Banner vs Leaderboard

Your experiences

[runboard]

I'm serving many millions of pageviews monthly, but my adsense revenues are not so hot. Let's just say, the CPM is so low it's not funny. Good thing I got lots of traffic, but still...

I think it is, partly, because I display a 468x60 adsense banner on the bottom of the screen.

Did any of you had experiences with switching from such a format and positionning to, say, a leaderboard on the top of the screen, or just moving the 468x60 banner to the top?

I'd like to hear any stories :)

[Blue_Fin]

All reports have been that switching from the 2 ad format to any of the 4 ad formats increased CTR and revenues.

Since all of your visitors will see the ad if it's at the top of the screen, which isn't the case when it's at the bottom, I think it goes without saying that placing the ad where it will be seen by the greatest number of visitors is optimal.

There have been quite a few discussions about ad formats, so you may want to scroll through the earlier posts.

[markus007]

Not true... I saw a massive increase in revenue, and ctr going from skyscraper back to banner, it comes down to how its integrated into your page... Just play around and see what works and what doesn't...

[Blue_Fin]

markus007, have you commented about this previously, because I don't recall any posts that didn't indicate an increase when going from the 2 ad format to any of the 4 ad formats?

[europeforvisitors]

Not true... I saw a massive increase in revenue, and ctr going from skyscraper back to banner, it comes down to how its integrated into your page...

I haven't noticed much difference between the formats during experiments with both, but it's hard to draw a conclusion because so many other factors come into play (at least on a site that has many pages, subtopics, and advertisers).

Also, some topics and audiences just aren't going to produce much revenue no matter what ad format you use.

[jackti]

your handle tells me you might run some kind of bulletin board, in which case your site could be generating a lot of monthly impressions with a reatively low number of unique daily visitors, daily unique visitors and visitor retention will give a better idea of how the program are expected to perform. no use showing the same ads to the same people every day.

[killroy]

In your case with a high visitor to impression ratio, you could try rotating the colour schemes similiarly to how Google does it in the SERPS sometimes...

SN

[runboard]

Thanks for the replies.

Indeed my site is about forums and the unique visitors number is very low compared to overall traffic. Many single visitors will view thousands (even tens of thousands) of pages.

Maybe there is some kind of ad network that works better with that kind of traffic?

[Blue_Fin]

runboard, I would certainly experiment with different sizes and screen position before looking into other ad networks, some of which do not allow forums.

I think having a 468*60 at the bottom of the screen is probably the worse combination as far as visibility and CTR.

[Mario]

I've had the best results with leaderboard at the top of the page. I find it best to match the ad border and background to your page - people tend to trust text links when they're not too flashy.

[matrix_neo]

My Suggestions as follows :

Skyscrapper works well in gereral.

People have a tendency to scan the content area and if they don't find some thing useful they will look for a way out their immidiate choice will be right column or navigation system. Some cases adsense can be effiectively on the left side to immitate the navigation system.

Banners works well inbetween the articles

When people read article they are serious and they are ready to follow any links which you offer.

Leader Board does well when user finished reading with your site and looking for a way out

Generally works well at the bottom of the page. Most people have banner blindness at the top of the page.

Square type will work well with some special sites interms of content and design

However it depends on how much knowledge you have about your visitor mentality and your site design and choosing the right type of ad type. Basically it involves a bit of physicology.

[adfree]

My experience:

Integrate seemlessly into content without frame, 350x250, matching theme colors, heading Sponsored Links to make clear what's displayed.

Googlers had a look and liked it.

My users consider this a value adding feature to additional resources. CTR is slightly above average from what I read here and other places.

Cheers, Jens