Review of the Google AdSense Webinar for new publishers

June 30, 2005

[Jenstar]

Google AdSense held a webinar for new publishers on June 30th, with three experienced publishers profiled, who then answered questions based on their own experiences.

Some useful tidbits from the webinar that I picked up:

Confirmation from AdSense of the top three ad unit sizes are-
1. 336x280 large rectangle
2. 300x250 medium rectangle
3. 160x600 wide skyscraper

AdSense plans to release new languages each quarter.

The transcript is online here:
[google.com...]

The three publishers profiled are listed in the transcript with their websites, and they each talk in detail about their own personal experiences and things they have tested for optimizing their AdSense.

It is quite lengthy and definitely geared towards new publishers, with many of the publisher questions clearly covered in the terms/policies. And surprisingly, they even ran out of questions to answer at the end! But if you like to read everything published about AdSense, the tidbits hidden amongst the 21 printed page transcript makes it worthwhile ;)

[arrowman]

Thanks Jen. This was an eyeopener for me:

So one of the things that he did was experimenting with ad positions. Here you see his site, <snip>, and on the left-hand side, he has the ads in the middle of the page originally. But just by making a little change like the screen shot on the right, his click-through rate jumped by almost 60%. Just by that little change of position.

Simply put the ads top left in the content rectangle, at the point where most people start reading. A bit ugly, if you ask me, but I can believe it's very effective. Interesting to see that Google actually endorses such practices.

This will change the way people read, and open up a new market for books with a useless tidbit of 7x6 cm top left on every page :-)

[edited by: Woz at 12:11 am (utc) on July 11, 2005]
[edit reason] No Specifics please, see Tos#13 [/edit]

[incrediBILL]

Interesting to see that Google actually endorses such practices.

They endorse maximizing revenue, what else would you expect?

FWIW, that's where I stuck my AdLinks when they bumped my income 30%, its the only place to put them IMO.

[markus007]

Yes that was interesting, time for revshare negociations with google :)

[incrediBILL]

the public service ads do count towards the page impressions

OK, PSA ads are definitely in the total impressions - good to know ;)

[Swebbie]

Simply put the ads top left in the content rectangle, at the point where most people start reading.

Location, location, location! AMEN! I am a test junkie. I'm always fiddling with very minor changes, both with the type of ad block and the positions. I can safely say that, across several topics on several sites, the upper left in the main content is the absolute key.

Now, some of it will depend on how your site is laid out, but the typical page will have content more or less in the middle of the screen under a logo or banner. People naturally (and without thinking about it) move their eyes to that position. That's all there is to it.

I'll add that when I starting testing Ad Links (thanks to BILL for that tip!), another clear pattern emerged, and it too follows the standard page layout model. Put a block of 4 or 5 Ad Links in the vertical style (120X90 or a bit larger works best for me) in the upper left margin. I suspect this works so well because people have become used to looking for nav menus in that position, and Ad Links look like menus (which they are, just not for your site).

Proof is in the pudding, as always, and I've tried all kinds of combinations. Upper left margin for Ad Links and upper left rectangle block of Ad Units where the content begins. Both above the fold. Works like a charm. I get 35% CTR across all my sites with this strategy.

[incrediBILL]

OK, since we're all in a sharing mode and close to a big sweaty group hug I'll spill the beans on the best tip I ever got from anyone @ Google (close your eyes Jen, you know too much already) ....

Use a banner ad program that can handle multi-media/HTML ads on your server to try out various color combinations and various ad sizes/types in different locations and let it run a day or two rotating a couple of combinations. When you use the banner rotations serving up Google ads in conjunction with channels to see which ads are actually performing best you can easily fine tune your site by testing multiple things at once and get the stats on what's performing best after a short trial period.

[enigmaak]

Thanks Jenstar for this topic - and the link to the transcript. It made me realize something that was right in front of my eyes, but i could not see before.

One simple change to my site on the lines of one of the demo'ed ones and my EPC has nearly doubled. Just goes across to show that there's always room for learning and improvement.

[mvander]

Yes, excellent reading. I love reading others stories on what they do and how they do it. Knowledge is power!

[PaulPA]

Curious as to what Phoebe meant by "25,000 page readers a day." Is that site visitors or page views?

[niki_man]

I would like to see Google give a Webinar on how to get rid of Spam and scapper sites that steal your content.

See my experience here:
[webmasterworld.com...]

What would happen to the presenters if scaper sites stole portions of their content then posted it on 100 subdomains with multiple keywords?

[xxxxxpp]

That was a very interesting read. thanks for the link