responsive ad code

Is this worth doing? Does it pay as well as ordinary ad code?

[Palehorse]

Hello Folks!

I have not posted in forever, sorry, I missed you guys.

I have several low key "Mom an Pop" type, none-corporate, retro looking sites that get huge traffic and a really good annual 5 to 6 figure adsense income.

This is down from years ago being SOLID upper 6 figure. I have always been reluctant to make major changes, going on the old axiom "If it is not broke, don't fix it"...

Seeing a steady decline, I have to start trying to "fix" it now, if you know what I mean. Anyway, looking at my traffic sources, I have discovered that the majority of my traffic comes from mobile devices and tablets.

Not asking anyone to give me a for sure answer, because I know all sites are different, but what I want to know, in general, is if you make your site "mobile friendly" and use responsive adcode, will it improve the income of a site that gets about 60% traffic from mobile? (lol long sentence I know)...

[netmeg]

I don't know that it *improved* my income (I didn't run any A/B tests on it), but it certainly didn't harm it, and mine has grown every year. My traffic is about 80% mobile at peak, and it has grown substantially every year (as well as revenue) so I can't really pin it on just responsive ads.

[Palehorse]

Thanks for the response Netmeg!

OK it did not harm it, that is good. Question, is your site listed as "mobile friendly" or do they still give you suggestions?

Also, how does your sites look in mobiles?

Thanks for the response :)

[netmeg]

I was an early adopter. Way early. They're all listed as mobile friendly, and they look fine in mobile insofar as I can tell. They're not particularly pretty, but they don't need to be.

[fumanchu]

I think they are great, particularly if you have a responsive theme on your blog or site. I do and I needed the ads to change depending on the user's device and screen size. They work really well in that sense.

I have not seen any difference in terms of the money though, Adsense still sucks for me in that regard. Ha. Oh well, I make what I make from Adsense and I don't much worry about it at this point. It is what it is and I don't expect much from it.

[Broadway]

I think the bigger problem you'll have is the conversion from your fixed-width layout to responsive.

It's been my experience that you'll notice a difference in ad stats.

With fixed width and css it was easy to dictate which adsense code was in which position in your html (which affects which ads get put in which ad slots), just by setting aside empty space and filling it in with the ad at the end of the page load. With responsive, with all the different breakpoints, that's not an easy task.

Also, with fixed width, you could always tuck the ad at page-top or top-of-page-right (or whatever) and still have lots of content above the fold too. With responsive, putting ads at the top make a bad user experience (on a 320 screen, if the ad is slow to load, all the visitor sees is white space. Even if it loads, they don't seen much content, just ad.)

The same kind of thing goes with the scroll to the bottom. On fixed-width, once you get to the bottom of the page you could place all of your copyright stuff, maybe a menu, relate links, etc... and your ad would still be visible and very clickable.

With a 320 screen, you have to decide which you want showing. If it's not the ad, it can certainly affect CTR.

I also think how people interact with a fixed-page on small screens is different. Even though they're scrolling left or right, they're still interacting with the page similar to desktop. You loose that with the change to responsive, and that can affect CTR, just as Google.

I think you have to do the transition, but it's not a straight across change.

[denisl]

I think the decision to make your site responsive is not just about the situation today, but about future proofing your site. I have not seen any benefit from the process since going responsive about 6 months ago, but I do feel happier about the future (the decline may have stopped in the last few weeks).
As sugested above, it can be quite a task to position your ads appropriately on smaller screens, and get a decent appearance at all screen sizes.
I have used responsive ads in some cases, but in other cases it seamed more appropriate to use non responsive 300x250, or 250x250 ads.

[Palehorse]

Well I just finished making one of my websites totally responsive. All the pages get the "mobile-friendly" signal when using google's mobile test page.

Too early to tell, but even though I made MAJOR changes, it has not hurt, in fact after just finishing tonight it is showing an increase in traffic from mobile devices, and a small increase in revenue. Does not look like I shot myself in the foot or anything.

Only time will tell though. Gonna wait a bit and measure its effect. Will drop a note here to let you know if it was worth the round the clock editing I have been doing these last few days.

Thanks for the responses folks!