is it better to remove high impression/low CTR blocks?

[sallam]

Greetings

I need your advice.
I have 2 adsense text banners, one placed at top, and the other placed in the bottom of my pages.
- The top banner makes good CTR, and about 70% of my total earnings.
- The bottom banner, although it makes about 30% of my total impressions, earns me less than 5% of my total earnings.

Is it better if I remove the bottom ad?
Will that improve my total eCPM and total earnings?
In general, does it improve total earnings if we remove the ads that has high number of impressions, and low CTR, compared to the account totals?
Or will I just loose the few bucks it earns me if I removed it?

[JamesR3]

You'll just lose the few bucks it made you.

[sallam]

but is it not better to rather have less total impressions?
In the end, the total CTR for the account will improve.
Will it not have a positive effect regarding google smart pricing?

[petra]

Yes, it is a good idea to remove high impression/low (non) paying blocks, it will improve you ctr and that will improve your Ecpm and your average cpc.

[guitaristinus]

I don't think removing the ad will improve your total earnings.

Overall eCPM and CTR will be lower with the ad. So? Total earnings are higher. I don't see why CTR would have anything to do with smart pricing unless the ads aren't converting.

Here's an explanation of smart pricing from Google
[adwords.google.com...]
"... if our data shows that a click is less likely to turn into business results (e.g. online sale, registration, phone call, newsletter sign-up), we may reduce the price you pay for that click."

[longen]

Compare two pages

Page A 50,000 impressions, earns $100
Page B 50,000 impressions, earns $10

Which page would Adsense prefer?

[sallam]

longen
in your example, the total earnings of the account is $110
Now, if we removed the ad from the second page, will that make the account's total earnings increase to more than $110?

[longen]

It should be more than $110. It makes sense for Google to sort Publishers by Impressions/CTR/CPM to give them the lowest possible server load, and higher earnings, as quickly as possible. With the best advertisers going to the best publishers, all things being equal.

[jomaxx]

Some people have reported seeing improved results. IMO the only way to find out if it will work for you for you is to try the experiment and see what happens.

It makes sense for Google to sort Publishers by Impressions/CTR/CPM...

Even if the phenomenon exists, which is uncertain but possible, there's no way of knowing if this explanation is correct. Suffice it to say that there's something in Google's suite of ad-matching, payout-dividing, and smart pricing algorithms that causes it to happen.

[Ankhenaton]

I was thinking about this too. I could see an advantage in an improved experience for the user if there are not too many adblocks. :\

I personally think if you annoy the users with too many ads they just leave. It's a fine balance obviously, as you don't want too loose revenue. But I think improved user experience is always better than short term desire for more money.

My textlink has the highest CTR.

[uhwebs]

I had ads on a forum with a low CTR. I removed them. And yes, it looks like I'm making more. My ppc seems to have increased a few cents.

But keep in mind the forum had 1000's of impressions and very few clicks-- less than 1% CTR.

[TheDonster]

I just removed 3K banner text ads that were placed at the bottom of my pages. The footer ads earned approximately 10% of what the leaderboards were earning. I kept the leaderboard text ads at the top of all these same pages. For my experience, it's a little early to say if this will return higher earnings since my site is experiencing much lower traffic since early Sept. I have noticed immediately that CPC has increased almost 70% on these pages. Overall, the CPC has shot up BUT total earnings have remained constant. For my site, I would rather display higher CPC ads since this will return more earnings whenever traffic increases. Plus as mentioned before, if you can earn the same amount without inundating your visitors to low paying ads, you are providing a much better site from your visitor's perspective. You will really have to experiment for each individual site.

[ken_b]

If you remove the ads from the low performing pages, what are you going to replace the ads with?

Blurbs for, and links to, higher paying pages on your site might be worth considering.

[OddDog]

surely it would be easier for everybody to talk of eCPM ....

[DamonHD]

Hi,

I am experimenting with showing fewer (not zero) ads on pages which generate relatively few clicks, to give the user a faster-loading page. Why pester the user when it doesn't generate revenue for you anyway?

I have NOT (yet) normalised this to CTR, it is based on absolute numbers of clicks.

With all the recent traffic turmoil (currently I am seeing as much as 50% lower than normal on some days) it is difficult to tell if my change is a good one or a bad one, but pestering the user less surely has to be good in principle! B^>

Rgds

Damon

[spaceylacie]

sallam, my answer to you is yes. This(removing high imp./low CTR blocks) has worked well for me. Very well.

Even on my new sites and pages now, if I see that they are low performing, I either remove the blocks totally or reduce the number of blocks. It works great for me. Less, higher quality ad units is the way to go, IMO.

I know a bit of what I am talking about in this instance. What you are asking is something I implemented this past year and it's worked wonders. I made over 4K in August with Adsense, typically(in regards to # of visitors) the last month of my "slow season".

[sallam]

spaceylacie
Thanks very much. So, my guessing was righ after all. Your confirmation out of your own experience is of high value, and proved that I took the right decission.

[longen]

Even on my new sites and pages now, if I see that they are low performing, I either remove the blocks totally...

New pages can often have a low CTR, but if you wait 3 - 6 months until google start sending you "kw1 kw2 kw3" traffic those low ctr pages can start performing.