New Adsense Feature - just posted?

varies the number of text ads that appear in a given ad unit

[howiejs]

"To increase monetization on your site and improve the relevance of ads, AdSense now varies the number of text ads that appear in a given ad unit. In cases where we determine that increasing the size of the most relevant ads will improve performance, we'll drop the lowest-performing ad or ads and expand the remaining ones to fill the entire unit. Showing fewer ads works to your advantage, allowing the better-performing ads to draw more user attention and click-throughs. Google AdSense technology will automatically determine the optimal number of ads to display on any page and will only show fewer ads when doing so will make you more money!"

[jim_w]

I wondered what the heck was going on. I too have seen these stretched out ads before the announcement.

My question is I reduced some ads units on some pages to increase revenues. This essentially does the same. If I am seeing all ad slots filled in an ad unit, does this means I should put on more ad units till I see this start happening?

[TheDonster]

The expanded ads have been on my site for 2 days now starting Thurs. Since my site always experiences a decline in earnings on Thurs, Fri. and Sat., I was amazed to see my average per day stayed exactly on track with the rest of the week. In fact, the expanded ads started to appear at exactly the times when earnings would normally decline. It's only 2 days, I know but I've never gotten earnings on a Thur. or Fri. that matched with the rest of the week for over 5 months now! Another point is that the weird look might actually be beneficial in countering ad blindness. Say regular visitors know where all your ads are located on the various pages of your site. Even I was waiting to see what ads would show up since it changes regularly. Granted, this can all be chalked up to the novelty factor, but I've gotten a healthier CPC on my 2 worst performing days and I can't argue with that. For those who have reported lower earnings, I'm wondering whether or not they have a regular, high paying advertiser to fill the expanded ad space? This is my situation and this advertiser pays up to 10x more than the lowest paying ads in my blocks. It may be this is really where the expanded ad units are most beneficial to both Google and the publisher.

[drall]

Large network of pr6 -7 sites with relativly stable ctr and epc since the start of adsense has seen a drop in ctr of 37% percent now and a drop in overall earnings of 29%.

This started the day this change took place on our sites.

[Bluepixel]

I also have ebay ads.
They don't even have a title in their ads, only text. I guess most user's don't even see that you can click on them.

[John Carpenter]

I'm going to say it blatantly: I don't want ugly ads on my site, even if they earned 50% more.

I need to be sure that the font size of Google ads does not change, unless we select a different ad format.

Also, I don't understand why only premium publishers are allowed to choose font family and other parameters of the ads. If Google allowed all adsense publishers to control the appearance of the ads (so that it matches the site design), it could increase CTR and earnings.

Let me find out what works and I will earn you more money.

[david_uk]

I don't like the look of the new ads, but I'm warming to to the idea.

My concern was that they would place just one ad in my main block that earns me most of my money, and in fact LOWER my earnings as a result. Especially if they selected a junky scraper I hadn't blocked. I don't have absolute faith in algorythms.

However, I've just been looking at my stats for yesterday. Saturday is normally a slack day. One of the channels earned me quite a lot more than normal. Just looked at the page and it's displaying the new format in a banner adblock.

On my main banner I've only seen 4 ads displayed and the earnings are up to normal. So it might actually earn me more money after all! If they continue to show 4 ads in my prime spot, and whatever they deem best in the rest then I'm happy. Maybe the algorythm actually works, and has correctly deduced this?

I wouldn't say I'm a fan yet, but I'm sure that extra revenue will help me get over the new format :)

Anyone know if they apply the format to all blocks, or just certain ones?

[alex77]

This is rather annoying... we're seeing totally off-topic ads in new pages as well as established ones. Clicks + earnings went down significantly. Since we just recovered from bourbon crashes and finally things were looking bright again, now this.

I just hope they get it sorted out soon. I don't know what's worse - seeing your pages not ranking or ranking but showing useless ads!

[Gandhalf]

I guess Ebay ads are showing because the Bot is crawling the pages again. I havn't checked the logs yet but if you refresh the page a couple of times, ebay ads disappear.
Thank God!

[europeforvisitors]

Since the date of the announcement
Traffic- Constant
CTR----- Down 2X
ECPM---- Down 3X
Revenues Down 3X

My CTR and eCPM were down about 10% for the first five days of August (compared to July), but for the 6th and 7th they're running about 13% above the July average. IMHO, that proves only that short-term swings are normal and it isn't wise to draw too many conclusions from them, especially when so many factors go into determining EPC and CTR.

[error10]

I finally gave up and redesigned my site after seeing a LINK UNIT appear inside a long-standing 468x60 ad unit block! Since doing so, CTR and revenue seem to be back to normal, probably a bit higher, even.

I also finally went through and blocked a bunch of scraper and made for adsense sites, so we'll see what happens.

[Bluepixel]

It's a little early to drink champagne but my EPCM definitely increased by 50% yesterday and today.

I hope google won't remove that new feature.

[TheDonster]

My eCPM is up also almost 50% as well, but the biggest gain I've seen is CPC is up almost 80% over my 3 worst performing days of the week! My question is how long will advertiser's budgets be able to last with this? I'm thinking the small advertisers will bail if their ads are not being shown whenever earninngs are going down for Google & publishers. Of course, that'll leave the bigger fish with more space but competition for keywords will drop. This may be why Google is talking about increasing the minimum keyword bids sometime this Aug.

[7_Driver]

Something's certainly improved my EPC over the last few days - which is a very welcome development.

[berto]

I, too, have begun to observe fewer ads displayed per ad block, but only for leaderboards (which I only use on one category of pages on one of my sites). I am not seeing any change to the font style or size, just wider adlets with more characters per line--a relief, because I also would be very unhappy with oversized text.

When Google decides to display fewer ads per ad block, is it perhaps pruning only the low-bid ebay-mongers, scrapers, Adsense arbitrageurs, and other bottom feeders? If so, great, for then we won't have to actively manage our URL filters for this purpose ourselves.

I mean to say, if Google is just pruning the minimum-bid, $0.01 to $0.02 per click ads, I'm all for it.

[edited by: berto at 12:33 pm (utc) on Aug. 8, 2005]

[YesMom]

Well, I *was* going to try out Yahoo on a certain site where this new system looks terrible, but I can't even login to their control panel. It keeps sending me back to the login page. Oh, well... I don't have that much patience! Can't imagine they'd answer an email since they never have in the past when I was an advertiser and they never deposited the "matching" $100 incentive.

ECPM and EPC are UP on that site with this new format, but CTR is waaaaay down.

I'm okay when 2 or 3 "adlets" are displayed in the leaderboard, but when there is only 1 you just don't see it at all. Maybe someone at AdSense will realize this?

I can live with the 2, 3, or 4 ads... but not with just one.

[berto]

If Google is pruning low-bid advertisers from ad unit displays, won't this exert upward pressure on advertiser bids?

In other words, if Google is displaying just one, two, or three ads in (some) four-ad-capacity ad units, won't advertisers tend to bid higher for the fewer remaining slots?

So, we publishers make more for two reasons:

--Visitors no longer have the option to click on the very lowest paying adlets (they having been purged).

--The EPC of the remaining displayed adlets will have increased.

[crisscross]

I really wish Google would stop using live publishing sites as a place to carry out experiments.

With all the Ph.D.s at Google you'd think they would have some common sense. The way it is supposed to work is that you get some test subjects to try a program, then if it seems to work, you invite other subjects, getting their permission first. This avoids the feeling that a powerful supplier is acting arbitrarily, and in bad faith. I don't like to have so much open space at the top of my site. It looks like I could only get one ad, not four. It makes my clients think there is no advertising on my site.

That said, I wish Google would simply give the publisher the option of the number of ads to display. We would like a skyscraper with three ads, not four. I also think that Google should allow the publisher to be able to select ads from content categories.

[John Carpenter]

ECPM and EPC are UP on that site with this new format, but CTR is waaaaay down.

If eCPM is up, then it doesn't really matter that CTR is down. eCPM is the only item that really matters. Let's suppose your site gets as many visitors daily as mine and we have the same number of ad units. You could have 90% CTR and $5 eCPM, but I will still earn much more than you, even though I have 4% CTR, because my eCPM is $40.

[MikeNoLastName]

For the record: had the highest Sunday earnings on record AND the highest ALL TIME daily earnings on Monday with CTR all over the place. Obviously still a little experimenting going on.
However, also seeing an awful lot of BLANK ads where there are multiple ads on the page. Maybe they need to re-evaluate the algo a little, espec. when the ads are more than a screenful or two apart (hint, hint ASA :).

[castar]

Please make this feature optional Adsense. One of my sites was so full of white space from two separate ad units, that I had to remove one of them. It looked too unprofessional. Still trying to figure out what to do with the other one. Thank you for your consideration.

[jhood]

I noticed this feature a few days ago when a single ad appeared in the 160x600 skyscraper space. I assumed it was a bare bones graphics ad but now realize it's one of the new text formats. Personally, I like it. Graphic ads have been popping up more often so there is now a little less predictability about what will occupy the left column on my sites. That's good, I think.

AS for lederboards, we don't run them. I have never liked the way the text ads look in lederboards. It's an unnatural way to display a bunch of text ads; they look much better in skyscrapers or large rectangles, IMHO.

If the large text ads for better clients crowd out some of the smaller and rather questionable players, so much the better.

[Kalabuchi]

has Google stopped this new feature already? I do not see any "less than 4 unit-ads" dislaying on my leaderboard anymore.

[Ossifer]

I've just seen an advert like it on my site, so I guess it's still going.

I wasn't impressed to start with, but my CTR seems to have gone up because of it, so I'm a bit more charitable towards it now.

[ann]

this may also be a way for Google to handle a falling seasonal inventory?

Whatever, the last month was a record breaker for me and this one seems to be doing even better---so far, so good.

Ann