Forum Moderators: martinibuster
There have always been a couple players that we respected that as in our case felt that loading there site up with more then 1 or 2 units would hurt there overall user experience beyond what they would gain in cpm's so for 4 years they as us have kept there ad units to a bare minimum, 1 to 2 units per page in most cases.
What I have found though that has blown me away is that since October 2007 EVERY one of them have loaded there sites with every possible Google unit available. Im talking 3 cpc blocks, 2 link units etc per page. I am coming to the conclusion that the pain we experienced in October of 07 was universal. These guys would have not done this unless they were absolutely forced to.
Just a interesting observation from someone who is going to sit back and take advantage of this, our traffic has grown substantially at the same time and I cant help but wonder if its because our competition is destroying there user base with pages filled with Google ads in a vain attempt to keep there revenue up as there user base erodes and we are the last holdout who has not done so.
Also, I wonder how those publishers are doing with multiple ad units. Some people claim that multiple units increase the chance that a reader will click on lower-paying ads, thereby lowering average EPC, while others point out that a greater range of ads and more opportunities to click will result in a higher CTR. In the end, eCPM and credibility with one's audience are what count.
Heck I think each page they have is 60% adsense ad units now lol.
Those "advisors" seem to push the use of every possible ad unit, link unit, search box, etc, at least in my experience.
I still prefer a single adblock and only one adlinks unit on a page most of the time.
I've steadfastly stuck to my 728 X 90 above the fold and a 728 X 15 text one down at the bottom.
Even then I think we're creating ad blindness but to overwhelm your visitor base as some examples cited is sheer madness.
I'm not throwing away 10 years hard work on short term gains.
i'm very annoyed about that situation. i have top quality content and really care about my visitors. sadly this is not the most profitable strategy for sites that mostly rely on search engine traffic. google does not reward content quality. their frickin algo is not able to distinguish seo'ed crap from serious information that helps on.
being cynical: plastering your sites with nothing but ads, disguising them as navigation, minimal content and offering no other exit options is the way to go for the top ranking sites.
Another sign of the times?
The majority of my impressions see no ads at all. Maybe that'll change in time, but experimentation for me, together with one of spacielacie's landmark posts, suggested overloading isn't even a route towards short term gains.
Prehaps it's dependant on traffic type or topic.
Is it just me, or has the Webmaster World Adsense Forum grown much quieter over the past year or two? We talk of advertisers abandoning the content network. Maybe a few/some/many publishers are beginning to abandon the effort, losing interest, too?
Certainly.
Several reasons:
1) WebmasterWorld TOS as well as Google Adsense TOS forbid to become too concrete with anything (no URLs allowed, no specific data to be posted). This leads to very generic discussions that often do not offer the kind of advice on emight expect from such a pool of experts.
2) Discussing OLD topics gets boring after a while (e.g. possible improvements to Adsense, EPC is up/down/the same), and so people stay away.
3) Whenever a NEW observation is being made, e.g. what is now known as "The October 2007 Glitch", a group of people starts to seriously discuss the phenomenon, and another group of people jumps in to claim (as serious as the one who started the topic) that the observation may be just an isolated event, most likely based on market forces, the temperature in Mountain View, or whether someone sneezed in Beijing. This gets boring, too, and so the discussion quickly stops.
At the end, what remains are some new members asking old questions, and old members discussing the fact that it has become "much quieter". :-)
Readers, radio listeners, TV watchers are all accustomed to advertising. They tolerate it and read through it. I've been loading some pages with 3 adblocks and three graphic ads, plus my own graphic and text ads and my traffic continues to rise.
NFL football is so heavily loaded with advertising it sometimes makes watching a game difficult there are so many interruptions (thank God for remote control), but the advertisers keep paying more and the viewership remains high.
IMO, those who believe that more ads on a page will somehow cause a decrease in traffic have it all backwards. I don't think the two (# of ads / traffic) have any relationship.
It may or it may not have an effect on traffic, depending on the sector, on how the ads are implemented, and on the ratio of content to ads. As with most things, it probably depends.
Also, traffic isn't the only consideration. An ad-happy publisher may attract fewer inbound links (especially from quality media or from academic sites) than a publisher who doesn't let the advertising tail wag the dog.
Finally, AdSense is only one type of advertising (and not necessarily the best). A publisher may be able to earn more (and lower risk exposure) by using one AdSense ad unit and devoting any additional ad space to display ads and/or relevant affiliate links.
... In response to the "October Glitch" and my recent decline in earnings, I have reduced the Adsense presence and ad impressions. And I have not filled the emptied Adsense ad blocks with competitor ads, rather I've put in place features and "thing blocks" to enhance the visitor experience.
I finally got tired of all the endless optimizations and split tests and micromanagement and Ad Filtering and trend tracking and Allowed Sites and Managed Ads and Referrals and on and on and on ...
Enough already!
In the end, what a waste of time!
Rather than strive mightily to squeeze the extra 20% out of Adsense (and other e-commerce programs), I've decided to scale back and focus my efforts on the core "product"--the reasons my sites exist in the first place, and to serve my site visitors above all else. So Adsense revenues are down by 20%, so what?!
Whether site visitor counts continue to grow--they have, Thanks Be to Google (and the search visitors They send me, although They could strike me down in the SERPS at any time, what can I really hope to do about it?)--visitor growth doesn't really matter all that much more either.
I have more free time (I read the Adsense Forum less and less), my conscience is cleaner, I'm less stressed, life is more fun again.
That's the sign of my times!
<irony>Needless to say</irony>, standard disclaimer: Your Mileage May [and Probably Does] Vary.
Rather than strive mightily to squeeze the extra 20% out of Adsense (and other e-commerce programs), I've decided to scale back and focus my efforts on the core "product"--the reasons my sites exist in the first place, and to serve my site visitors above all else. So Adsense revenues are down by 20%, so what?!
I'm with you on that. However, I can also understand that for sites with huge visitor numbers, a very small increase in ctr, or whatever can mean a substantial sum of money.
There's a point where tweaking to squeeze out a little extra income is counterproductive.
I don't do testing of different colors, locations, sizes, etc. I have better things to do, but then my ecpm is in double figures consistently, my traffic is modest but I still earn 4 figure income every month.
