AM i thinking wrong on multiple ads reaction?

Multiple adsense is not of much use

[robinponty]

Hi,
I feel that if I add 2 more units, my click through rate will go double/ 3 times (a little less) because of these possible reasons –

1. My first ad unit was on the top of the page, and when a person comes on the second screen, the first ad unit goes of the screen. Hence putting a second ad unit on the second screen may get a click. Similarly, putting a 3rd ad unit at the third screen may be clicked as he goes further. (Ideally CTR will not go 3 times since ad unit on the top of the page is clicked more (but lets say CTR will go double if not triple).

2. May be the visitor has read those ads on the first screen, but did not find them of use. So if we have more ads to show, he may find one relevant and may click on that.

BUT

I feel that since the “ad unit” on the lower part of the page, will have a lower CPC, so I may loose the visitor at a lower price. If I do not have the other ad units, my current ad unit will have the maximum attention of the people and also, I will be paid higher. Also, if I do not have other 2 ad units, may be a visitor come on the top to see the “top ad unit” and may click on and pay me healthy CPC.

So overall, I feel that there will not be any net profit by putting any additional ad unit. On the top of that, MY CTR is already quiet healthy so I feel I will loose instead of gaining anything by putting additional ad units. (I will not be getting the benefits of additional ads being displayed, since I do not expect my CTR to go much higher any more but I may loose a visitor at for a Lower CPC.

Am I thinking wrong?

Thanks all for your time!

[ronin]

If you are serving two or three adpanels on a page your impressions will go up by a factor of two or three, while your clickthrus may rise a little.

Therefore your CTR will drop significantly. Though your bottom line may be slightly better.

[devlin]

I think that many people running AdSense are doing so as a way of enhancing income from an information site.

Maybe CTR is not the prime concern of some people. What about the impression that site visitors have of the site if pages are plastered with "Ads from Goooooogle"?

I think that many of my website visitors would go away quickly if they saw too many ads. That means that my page views per visitor would go down, which in turn would impact on site income.

+++
IanT

[robinponty]

Okay, I may get a few extra clicks but I am putting 2 more times, lower value ads as well. Will that not hit the bottomline adversely. May be one, click through can go from Lets say, 6.5% to 7.5% but now I am putting ads of lower value as well.

So, per 100 impressions, I may get one click extra (7.5 in place of 6.5) but if i have 2 clicks on lower value ads.

Let me take a case.
where lets say average CPC I get is .30 when i dispaly a Unit of 4 ads. So, we say the 4 ads have these value (in cents) repectively -

35,33,30,22

so average i get is 30 cents per click. So per 100 impression, i get usd 1.95 (6.5% clicks).

Now lets say i show 3 units. Total 12 ads.
Here is the click value in cents -
35,33,30,22,20,19,18,17,16,15,14,13
Here average CPC i get is 21 cents.

so average i get is 21 cents per click. So per 100 impression, i get usd 1.57 (7.5% clicks).

i know, there are certian hyphotesis here with numbers biut to me it sound a trend with my past excperience. What do you guys say?

[robinponty]

Yes devlin, agree!

[JuniorOptimizer]

I don't plan on doing this. I see no real advantage and it sure seems like the higher the CTR, the higher the payout so it seems this could upset the balance.

[Visit Thailand]

Best thing to do is try it out and monitor all stats. Give it perhaps a couple of weeks or whatever you feel is fair and then compare results and expectations.

[Broadway]

JuniorOptimizer brings up a point that I had forgotten about. At one point I did feel that my Adsense optimizing that seemed to result in a greater CTR seemed to correlate with an increased EPC (as in Google was paying a higher % to me). I don't know that this theory was ever confirmed but it will make me slow to make a change in the number of Adsense boxes I display on a page, so I don't dilute my current CTR.

[ownerrim]

devlin, I'm not so sure this will turn people off. I think users are used to seeing ads in multiple spots on webpages of all different kinds of sites. They see them in their hotmail, on news sites, everywhere. I think what would turn viewers off (for an info site) is where you place the ads and how. If the ad placement and color selection looks tacky, that may diminish the viewer's perception of the site's quality. If you have 3 ad blocks relatively close together, that would look "greedy" (remember altavista). However, if the color selection is tastefully selected and the ads are appropriately spaced, maybe this will work fine.

junioroptimizer, are you sure that higher ctr equals higher payout. Two weeks ago I shifted away from leaderboards to a 2-ad banner and got much lower ctr, but significantly higher earnings.

[caspita]

My opinion is that this new feature of multiple (3) add units is to be used with a different strategy .. yes you may have the big add unit at the top (4 ads) or at the side (5 ads) .. but do not fill up your page with just 4-5 groups of ad units.. the strategy should be to keep the regular sky/tower adunit and use the other two choises to mix the ads with the content, like put a 1-2 ad units after a paragraph or as a reference in the middle of an article. This will target more specific ads for that section and you could even get better value there. As everybody says.. testing will give the answer.. we need to use the chanels to find out what is worth.

What I don't like from the multiple ad units is that it is giving more tools now for all those spamy sites out there that have no content but the ads .. the people get there and their only choises are back button or an Ad. Those site will be able to present more Ads now and the Advertisers will see that also.

[blairsp]

Surely the only way that your earnings will drop is that you are now giving three chances for readers to leave your site rather than one. In effect you are simply increasing their chance of leaving, not that the actual click will be worth less. They are still leaving no matter what ad they click on(unless you are opening up the ad in a new window which I believe is still against TOS).

You are simply offering G more ad space for free (unless of course there is at least one click through)The only solution is for G to offer new window opening (which other non mentionable contextual advertisers do) which would allow customers to potentially click on two different ads from two different formats. That is unliekly to happen IMHO

Edited for "Shocking spelling"

[Jenstar]

Something else to keep in mind is that perhaps someone is reading your article - and never would have clicked on that top ad unit. But they get down to the bottom and then see an ad unit - they just might click an ad rather than hitting the back button. So a $0.14 click is better than no click at all. But that said, it can be hard to guess how many of those who clicked the $0.14 ad would have scrolled back up to the top and clicked a higher paying ad instead.

Definitely run multiple channels on the same page, that way you can easily track which ad units are attracting the most clicks - and hopefully, the one with the most clicks is also the one with the highest EPC.

[ownerrim]

Echoing Jenstar and Caspita, since the goal is to get more clicks without suffering EPC loss, ways to minimize the problem (of getting lower paying ads while more ad blocks are being utilized) might include:

1. placing new ad blocks where you previously never intended visitors to go. that is, if your intent was to have them click an ad at the top of the page, place the ad block at the very bottom. you do run the risk of getting lower-paying clicks (for those visitors who before might have scrolled back up to the top for the "one" ad block), but this can be minimized by

2. using smaller ad formats such as banners and half banners--versus skyscrapers and leaderboards---that carry 1/2 or 1/4 of the ads.

[ownerrim]

Interestingly enough, someone in the adwords forum stated that he was pleased at the changes since it would allow his ads to run on more pages at a lower cost.

[JuniorOptimizer]

I actually think JenStar makes a good point.

I added a second channel and can track both sets of ads to see what happens. This might be Gooooooooooooood.

[europeforvisitors]

Something else to keep in mind is that perhaps someone is reading your article - and never would have clicked on that top ad unit. But they get down to the bottom and then see an ad unit - they just might click an ad rather than hitting the back button.

In that case, wouldn't it make more sense for Google to offer duplicate ad units (a la traditional ad banners, which are often served at both the top and bottom of the page)?