Do more ads per page result in more revenue?

[timwestla]

Currently I am running one image ad and one text ad per page, both above the fold. I'm just wondering if another ad below the fold would be worth the effort. I really don't want to update 200+ pages just to experiment :) Any thoughts on this

[Hobbs]

a) Investigate using a CMS or using SSI for ads
b) Consider leaving it up to Google to place image or text ads when generating your ad code.
c) And this is only my personal experience:
Less is more!

[Matt Probert]

Google persuaded us to try additional ad units. While impressions increased as one should expect, eCPM reduced. The net result was no benefit to either our readers nor us, but Google got lots more free advertising.

Readers don't like adverts. Keep them to a minimum.

Matt

[jason207]

Do A/B testing across a few pages on your site, there is no simple yes or no answer, what works for one page on one site may not work for another page on that site, or what works for one site won't for another. I have pages that run the maximum allowed ads and when changing one to a single ad, the loss in revenue was staggering, i couldn't even go the whole 7 days i had alloted for the test, but on some pages revenue did rise. I personally have never had good luck with just running image ads, surprisingly my users just dont care for them(on the adwords side my image ads dont convert as well as my text ads either), so alot of the time i just run text only, especially in the prime advertising spots.

It really boils down to your content and your visitors, i say put as many ads in as your content and users allow. If your page has one paragraph adding 3 ad units, 3 link units, 4 referals, and 2 searchboxes isnt going to be a good idea, but as the length of the content grows so should the amount of ads. Of course if your site is on adsense and geared towards advanced adsense users, then it won't matter how many or how few ads you have, that group of users will most likely never click. A site on the cool new widget for college kids, could result in pages that could have the max amount of ads and that wouldnt be enough as users are looking for the best deals, software, hacks/mods, how-tos, etc. for that widget.

Sometimes more really is more and sometimes readers like adverts, other times less is more and readers hate ads, a visitor to one site about topic A, may hate ads and never click there, but when that visitor comes to a site about topic B turns into a click machine, and can't get enough ads. There's really only one way to find out, and thats testing. If its hard to make changes for testing purposes, this may be a good time to look into changing the site to where it is easy, before you get to 1000+ pages, and something happens to where you have to make the changes and fast.