If I can get a CTR of 2% or higher I'm happy. Diet Scams is pulling an average 2.17% over the past 10 days. More important is the eCPM. It's gotta stay above $10.
Adsense placement is typically more important than whether you have 1, 2 or 3 ad units, but it does vary by niche and site content. I've seen link units do well on some sites and poorly on others but in general a single ad unit near the top of your content works best. Another thing is how well you blend the colors, size and shape of your adsense blocks into your template; this can have as much or even more effect than placement or quantity of ad units in my experience and I never stop experimenting with these things until I find the best combination for a given content site. Lastly, I also experiment a lot with combining Adsense and other ad types like Vibrant Media, TLA Inlinks, Just Relevant, Affiliate Links, etc. to see what works best on a site. Sometimes Adsense is just not a great earner if Adwords bidders aren't paying enough for keywords related to your niche and content. Good luck with your experimentation; it really is the best way to maximize your earnings.
reading this I'm giving try on it also. I removed link units and instead keeping 3 ad units with text/image instead of images only. I'm thinking moving the bottom banner up and instead of 768x60 doing 468x60 see how this will go.
You'll have to test longer than that to make a decision, right? Most of my experience with link units agrees with what you've pointed out. There have been rare exceptions, and like placement of content ads, I believe the proper (or lucky! ) positioning of link units can be in the publisher's favor. $urprised me with one of my sites.
So far my CTR has increased by 1% and my eCPM has more than doubled. I'll keep you guys up to date. PS: Earnings have more than doubled. HMMM ... Maybe less ads does mean more money.
does the same apply for less links per ad unit (smaller ad size ie 125x125 rather than 250x250) i wonder? if for example you only disply one link in a 125x125 instead of 4 in a 250x250 then I would have thought that only the highest bidding advertiser will be featured? you may get less clicks, but the clicks should be worth more? perhaps this is just obvious?!
I am using 2 link units 1 is running horizontally below the header 1 is vertically at the top of the sidebar navigation. I am using 1 ad unit - It's a 336x280 Its placed in my main content area which is in the middle of the screen. It's placed below "sponsored links" which is right below the post title. My eCPM is up by more than 5 times today. My earnings have more than gone up 5 times. So far, less ads = higher ctr + more clicks + more money
Sam - I believe that ads are based upon 1st - relevancy and 2nd - cost per click 125x125 have a really low clickthru. From what my results are telling me, I would just stick with 1 336x280 or 1 300x250 ad unit.
PS: Let me put it this way - Example: Yesterday it took me 30 clicks to make 5 bucks. But today I've made 10 bucks off of 12 clicks. I had similar results yesterday also. (the results above are an example. i'm not trying to get banned from adsense for giving away too much info. just try it for yourself.) quick tip.. follow my sig below - it has great tips on increasing adsense earnings.
looks interesting! trouble with my site is that I just don't think the keywords are worth much at all - i had 10 clicks the other day and only earnt about 54cents!
So true. Too many ads will drive away the visitors and lesser the ads at important locations, more the number of clicks, especially when you get SE traffic.
You don't get more clicks, just every click is worth more since only the top paying ads appear on your website. eCPM is laso higher because there are less ad impressions since you have less ad units.