Sept was my first month with Adlinks. After adding these, my CTR has remained the same , but income has reduced. My average click value of Adlinks ads is even less than my lowest paying channel. I am not sure if I can disclose the stats or not. My lowest paying channel has avg click value of X. My highest paying channel has avg click value of 2.01X. But my avg adlinks ad click value is only 0.87X...which is 13% less than X. I feel this happens because Adlinks lead to too many ads . Unlike Ad Units , the user is exposed to low paying ads too and this reduces income. Any Comments?
I don't see how they could possibly reduce income, unless you used them improperly. The big advantage of ad links, is that they don't count towards your three ad units, but rather allow you to have a fourth ad unit.
By giving the user more choices , we are leading him to the less paying ads. I just use a single ad unit in order to maximise click value. When a user clicks a link unit, the probability that he will be taken to a high paying ad reduces. This difference is noticable especially when the day starts . The ads on my ad units bring 0.3-1 $ in the morning. An adlink ad usually is 3-5 cents , though on few occasions they have given 1$+ . After 6 hrs ..all ads seem to give around 5 cents and eCPM gradually decreases. Atleast for my site, it seems a better idea to remove adlinks and allow only ad units to be displayed.
By reducing income , I mean reducing THE POTENTIAL . Just like a shopkeeper prefers to push items with higher profit margins, I would prefer only ad units to be displayed , if adlinks are all leading to 5 cent ads.