Ads location in site and prices per click

are first loaded ads the ones that pay best?

[adrianTNT]

If for example I have header_ads and footer_ads with with AdSense, will ads in header (first ads loaded) be the ones that pay the most per click? Site might have 0.5% click rate in header (first ads loaded) and 20% click rate in footer.

Will Google automatically show the ads that pay better in the layout area with better click rate?

I hope i make sense.

[ecmedia]

I think the highest paying ads appear first. Nothing to do with CTR.

[AussieWebmaster]

Gives a good reason to make sure the ad position is seen by spider as appearing first

[adrianTNT]

Hmm...

So best strategy for a good revenue per click would be to only have one ad (if possible) and placed in correct position for better click rate, rather than having ads in more locations.

And first ads are considered the ones appearing first in html code, that goes without saying, right?

I still find it hard to believe that Google doesn't place more expensive ads in places with better click rate.

Any other thoughts about these things?

[jomaxx]

So best strategy for a good revenue per click would be to only have one ad (if possible)

Yup, that seems likely. But revenue per click is the wrong metric to be using. The idea is to maximize your total earnings. Really the only way to crack this nut is to watch your own site's stats carefully and try a few experiments.

As for where the highest-paying ads go, I don't think anyone outside Google can confirm exactly how the system works. PROBABLY the first request that comes into their server gets them (which will usually be the highest one in the page source).

[adrianTNT]

I just want to mention that I edited my ads and now I only show one ad per page, in addition to this I changed location a bit and now the site makes exactly 10 times more $ per day.

Yahooooo!

Emm.. Sorry, I meant 'Goooooooogle' :)

[greatstart]

That's just what I did earlier this year, placed only one ad per page instead of two. I saw a nice improvement for a few months, until our friend "Mr. Smart Pricing" decided to kick in. Oh well, at least I tried. :)

[farmboy]

I just want to mention that I edited my ads and now I only show one ad per page..

Do you mean one ad or one ad display?

For example, one 125 x 125 button will show one ad but one 250 x 250 square will show multiple ads.

FarmBoy

[potentialgeek]

So best strategy for a good revenue per click would be to only have one ad (if possible)?

You might have to read the ads that appear first. It depends on their CTR. If they are not good ads, or not as relevant to your site, they may not get the CTR of the other ones, even if they pay more.

Also, the difference between the value of various ads isn't always very significant. It could be $0.20 or $0.2. Depends on the competition between advertisers.

For example, if your site is great for advertisers, and you only allow one ad on it, it could lead to a bidding war (via site targeting).

p/g

[martinibuster]

I still find it hard to believe that Google doesn't place more expensive ads in places with better click rate.

It's more sophisticated than simply sticking the highest priced ads first. Google uses CTR as part of it's determination of whether an ad is lucrative. Their blog discusses how an ad at 10 cents a click that on average is clicked ten times ($1.00) over X amount of impressions is preferred over an ad that costs 20 cents per click but is only clicked on an average of three times (sixty cents) per X amount of impressions.

Added
Just found the blog post, entitled, Ad Rank Explained! [adsense.blogspot.com]:

While bid price (the price advertisers are willing to pay for each click per thousand impressions) is obviously an important factor, we also calculate advertiser Quality Score to make sure the best performing ads will always appear on your site. Quality Score takes into account factors such as an ad's relevancy and click-through rate (CTR) (i.e. how likely users are to click on a given ad) because a higher CTR sometimes outweighs the benefits of a higher bid price. This ensures that your site always displays the ads representing the highest revenue potential for you.

[adrianTNT]

Do you mean one ad or one ad display?

On one page there is one format with 2 links and on another page there is one ad with one link in it (the half banner).

The page with one link in the ad (half banner) performs best but this is also because the ad is masked in the page better on this page. It looks more like site content.
Something like:

Site link
site link description

Adsense ad Link
ad description

Site link
site link description

[frox]

The great question is: if I have 2 ads blocks with 4 ads each, will Google populate the two blocks in series (one block after the other) or in parallel (spreading good ads in both blocks)?

Let's suppose the EPCs of the 8 ads I will show are:
$1, $0.90, $0.80, $0.70, $0.60, $0.50, $0.40, $0.30

Will google place them like this (in series):
BLOCK A: $1, $0.90, $0.80, $0.70
BLOCK B: $0.60, $0.50, $0.40, $0.30

or like this (in parallel)
BLOCK A: $1, $0.80, $0.60, $0.40
BLOCK B: $0.90, $0.70, $0.50, $0.30

I have done a couple of studies, and I think they are loaded in parallel.
My studies involved breaking up a 4-ads skyscraper in 2 2-ads smaller blocks, monitoring them separately and playing with their position in the page AND in teh HTML code (via source-ordered contents)

I could not see a real difference in EPC. Of cource, CTR was generally higher in the top-most block, but EPC was somehos similar.