Link Units. Are they worth the space?

[jason77]

Are links units worth the effort and/or space on the website?

The problem is people need to click on it...and then click on an ad again...so not many come through.

Additionally people who never searched on google for your competitors websites now are reminded of using google for searching for those websites.

whats your thoughts?

[ken_b]

If I had to choose between Link Units and Regular Ads, most of the time I'd choose Link Units. They perform very well for me.

[hunderdown]

Jason, you have to experiment. Yes, people have to click twice, but they do present a broader range of options to people than even the largest adblock. (And I wonder, because of the need to click twice, do they help your smartpricing rating?)

I have tried them in various places on my site. They worked well in exactly ONE place, but there a link unit works extremely well. That's a page that is getting a lot of traffic that is only broadly targeted--sites with more specific topics and traffic do better with adblocks.

Of course, your mileage may vary....

[greedy player]

Link units for me don't perform very well..

However I'm always tempted to give them a go if it may help smartpricing in any way.

[gothwalk]

With my current placements on my main site, they're exactly as good as the ad units. In fact, checking my stats, they're actually 1.5% better in actual earnings over November.

[chrisv1963]

Link units perform very well for me

[BigDave]

I think they do better when you are likely to have active shoppers on your page. They seem to do well on reviews, and hobbies where people tend to spend lots of money.

On more general pages they seem to get clicked to the first level often enough, but rarely get that second click that actually pays.

Or at least that is my experience.

[System]

The following 5 messages were cut out to new thread by jatar_k.

6:42 pm on Dec. 1, 2006 <small>(pst -8)</small>

[edited by: jatar_k at 2:43 am (utc) on Dec. 2, 2006]

[carminejg3]

We never used the link units.... until a bout three months ago. We placed them in some spots that a user may be looking for an "Out" and I was a little shocked that they did well. not as well as adsense, but they can ad another 5-15% per day.

I use them as an end of article point. adsense on the left and adlinks on the right. side by side.

It's funny I should write an adsense book. Because it seems with the books or ebooks on adsense the authors once had bad adsense adlink placement and put them into a better location, and instant Adsense expert.

adsense doesn't take much more then good content and good placement, with traffic of course. Try asking an ebook publisher that makes $100's or $1000's a day how many impressions they get, before you buy. 99.99999% will never tell you because it's 10,000's so thats how they go from $2 a day to a few hundred, simply better placement and color.

using google and webmaster world you can find a ton of tips, but each site is different so you do need to test.

forums swear by top ad placement.... mine didn't work, actually i have a spot in the last post position, which catches people looking to get "out".... test and test, and add new org. content.

[greatstart]

I get about 10% of my earnings from adlinks. The main problem is most users will not click a second time for you to be credited.