Anyone use Auto Ads only?

[atladsenser]

On my website, I still have the old AdSense ads I've had for many years, in addition to Auto Ads turned on. I notice in my stats that Auto Ads get many more clicks, have a higher impression RPM, and a greater percentage of Active Viewable Area than my older AdSense ads that I've placed.

Have you gotten rid of your old ads, and use Auto Ads only?

Love to hear your thoughts and how it's worked for you.

[greenlift]

It was more than a year ago the last time I tried auto ads - I want to try it again because I hope things might have changed? Who doesn't want to improve revenue? But, each time I've tried it I was disappointed and discontinued it shortly after implementing it. Would also love to hear the thoughts of others about it.

My initial impression is that it turns my well crafted and organised web site with it's nice looking design into a spammy site loaded with many ads in places I do not like seeing them. Some times these ads are in wierd places and messes up the site design to the point that it looks like a 5 year old tried web design for the first time in his life. On a web site you need to provide people with a good experience else they simply don't come back.. I'd rather have a low add CTR and have people coming back instead of having them avoid an irritating spammy site that looks like it is broken some of the time.

With Google's wonky up and down keyword rankings you're not always guaranteed a steady flow of organic traffic from them, and for this reason you absolutely need a loyal visitor base that has a good and valuable experience on your web sites. People remember a good, pleasant and valuable experience on a web site. That is what makes them come back for more.

I'm bombarded by Adsense promoting their auto ads as the greatest thing they have to offer. My personal opinion is that this just makes them look silly. It actually makes me a little nervous because who wants to do business with an organization that does silly things?

Perhaps things have changed? and if it did I'm willing to give it another try, but I'm not holding any thumbs.

[edited by: greenlift at 5:55 am (utc) on Aug 17, 2021]

[NickMNS]

@greenlift
Great points, user experience important.

I don't use Auto-Ads except for vignettes. I experimented with them when helping someone else, but they were so bad they were gone within minutes. I have enough trouble ensuring that pages look right on all screens sizes when I control all the elements, I don't need hassle of trying to guess where random content may appear and break everything else.

@atladsenser how old is you code. If the ads are appearing the code is good, I wouldn't worry too much. They have updated it recently but it wasn't a breaking change. The reason that Auto-Ads gets more clicks and AVV is that placed in location where it is seen. From my experience in locations that you would be embarrassed to place an ad. Those ads get seen and clicked. I don't think you need some fancy AI/ML bot to figure that out. The question to ask is what greenlift raised, what impact does it have on your users.

The other big issue I have with Auto-Ads, is that you can never be sure what your users see as ads change location, what you see is not necessarily what they see.