Balance between Ads and keeping Users

Maybe people go away because of too much Ads?

[wernizh]

My website is a mixture between a news portal, a community and a forum. It is good indexed and every day I get some 1000s new visitors.

The design of the ads are according to the heat map of google.

- First row: Titel of website
- 2nd row: Leader board adsense
- left row: first 1 adsense link block
- left row: menu of the web site
- in the center: text of news, articles forums etc.
- for some articles I do include a text ad box
- after the articles: another text ad box

I did some adjustments with colors, borders etc.

But I'm a little bit concerned that people might think that this is too much advertising. Especialy the leaderboard looks a bit strange there - But it makes a good part of the site's money.

But - on the other hand - maybe a lot of people go away because they don't like advertising everywhere? Or maybe they don't go away for the moment but they lost their confidence to register.

I could remove the leader board for a while. But I think it will take several days to see a difference, if a all.

Suggestions? Ideas?

[Matt Probert]

Certainly be wary of not overloading a page with adverts. The more advertising on a page, the more people it will annoy. Striking the balance is a fine art, naturally with no advertising you don't upset anyone, while an advertising billboard just looks "spammy" and upsets almost everyone.

Matt

[moTi]

if you consider removing ad blocks then start to kick out your worst performing ads that nobody clicks on.
investigate the lame ducks. no one will miss them - neither you nor your visitors. show only the killer ad blocks and blend them nicely into your web design.

[swa66]

Less is more.

pure in terms of cash less adds typically yield only the better paying ones.

in terms of users wanting to come back

in terms of people willing to link to you (or willing to keep their link to you). And thus affecting directly referrals and PR alike

...

[wernizh]

Swa66: Exactly, I was thinking of that:

- Users coming back
- Users linking to me
- Users registering for the community

I'm not talking about higher ecpm etc. This I already analyzed and adjusted.

I found now that my top leaderboard banner makes 20% of my websites money. But it is clearly to see as an advertising. Even by blending out borders etc.

So I was thinking to remove that leaderboard banner and forget about this 20% of money and hope that people will stay and link more often. So at the end I will earn more than this 20%. The problem is only that the effect of people linking to me etc. take a lot of time and cannot be seen within a week or so by analysing channels.

[josetann]

A few options to consider.

Just leave the ads there. Don't pull down a well performing ad! Also, regular visitors to your site are less likely to click on the ads anyways, so if you drive them away...no harm done (as far as pure revenue). Besides, regular visitors to your site will over time get used to the ads and pretty much ignore them.

Offer a premium service to your visitors for a fee (monthly, yearly, lifetime, up to you). One of the perks will be no more ads! This way, someone who is really bothered by your ads has a way to get rid of them, and you still get some $$$.

Don't show ads to registered members, or at least don't have as many ads. A user who is just browsing your site once won't go to the trouble of registering, and a first-time user (or just infrequent visitor) is more likely to click on ads. Someone who is a regular is more likely to register, and less likely to click on the ads.

Tell users how to block ads. Especially useful if you don't have a way for them to register for the site somehow. You can make it short and sweet, tell them to download Firefox (perhaps you can link to Google's version and get some $$$?), give them a link to install Adblock, and they won't see the ads. Only bad thing is that some of the others here may not appreciate that, since your users will now not see ANY adsense ads!

[wernizh]

josetann

Thanks a lot for your input. I do appreciate it very much.

Your last point I was considering also. Give them an option to switch off ads. I could offer them a button to switch Ads off (and back on again). This I could do very easily. Set a cookie. If cookie is set then Ads will not be shown. So users would have the control whether to see Ads or not.

Is this not a problem with Adsense TOS? Don't think so.
Any opinions about such a button?

[josetann]

I just re-read the adsense TOS, there's a lot of sections you have to read, from what I gathered you cannot alter the look of the ads, and cannot alter how the page is displayed when a user clicks on an ad (so no forcing it to open in a new window, in a smaller window, with a frame on top telling users to click here to return to your site, etc.). If you have a cookie that determines whether a user sees an ad or not, then that's fine. Well, I guess it depends how you do it. If the ad is still sent out but you somehow hide it based on the cookie, that's a no-no. The easier (and much preferred) way is to just let the webserver check the cookie, if it doesn't exist then spit out the adsense code. If it does exist, do not send out any adsense code whatsoever. That would be fine, as it's either all or nothing, you're not sending out altered adsense code, or obsuring it, or anything like that.

[wernizh]

josetann

my website is done in php so I can check for cookies and send the whole ad code or nothing of it.

It really sounds interesting to give the user the possibility to switch ads on or off.

I'm thinking about an entry in the menu like "Switch Ads of for this Site". And another one to switch it on.
But what is the user impression about that?
I never saw a site with that kind of options.
- Maybe it gives a good impression - because they are not forced anymore to see ads. They can decide.
- Maybe they let switch it on just because they don't want to miss something interesting show up on a page or the other?

[josetann]

Personally, I would make them register. Don't want to make it TOO easy on visitors to block ads. But that's your call. Probably won't matter too much, if a user isn't going to stay on your site long they probably won't bother disabling the ads.

BTW, I've asked my users about their impressions whenever I make major changes on my forums (the main part of my site). Generally they don't care or they don't like it at all at first, but give it a few days and responses are more like "I didn't like it at first but I pretty much just ignore it now." As long as you don't have tons of popups/popunders, I think visitors will be pretty forgiving.