"Throwing It Out There" Thought

nothing too deep, just a thought

[webmastertexas]

TWo days ago I removed those small box ads via Fastclick, and I noticed that my Google earnings increase by about 30/40%. Anyone think there's a relationship between less banner ads and higher CTR on Adsense?

Just a thought.

[conor]

If you reduce your 'edvertising clutter' by default you are makeing yor adsense more prominent, which should increase click troughs, provideing the ads are atleast as relevant to the visitor

[webmastertexas]

As it turns out my CTR didn't increase, it was just a jump in eCPM. Good ole Google's stats putting things in perspective once again. :)

[diamondgrl]

I doubt it's a real effect and think it must have been coincidence. However, you can always test it by doing a rigorous test with the page displaying one way 50% of the time and another way the other 50%.

[Chad]

I removed all non-adsense ads and removed the borders from my adsense ads to make them look less ad-ish. With just two adsense ads, CTR shot way up.

I then removed the second adsense ad. CTR went through the roof.

Seems like the trick to advertising is to appreciate the public's strong aversion to advertising.

[richmondsteve]

webmastertexas, I've seen the effect conor described first-hand, but if your CTR didn't increase then I'm confident it's entirely coincidental. This week alone, with 3-digit clicks daily, my sites' EPM has ranged from x to 4x with no changes in content, layout, colors, ad placement, etc.

I've found that on my primary AdSense revenue generating site I can increase my AdSense EPM by removing the 1-2 affiliate ads I incorporate into most of my pages, but my total earnings from AdSense and affiliate commissions combined is greater if I leave them. That's not a given for all publishers though.

[growingdigital]

I agree with Chad. Subtle advertising is more effective than IN YOUR FACE CLICK RIGHT HERE advertising. I have applied this to several pages and have witnessed a large jump in conversions.

[BennyBlanco]

Chad, while I have had the same experiences with experimentation, I am pretty sure that the increase in CTR when you removed the 2nd ad code was due to the fact that you automatically cut your impressions in half on each page viewed by a user. Were you accounting for this in adjusting your CTR? Or did I misunderstand something?

[annej]

Am I right in understanding that if you have two ads on a page that counts as two impressions for each time a visitor goes to the page?

[ken_b]

Am I right in understanding that if you have two ads on a page that counts as two impressions for each time a visitor goes to the page?

Yes.

[webmastertexas]

One thing I didn't take into consideration was that traffic has jumped on my site by quite a bit in the last few days, and I'm getting about 50% more impressions than usual. Clicks have also increased, about 20%, so these two factors might also have a large impact. Whatever the reason, I'm certainly loving how Adsense is growing and growing and growing... :D

[skunker]

webmastertexas,
I am in the same boat as you! I just removed my fastclick ads after experience a 90%, yes, a 90% drop in my adsense earnings even as traffic tripled!

I removed fastclick and now I gained my adsense earnings back to normal levels, if not even better levels than before.

[itisgene]

I think it depends on the visitors behavior on your site.

Type A. If the visitors want to leave ASAP from your site (for whatever reason :)), then they will click only one ad (either Adsense or Affiliate link).

Type B. If the visitors like what your site offers, then they will click a few ads per visitor.

If you have more type A visitors, you'd better remove whatever makes less. In my case I removed Affiliate links from one of my sites.

If you have more type B visitors, you may want to arrnage the link layouts well so that people can click a few links per visit. There is no problem here having affiliate links and Adsense together. I have one site that has both and make same amount of money for me.

[Chad]

Benny: I took into account the double-impressions. What I saw was overall decrease in revenue. I have enough traffic to measure fairly accurately.

Also itisgene: on the issue of psychology of visitors; I've been using channels lately to track user response to different quality of content in order to answer the old question "If I put up really bad content will the user be more likely to click my ads just to escape?". ;)

It seems the opposite is true. The better the content, the higher the CTR -- to an extreme. My higher-quality content consistently results in a CTR three to four times that of my worst. I think perhaps earned trust is a strong factor in determining CTR. Something to consider!

[quotations]

We made no changes at all since 12/23/2004 but the AdSense CTR and eCPM have both about doubled starting on 12/26/2004.

[activeco]

My best performing site lost 80%-90% of revenue in last few weeks, having the same number of clicks.
EPC for very competitive kwords dropped in average from $1.20 to $0.10 .

Yes, I added more channels, doubled the traffic and # of clicks in overal, but the $ results were devastating.

I am almost giving up and getting more and more negative feelings towards Google and their often senseless algo's.

[europeforvisitors]

My CPM has been up significantly since Christmas, and the only change I've made has been to use rotating colors for the ads. (In the past, I used the default "Mother Earth" color scheme; I now use rotating color backgrounds, which make the ads stand out better against the white page and convey the idea that each page's ads are different from ads that the reader has already seen.)

[annej]

I was trying some tests on a couple of sections of my sites but CTR seems to be up everywhere since Christmas so it's hard to tell if my changes made any real difference. It does look like the one page that I set up with rotating color ads has made a significant improvement. Now I wish I knew if it is the rotating aspect or if it's that 3 or the 4 schemes have more contrast than the single one I had before.