Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I will agree with you that too many ads kills the user experience, but even that is dependant on your audience. If you have a site that attracts a lot of bookmarkers and relies on return visitors, adding ads won't do much for you.
Others run simple ads. and make extra spending money.
you will have to experiment with ads and placment.
We added a one linked text banner on our main page and it does very well.. in november and we went from $80 a month to $80 a day,Novemeber was about $2400 so it showed we weren't using our space right.
Now since google playied with the rates to increase their profits for the stockholders (which I think is illegal but not sure) we are barely going to break $1000 in april. (But I guess if I was worth 7.1 billion and I could screw a few hundred thousand publishers to increase my net worth by another billion, why not right)
So basically put it right in the middle of the page where people will see it. Or blend them into your site, but don't kill your visitors with ads...
We have a lot of return visitors so that shows we are doing something right...
Now since google playied with the rates to increase their profits for the stockholders (which I think is illegal but not sure) we are barely going to break $1000 in april. (But I guess if I was worth 7.1 billion and I could screw a few hundred thousand publishers to increase my net worth by another billion, why not right)
bogus conjecture
I had one topic that generated a lot of page views but these pages had a pretty low CTR. These pages had an Adsense skyscraper on them running text ads.
As a second unit I added an AdLinks box. It blends in well with the pages' navigation menu. It's more advertising yet its two different types of advertising so its not so obnoxious. Earnings for these pages is up, maybe up 50% or so. Dollars wise this is a nice increase but not earth shattering.
When there are 12 ads in a narrow field, you can get alot of low paying ads. If there is a wide range of ads, all similar but some pay $5.00 and others pay $.03, you are better off to only expose the visitors to the higher value ads and this can be done by limited the ads to one block. Though not fool proof, at the end of the month, the bottom line supported this. There is no guarantee you will only get high paying ads in the block when only one block is present. But, our experience is that is the norm.
We tested this on two pages and used the channels tool to see what worked best. When the content was wide, and the ads were wide ranging, more ads were better, because they could appeal to a wider range of visitors. But, if the topic is narrow, and all the ads are similar, 12 different ads you know are not going to all pay $5.00.
The bottom line difference at the end of the month on the two pages was huge.
You can decide this by using channels and checking them every few minutes during the test period and see the difference in the ppc revenue. In order to really test it, you need to watch it day and night for a month. Highest paying ads are present during certain times of the month and certain times of the day. It is pretty much like any product sales on the web, as far as that revenue pattern goes.
If you understand that, then just apply it to this test and you can complete it much quicker than the month. Just do math adjustments with percentages based on the normal sales volumn adjusted for time of day and time of month, and season.
It is interesting to note, that the highest revenue chance is when there is one block, with only one ad in it. You know that is the highest paying ad. Don't put more ads on.
Most visitors only click on one ad and then they are gone. Only a few click on two or three ads. See your logs and compare log data there to the channel data to see what I mean.
I was thinking I should have said more about the site - it is a travel site, with a lot of original content and a lot of user generated stuff (forums, reviews). We have a lot of return users (30 to 40% maybe) and a lot of new ones each month. It is not a get rich quick site at all - we've been at it for 10 years now, and annoying users has always been a big concern...
I've been online for 5 years - just over a year with adsense, and annoying visitors is a concern I have too. I also tried having two ad blocks on pages, and for me earnings went down, despite the ads in the second block being well targetted. What works best for me is one ad block on a page.
Also, I'm very careful not to put ads on pages unless they pay their way. If a banner doesn't have a reasonable return then it goes. Over the entire site of several hundred pages there are less that 10 ad blocks. I think visitors seem more inclined to click on the ads if they don't see them on every page. Maybe they get ad blind if there are ads on all pages.
