to remove or not to remove adlinks?

[Mikey85]

After placing the horizontal adlinks unit my ctr and cpm went down, but I received more clicks.

What should I do? Remove or not?

[hunderdown]

What about your total earnings? If that went up, keep them.

[Mikey85]

It went up because the visitors went up ;)...

[incrediBILL]

People always talk about meaningless CTR and CPM when you add a second ad it goes down, add a third ad it goes down even more. Earnings are the only thing that's truly meaningful, if it's going up you did good.

For instance, if I add a new ad block and earnings are up $50/day would I care if CTR and CPM went down?

NO!

[Atomic]

My earnings have increased nicely thanks to this new layout. What's surprising is that my CTR is holding steady even with the doubling of impressions which tells quite a story. On some pages I may remove the regular ad units entirely and leave only the AdLinks so that the pages appear less commercial.

[incrediBILL]

I'm not sure that's the only story it tells as Google repeats the same ads often and you flip from page to page and see virtually the same thing so you're less likely to click it.

[badtigger]

I still dont get it Bill: this time I added a Adlinks block, 120x90 in the upper left by the nav area. All I have then is a 336x250 in the middle of the content above the fold.

In the last 24 hours, since I tried it again, earnings are dropping and the eCpm is way down. While I average about 25 CPC, in the wee hours this morning, I saw two clicks which were 4 cents. This really contrasts with your experiences, where you saw earinings shoot up immediately.

I guess that Adlinks work very well on sites with a lot of traffic, as they pull eCpm down (Adlinks pay less pe click), but the traffic and the increased clicks on the Adlinks make up for it. With me, only getting some 2500 pageviews, it could be that the Adlinks are just not fo me :(

It is no mystery that things work well on some sites and not others, but it is a mystery (to me at least)why experiences with Adlinks are either a smashing success or either an abysmal failure -- no in-betweens.

[incrediBILL]

AdLinks don't display ads, only links to ads, so I don't see how their presence would impact the payouts of other adblocks unless Google is changing the ads they show which makes no sense either. Adding a skyscraper or leaderboard makes sense that it would impact your other ad block but Adlinks?

You got me on this one.

[spaceylacie]

You might not have enough data to compute accurate results. Just a thought. My data is based on about 50,000 ad unit displays a day, about 20,000 page impressions a day.

Ad links on my sites are not affecting regular Adsense earnings. Also, I keep Adlinks away from Adsense. Adlinks go in the navigational area, regular Adsense is located in the content area of the pages.

[badtigger]

spaceylacie: that is what I tried -- put the 120x90 adlinks in the upper-left quarter of the page, above the navigation, separate and away from the content. In the content, there is a 336x250 rect in the content, with a blended bg.

Bill: what I was getting at was this assertion -- assuming that the Adlinks payout for the publisher pays less, on average, per click than regular Adblocks, wouldnt it be a possibility that the visitor who is clicking on the lower paying Adlinks unit, would just be one more vistor who now wont be clicking on a higher paying Ad block?

So, if, say for every hundred clicks you are used to getting -- strictly from Ad blocks, forty of them are now coming from links -- wouldnt it make sense that this would drive overall earnings down?(again, assuming ad links pay less)

[incrediBILL]

I was averaging between $0.16-$0.20 CPC before and after AdLinks.

No idea why is stayed the same for me and changes for others.

[Mikey85]

spaceylacie, my ad is displayed 110.000 times a day.

[Gernwax]

When i first added it i seemed to notice an increase in earnings, but that may be because i had two ad units instead of one.

I have a get the feeling that adlinks don't always display and sometimes they take a while to load, anyone else experience anything like this?

[Arsi]

Hi!you should keep them.There,s no harm.
Thanks,
Arsi.

[Alioc]

Actually, AdLinks is more frequently displayed and better targeted than the regular AdUnits. Even if they pay less per click, it's better to get one compared to none. That's what I experiment with it.

[spaceylacie]

I get paid more for Adlinks, average of 2 cents more per click. Higher CTR, eCPM than my regular Adsense.

When I added Adlinks, my regular Adsense earnings(in separate channels) didn't go down at all.

Hmmmm.....

[asianguy]

Mike85, the bottom line, you made more money. So let be it, unless you are something illegal.

What kind of question is this?

lol

[edited by: asianguy at 1:00 pm (utc) on June 14, 2005]

[bumpski]

My Adsense data goes up and down 30%-40-50-60 percent per day, how can you make any judgement after one day.

Users are changing, Google is changing, Adwords is changing, the moon is shining .... You really can only look at long term results; even if you have high volumes of traffic, doesn't matter.

I've also noticed that ad relevance on a per page basis drops to a default set of ads, site theme ads, whenever pages go URL only in the Google index, which seems to be happening at a fantastic daily rate. Others deny this but I see the symptoms on a regular basis.
Also Adsense keeps experimenting with ad content and even style. I wish Adsense would create new ad units for each new experimental style, without this how can anybody optimize anything. We're all just guessing!

If your results qualdruple ( or /4 ) then you've probably made a significant change, anything less you've got to wait longer to tell.