Hi After reading some comments about better revenue by showing less ads I wounder if that is true. The fact is: The best paying ads are the first ads that are displayed on your website. The more ads you display the less value the last ads on your site have (comparing to the first ad and depending on your keywords and keyword competition) But if you only show lets say one leaderboard to increase eCPM will this really increase your revenue? If these 4 ads shown in this leaderboard don't interest the user viewing your site you wont get a click and you wont get money from him/her. But if you display more then one ad on your site, e.g. a leaderboard at the top, a rectangle in the content and a link unit in the sidebar then the chances drastically increases that the user is clicking on one of your ads because it is interesting for him/her. Therefor you wont get as much pay for the click if he clicks a lower ad but at least you get a click. I for myself am normally using 3 content ads and 1-2 link units on one site blended into the content so that they don't disturb the flow of my forum. If you want to take a look: http://www.patientenfragen.net (go into any thread) What do you all think? Tale or truth? StarBuG
I personally think that no answer could be applied on all sites. The only answer is testing, do them both for one week, check, compare and you will find your answer. I did this on different sites and testing was the only way to find out the best way to go.
I did a lot of testing in the last year but my revenue is constantly increasing and I don't want to risk that The other thing is that I run forums which are communities. If I remove ads and then add them later if the experiment fails I have a lot of explaining to do why I display all the ads again. But I am open for a discussion or if someone wants to give it a try StarBuG
StarBug, First of all, this isn't actually a fact: The top ranking ad on a site is actually the one with the highest CPC AND quality score combined. Technically speaking it's possible to have an ad ranked no.1 with a lower CPC than an ad ranked no.2 or even no.3. However, I'll allow that it is generally true to say the 'higher paying' ads will be among the first to display on the site. I doubt this question can have a single all-encompasing answer because so much depends on the individual sites. Some sites lend themselves to having a lot of ad units, others don't. My own gut feeling is that any increases in earnings reported by reducing the number of ad units is more likely to be as a result of reduced ad blindness than anything specifically to do with the ads themselves. Jon
That is what I meant. The best paying ads will be displayed in the first adsense ad (eg the leaderboard) that is loaded by your website. Of cours this does not mean that the first ad in this leaderboard is the best paying ad on your site, but you wount find the best paying ad in the third ad you have placed on your site. But that isn't the real argument here. The point is that many here believe that showing less ads and therefor increasing the eCPM rate will earn them more money at the end. I would say that this is a tale. I would agree here with you too. You can maximize your revenue by changing your ad format, placement and look depending on your site. But does the pure reduction of ads lead to an increase of revenue? I really doubt it. StarBuG
Situations differ for different sites. Placement for blogs, may be different from those on a video site, etc. Trial and error.. that's the key. Tell us what niche your site is on, and experiment with it. Tell us the results, we'll try to help you out
It's an interesting question. I can imagine scenarios where a visitor who has read your page and is then looking to move on will click the nearest link of interest. The value of this click will depend on whether it's the only ad unit or the third on the page, that's understandable. What I think you'd struggle to measure (without extensive testing, as suggested) is whether the increase in earnings through this practice matched or exceeded potential earnings from those who, finding no nearby link (because your only ad unit is far away on the page) simply clicked back or Home. Testing should show this but, as you say, you'd need decent traffic and data to really make the tests worthwhile and then you're looking at messing your users around and potentially losing money! Jon
I posted the link to one of my forums in my first post here. It is a forum for german patients with (medical) questions. (yes, I am becoming a doctor early next year )
It will depend on how many suitable advertisers exist for your page, and how much they have bid (ignoring different CTR as mentioned above, which also affect 'earnings') Top 8 bids, scenario 1: $2 $1.50 $1.00 0.80 0.30 0.15 0.1 0.05 Top 8 bids, scenario 2: $1.50 $1.40 $1.30 $1.25 $1.15 $1.10 $1.05 $1.00 Given the first scenario, you only want one ad block, because the first 4 ads pay much more - so you are better off losing 2-3 clicks in the second ad block in the hope of getting just 1 more in the first block. But scenario 2, where the spread of bids is much less, you should be better off with 2 ad blocks, becasue you're going to earn more overall. To put it more simply, if there are a couple of advertisers who are paying much more than the others, you want just one block. If lots are paying about the same you want more than 1. BUT advertisers and their bids change all the time, so testing today will be invalid tomorrow...although there are tools I think that tell you how much people are bidding etc. But there is no 'right' answer - it depends on the site and the advertisers and the placement etc.
@Rasputin There is a flaw in your argument. If you have more then one ad, people will still click on your first ad, no matter what. But the people who wont click on your first ad maybe would click on the second ad, if you have one. People don't read a whole page and after that click on the ad. They read your page and the first ad they find interesting is the one they click. Remember that adsense clicks are all about people getting interested in the ad. If the first 4 ads in your one banner are uninteresting to them they wont click at all. Showing more ads will get you additional clicks from users which would not have clicked otherwise. So at the end you will earn more with more ads, regardless of the bids (excluding PSA of course). Your argument would hold in the case that you display to competitive ad banners at the same spot, e.g. to large rectangles next to each other. In this case a click on the right would bring you less money. But here my argument is also valid as well. It is all about peoples interests in the ads semselfs. StarBuG
Probably, however, its not a precise truth in that it not conclusive, but the likelihood of it being correct is probably true.
There will be no absolute answer for this argument. If you prioritize revenue above all else... the more ads you have, the more likely your revenue will be higher. There could be some downside though, the CPC of your 3rd ad unit might be horribly low depends on topic; sometimes I would rather improve the visitors' experience (having few ads for example) to have them visiting advertisers that pay peanuts.