How Hard Up for Ad Space is Google?

Interesting email from AdSense

[ken_b]

I just got an email that was pretty odd.

A simple message saying they noticed I was not running the maximum number of ads on 1972 of my pages, and an image of the Heat Map [google.com].

Followed by the sugesstion that I load the pages with the maximum number of ads allowed. (I don't think I have 3 regular ad blocks on any page on my site. I normally run 1 regular ad block and 1 adlinks block. Some pages get 2 regular ad blocks and no adlinks blocks.)

Can they be that hard up for adspace? I doubt it, because I frequently see just 1 or 2 ads in a 300x250 or 120x600 or 160x600 ad block.

Apparently they didn't notice there is only 1 or 2 ads on each of the other 4,000 or so pages! :)

[bumpski]

Perhaps Google has a big "peak" traffic times, like lunch time on a weekday. Advertisers can set times for their ads to run, and if they all choose lunch time there will be lots of unused "ad bandwidth" on your site the rest of the time. But with lots of ad apace Google can blast the ads at lunch time.

Also if you've ever advertised in a magazine, the first thing you look at is readership. Lots of ad impressions for Google looks like real good readership!

[HuskyPup]

like lunch time on a weekday

Whose lunchtime?

[zdgn]

I get these emails from them for different sites too.

Some encourage more ad units, some encourage change of placements, some suggest replacing sizes, etc.

They do tend to be pretty specific at times, don't they... (e.g. paraphrasing: we notice that 387 pages in /xyz/ contain only one 120x600... do change those to 160x600... or better still, add another 300x250 and see the difference!)

For what it's worth, it feels nice that things are being monitored closely - even if just by a bot. :-)

I do try some suggestions. A few indeed resulted in significant gain. A few tank the revenue. Some suggestions I just won't make because of aesthetics, space or various reasons, but thank you - keep them coming! :-)

So, in the end, I just treat these emails as well-wishing, break-the-complacency optimisation tips and suggestions which may or may not work. Afterall, testing is everything with AdSense.

[DaStarBuG]

More ad units mean more revenue for you and for google.
This is why publishers get these auto generated messages.

And most of the time if you follow the suggestions you will earn more money.
However these messages don't take design or the intent of the webmaster into account.
So ignore them if you think they wont help you but maybe it is worth trying out one or more of the suggestions ;)

[bumpski]

Whose lunchtime?

Depends on your targeted market, but:

Noon to Four or so US. Not much activity in the Atlantic and Pacific.

With time and locality targeting there can be massive bursts of advertising over relatively short periods of time. If Google thinks the website itself has a locality the bursts could be very short. (That's a concept I don't like, localizing sites, unless they want it. (Webmaster tools to the rescue?)

The question was why so many ad units with so few ads. I say Google wants ad bandwidth available, and it's going to be very hard for a webmaster to observe "large bursts" of ads from typically one location, time zone, market, etc.

[nomis5]

So I never get these emails. Why? Is my site optimised to perfection (ha ha) or what. How do Adsense determine which sites to send this type of advice to? For comparison, I get 13k impressions per day on one site. Are your stats hugely different?

[ken_b]

Turns out the email message was repeated in the "messages" section on my AdSense contol panel.

They suggested I ad another 2721 ads to the pages they reviewed.

LOL...no.

[caribguy]

Tweak to deliver the new ads only during lunch time. If I could make say an extra 100 bucks a day with such a simple change I'd be game.

[BillyS]

nomis5 - I'm not sure how Google selects their sites. We get closer to 40K impressions per day and we received fairly personalized service. The Adsense person did a mock up of our site with two or three scenarios for various ad placements. Keep an eye on your emails and messages... your turn will come.