adsense or agency ?

[mike5100]

Hi folks - we have a reasonable sports fanzine type site with about 500,000 unique users per month generating about 12m page impressions. We've always concentrated mainly on a 3rd party agency selling advertising for us and they make us about $10k per month after their commission. But in recent times they have been only selling run of network low value stuff, and I'd value your thoughts on whether we'd be better off taking adsense seriously instead of playing around with it as we do (currently it makes us about $500 per month).
The site is mainly forums but has some good content as well.
Do you think we'd make similar money putting Adsense in the prime spots currently occupied by the agency stuff (and of course learning a lot more about Adsense by getting involved in this forum :-)
Thanks
Mike

[HuskyPup]

Do you think we'd make similar money putting Adsense in the prime spots

This may seem a stupid response however what's to stop you experimenting since it costs you nothing to sign-up?

I do assume you have control of your sites?

Are your current ads in simple includes whereby at a stroke you can update every page immediately or will you have to do a massive find and replace operation?

You've certainly got the numbers that many would envy however bearing in mind you do have mainly forums then the expected low CTR may occur.

Than again, you may be pleasantly surprised with completely new ads:-)

[rajivatre]

I would say apply for google ad manager. It would allow you to create spots on your site which you can define minimum cpc and lot many features. So these spots can be occupied with adsense and your conventional advertising which ever gives you better CPM or CPC.
Ofcourse you may have to define the CPM or CPC you are getting from your conventional advertisements.

[mike5100]

Huskypup - no - not a stupid response, but we can't do what you suggest without ditching our agency which would be a big step. We do have some google ads running but haven't looked at rajivetre's suggestion yet. Maybe this idea is a good compromise and might put pressure on the agency to sell more premium stuff.
Mike

[jetteroheller]

Try to integrate 2 AdLink units on each page.

The AdLink units are as small as 468x15 or 120x90 and have for the small space a very good revenue.

When this experiment increases Your AdSense income to more than $3000, I would say, the best places for AdSense would bring it up to beyond $10000 + $500.

[mike5100]

Thanks jetteroheller ... we'll try that.
Our agency seems to be running the same sort of stuff we could run with Doubleclick or something similar but it would mean us dedicating someone full time to keeping on top of our advertising. We could do the same and dedicate someone to adsense.
But I'm trying to get a feel from you guys as to whether you think with our users, pageviews and the type of site (predominantly forums) we should be expecting say $300k or $400k per year or whether we are doing OK at about $140k (albeit through an agency). I know that 140k might sound a lot but it also takes a lot of people a lot of time to keep the whole show on the road, so 140k is borderline.
Thanks
Mike