to be so they never look there. If you have 3 columns of text content on a page and you place the skyscraper in the middle column you've just created an ad in a spot that's pretty novel. With good spacing and colouring on the page you can make it look nice so that people both easily can identify them as ads but also pay attention to them.
Good luck!
They really need to offer a horizontal ad somewhere between the banner, 468X60 and the 728X90 leaderboard. Something approx. 540 to 600 pixels by 70 or 80. I have a lot of space where i think the banner is too small and the leaderboard is too large.
Anyone else have this problem?
They really need to offer a horizontal ad somewhere between the banner, 468X60 and the 728X90 leaderboard. Something approx. 540 to 600 pixels by 70 or 80. I have a lot of space where i think the banner is too small and the leaderboard is too large.
Gotta agree. Something like a leaderboard, but with only 3 ads across would help. Also, rectangles that are wider but not as tall. I have tried stacking two 468x60 banners together, but as the width still wasn't wide enough for the location they looked odd.
Would it be dreaming too much to hope that someday we can specify our outside dimensions and have them auto-fill with whatever can fit, however way it can fit?
I happened to see my site on a pc away from home yesterday. That pc had a much smaller screen than I use and the resolution was much larger than I use.
This is an excellent point- thanks for mentioning it, icedowl. An ad format might appear entirely above the fold with a 1280 x 1024 resolution, but partially below the fold on a 1024 x 768 resolution. It would be very interesting to hear from the rest of you whether you consider your ad placement and ad format in relation to the page content or in relation to physical location on the screen.
I'm noticing that there are a lot more threads on the subject of optimizing your sites, which is great. I'll definitely pass your responses on to the rest of the AdSense folks here- they're eager to hear what you have to say!
Edited to include: Going back to the original subject of this thread, I wanted to point out that both the 300x250 and 336x280 rectangles have shown to be strong performers in terms of ad format. As long as they fit in nicely with the UI of your pages, I'd recommend using these wide formats.
ASA
It would be very interesting to hear from the rest of you whether you consider your ad placement and ad format in relation to the page content or in relation to physical location on the screen.
I choose my ad format in relation to the page content. On larger pages (50 lines+ text) I use the large rectangle, but when there is less content I switch to smaller blocks in most situations. I try to keep the ad vs. content area ratio below 15%.
adsenseadvisor: Our only consideration for horizontal physical location is that the site continues to fit very comfortably on a 1024 wide screen. For vertical we try not to have two ads appear on the same screen; so that on a scrolling page there might be 3 ads but only one within the viewport. Ideally :)
Btw it would be very nice to have an ad format resembling the adsense for search ad; So basically 4 ads stretching horizontally one above the other; maybe 180/200 pixels high and something like 580 pixels wide.
This because if you have a table at 100% width listing items (a table much like the adsense ad performance report or the one here listing this message) and you want to place an ad above it, the 336x280 eats up a lot of vertical space and leaves an area of whitespace to either its left or right depending on alignment. For me that would be the one missing ad format; and given the kind of really nice effective CPM on the adsense for search it might be a top performer.
It would be very interesting to hear from the rest of you whether you consider your ad placement and ad format in relation to the page content or in relation to physical location on the screen.
Both. I like to place the ads above the fold if possible. But I won't sacrifice the page design to get the ad up there.
And in some cases it makes more sense if the ad is further down the page, at or near the end of an article for instance.
At 800x600 most of my pages have at least part of the ad above the fold. At 1024x768 most of the ads are above the fold.
I find the 336x250 is too tall and in many places, if I put it at the top of the page (which produces the best results), the content gets pushed down too far on 800x600.
BTW. I run a 800x600 browser window but am on 1024 screen res. So even though the stats say that only 30% of users are on 800x600, there are many users who don't run the browser window full screen.
If someone from Google is reading this thread, I need an in-between size banner (lets say 600x90 size) that shows 3 ads across.
;)
