Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I did some control tests on several pages with the 160x600 wide skyscraper only, 468x60 leaderboard only, and wide skyscraper / leaderboard combined. The leaderboard ads tended to be more generic and repetitive to the content, perhaps it's space related? The skyscraper ads we always more contextual per page in all cases on every page I tested had better ads than the leaderboard.
The large rectangle seemed to be best of all but doesn't fit my site design, if google only had an expandable large rectangle that would occupy all the space, like 90% or so. You listening AdsenseAdvisor?
Has anyone else encountered this?
Since You insert the banner at a different position, this could be an anwser th this question.
First, remember I did a control test with individual ads per page, then combined them on a page, the results didn't change. If the leaderboard (LB) was the first or ONLY ad, or even with 2 LBs on a page, some ads simply didn't show up. In the HTML the skyscraper ads are furthest from the actual content but closer to the KEYWORD anchors (like title, <H1>s, etc), the LB ads are closer to the actual content.
I then spent some quality time with the Adsense Preview Tool and it left me even more confused at first but then shed some light on this situation. My final conclusion from the Adsense Preview Tool was that the ads with the least amount of text were being fed to the thinner shallow LB ads, and the bulkier text was being shoved into the skyscraper ads. Maybe AA will confirm or deny this speculation based on empirical evidence.
Seems to make sense that the ads displayed are picked based on available space in the selected format, but that definitely indicates to me that the LB ads *MAY* be less valuable than the skyscraper ads overall.
FYI, adding the skyscrapers didn't impact my CTR whatsoever, the impressions increased as expected and the CTR held steady. I guess that's not a BAD thing, as double ads could've easily resulted in reduced CTR. I'll continue to monitor this and also find out in a couple of days based on the channels whether the skyscraper gets more CTR then the LB.
Revenues seem to be holding and maybe up a little, clicks are holding strong, but like I've seen mentioned in other threads, it would appear I've exposed my site to some lower paying ads which are taking those clicks and now it's taking more click thrus to generate the same income.
I think it's still too early to tell but my site trends are usually pretty stable and this is definitely a glitch on my radar.
Number of impressions doubled as expected.
Number clicks on ads for the same amount of traffic is up 50%-100%
CTR and CPM took a minor dip, which is expected with twice as many ads on the same traffic.
Now, what wasn't expected - the actual revenue only increased about 10% and is holding steady.
I'm assuming this means with almost TWICE the clicks per day, but only 10% more revenue, that I'm exposing my customers to a lot more lower paying ads and it's taking a lot more clicks to make up the difference.
Very disappointing, but i'll keep the 10% raise :)
It's been almost 2 weeks now and CTR is up a bunch but earnings are still only about 10%-15% above previous earnings. Definitely an improvement, but it seems that I sacrificed quality high paying clicks for low paying clicks in quanitity.
Guess I'll leave it alone at this point, take the extra $$$ per day and hope they keep coming.
