336x250 only showing two ads?

[maxgoldie]

For the first time I see only two ads in my 336x250, where there normally should be four. Plus the fonts are almost twice as big as normal.

It looks terrible. Any ideas how to get it to show four ads?

(I have opted out of CPM and "advertise on this site".)

[jomaxx]

I am seeing this as well and almost started a thread about it earlier today. My guess is the Google is running a test to see whether they should error on the side of displaying (a) a full ad block, or (b) better targeted ads. Personally I chose that rectangle size because I want to see 4 ads in it, not 2 ads, so I hope they switch things back soon.

[NoLimits]

My CTR is down significantly since the change. The EPC is noticeably higher, but CTR is just horrendous...

The EPC surely isn't compensating for the decrease in CTR I'm seeing personally. eCPM down approx. 50%

I'm going to try some other formats to try to get rid of this.

[FrostyMug]

I'm seeing this too. past 1-2 days. not seeing any monetary benefits yet, the site looks OK, but not as good as when the whole ad space is filled.

[Frequent]

After 2 days i am seeing CTR cut by more than 50% and EPC up by about 5%.

Definately not worth the trade so far for my sites.

On the other hand, my Adwords campaigns are doing much better with regards to CTR and no change in conversions.

This tells me that results are definately VERY dependant on how the ads are integrated into your site. As a publisher my sites are sucking wind (bad for me, bad for the advertisers), but as an advertiser, the content sites my ads run on are doing better (good for me, good for the publisher).

I hate to think about starting a network wide redesign but it may be necessary if things don't start to moderate.

Freq---

[annej]

I'm still getting just one to three ads in my rectangles, usually two. But it doesn't seem to have hurt my earnings at all, perhaps because they are all well targeted. And the tower ad units are still full. Truly strange. I wish ASA would tell us what is happening.

[NoLimits]

I changed them to 250x250 for the time being...

In case anyone cares - the format I'm using that I am seeing such a dramatic decrease in CTR with the 336x250's showing only 2 ads is as follows:

G = Google Ad
C = Content
N = Navigation
Z = Image/Other
B = Blank Space

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
ZZZZ CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC NNNN
ZZZZ CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC NNNN
ZZZZ CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC NNNN
ZZZZ GGGGGGGG BBBBBBBBBB NNNN
ZZZZ GGGGGGGG BBBBBBBBBB NNNN
ZZZZ GGGGGGGG BBBBBBBBBB NNNN
ZZZZ CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC NNNN
ZZZZ CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC NNNN
ZZZZ CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC NNNN
ZZZZ CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC NNNN

I am under the assumption that if I were to wrap the text of the article around the advertisement, the impact would be far less noticeable. It just makes a huge empty void with 2 ads in the above format. I would happily wrap the text around the ads, but I frequently use images early on in articles and the formatting gets crazy with lots of images, text, and ads - not to mention, when Google is showing 3 or 4 advertisements inside the 336x250 I get a really respectable CTR with the above format.

[NoLimits]

Ha! A few thousand more pageviews have passed through after changing the format to 250x250 - CTR is running about 8x higher on my new channel for the 250x250... they are all showing 3 ads and look nice and filled in.

eCPM is also back to normal levels on this channel.

I wonder why they impliment these changes throughout the system when it obviously doesn't have good results on all sites. I thought they did things like this on a per site basis...? There should be nothing statistically that could be telling Google that my site performs better with 2 ads in the 336x250 unit, as it has never affected me in a positive way. I'm a bit confused in regards to this. I'd like to think that the changes they are making to the ads on my sites would be for the better, but I guess I still can't complain - it's a lot less maintenance than Chitika.

[NoLimits]

<heavy sigh>

After I changed to 250x250 - all was well for awhile, earnings were going up, ecpm up, ctr up.

Things were looking good... now Google is showing only 2 ads in my 250x250 units. Now I'm not even going to mess with other Google formats because this really is a poor judgement on the part of Google. YPN will fill the void until whatever knob got bumped gets bumped back... or longer.

[maxgoldie]

Even putting two half-banners on top of each other to attempt to get rid of that annoying whitespace doesn't seem to work.

[willow731]

Maybe this is connected to the "engineering work" that shut down the adsense homepage for a while tonight. Maybe they were "engineering" little square ads to fit better into large rectangular spaces...

;)