i received that mail and replied to G - I wanted more clarification since I have both 336x280 ATF and 300x250 ATF and the format 336x280 ATF very clearly pays much more - nearly 2x CTR and 2x$ vs the medium rectangle ATF. I am still waiting for my response from G-adsense team. that means for now that my site-advetisers are bidding much higher on the large rectagle than on medium - I also see video ads on large rectangle but none on medium rectangle - ... hence i have the majority ATF on large format - unless G specifies a precise date to start the announced "Custom Placement Packs "- program. however i changed the page layout to make all top center ATF being one of the rectangular formats and make channels targetable - see http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=231312 with great success so far
Sorry but what do you guys mean by above the fold or below the fold? Please explain. I run a blogspot blog. How does it relate to that?
Basically what on someone screen before they have to scroll down this link will help you out for your blog https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=43869 hopefully you find it helpful
ATF ( above the fold ) is a precise publishers' industry standard description of exact ad placement top-of page visible without any scrolling ... as precisely mentioned in G's eMail recently "...They require that the units be placed "above the fold" on a page so that the ads are immediately visible to your site's visitors without scrolling down...." all those having full control of their page layout can easily comply with such standards to earn much higher revenue by attracting better paying advertisers. just change the template until you meed those requirements. if no control over your page layout - then may be it would be time to change system or SW to regain full control of your publishings and hence full control over your success i use a totally different blog SW since years (different from most users out there ) i modified just about every part of the layout to fully optimize the blog for successful web publishing - which in the version I use will soon be available to the public free OS - fully SEO, the new version also is scheduled to have SEF URLs and fully customizable template to get hghest possible layout features as needed for adsense optimized pages for highest ctr/$ if you want to successfully blog - then you could earn 500+ $ / months - hence you may start thinking in investing first before earning - invest in your own website, then install the blog SW that is most successful - then produce quantities of quality content - then start earning ...
Thanks both of you for help. somehow am not too convinced with that ATF idea..to put 300*250 ad ATF looks weird. Anyone else thinks that way? I currently have leaderboard, which used to do well but last couple of days inside posts are doing better than leaderboard..its surprising.
leaderboard was a G recommeded successful format about a year ago now no longer hence the question is: do you need or want adsense revenue or is adsense just a hobby for you? if you need adsense revenue - then you may have no other option but to display what advertiser customers ask most from G and if high paying advertisers want rectangles for image ads or videos and pay much higher ( i get approx 50% more adsense revenue since I removed ALL leaderboards and all small banners and placed the two rectangles top-center and/or ATF I am talking about 65$/d or 100+$/day and for me at least that makes a huge difference - specially since a substantial part goes into charity from my adsense revenue. look at major global publicatons such as Times or Newsweek, National Geographic or other printed publications .. they ALL live from advertising income since the subscription pays for a small % of real total cost only they all have their very best placements occupied by high paying ads - the actual reader still goes to that xth page to find what he actually wanted to ready anyway. the visitor of a site, of a particular topic - will still scroll down to find the post if the ATF is occupied by a high paying ad the question only is "do you need the extra few thousand $/yr" " do you have anything useful to do with it" or is $ unimportant to you at all because of actual site-content / site-product/service revenue. my site offers all for free/donation since ten years - hence myself i never could afford a fast high end root server and top HW/SW without the additional income from adsense! adsense makes about 50% of all revenues ... for me. hence if i can increase that share by 50% simply by changing ad format and ad placement - with the very same traffic i have already, then that surely makes a serious difference that allows me to invest in even better productivity material / another top HW these coming days/weeks, more creative productivity, etc and also some more fun in life!
You mean, you're all special, just like me? I tried what the e-mail said, just for grins, and, I have to say it's more than doubled my clicks. Afterall, 3 is more than double 1.
YES we all are special to Google as we are the source of income for G - no publishers = no G billions the other have of G specials are the advertisers - but without publishers there never can be advertisers and without publishers willing to give best spots and add most demanded ad formats - there will be no happy advertiser - hence if we make advertisers happy = G happy = we happy because the $ flows increasingly toward all
I'm use to it because I hit a couple of hundred newspaper articles a day and it is pretty common for them. But I'd never do it on a site I own. That's a big chunk of the screen. Maybe farther down, but above the fold is good real estate, and at the rate I am earning from google I feel like a fool for the smaller ads I already have there.
a true ATF rectangle may give as much as 10+% ctr on the single ATF rectangle ad unit alone - in addition to ctr on the 2 additional ad units on same page ... the difference between ATF and a little lower easily was up to factor 2-4 in CTR on my site before / after changing as always -. if u have abundance of $ to do your online work - it never matters what u place where if u need the additional 30-50% you get for using ATF vs NON-ATF then the look is a minor factor if ATF helps ur site advertisers to do better business and thus are able/willing to pay more to YOU via G u to earn more to have more to invest into a better future - online or offline and thus to be more successful in future work u do
I got this letter as well. I did make the changes and sent a reply and received a "non-canned" response. My revenues have gone up slightly from this change. I also was considering a change to adbrite on some of the pages. I had just signed up for adbrite a few days earlier. I wonder if Google has a mole in adbrite?
That was a good post hans. What I added above the fold was the 120x600 text. I put it on the left side and it is visible basically all the way down the left side of the screen (ATF). When I did this, I got about 10x as many clicks as I did before. It's still nowhere close to what I earned with private affiliate programs, but it increases every month so I'll leave it for now. But that is only 120 wide and in an area where I already had banners before. This other size is just way too much ATF screen space in my opinion. But that's all it is - my opinion. Everyone's site is different, and if it's easy to implement then go for it and hopefully it will give you a nice increase in revenues.
iamge ads include video and iamges i have many of them incl video and they are looking good and of course paying about 4-5 times higher than text because a bidder has to bid for all 4-5 slots on an adunit to get the full image published i love it my site visitors also because they get much better content in exchange for the 1-2k$ more revenue i make/m ... the choice is yours
hans, your posts are misleading, to say the least. if your contextual ecpm averaged out to, say, only $1 per thou, and you did 2x more with these cpm ads, then more power to ya. but for publishers who have a much higher contextual ecpm than you do, $2 per thou cpm ads would almost never be able to beat out the contextual ecpm that they are getting. i got rid of site-targeted ads a month ago, and since then the targeting for the contextual ads has improved... don't know if it's related, but my average ecpm has always been too high for site-targeted ads to make the cut.
my site wide average ecpm is a lower 2-digit -$ - hence i see no relevancy to your mentioned 2$ at all but finally the page-cpm is the sum of all 3 large successful formats all combined and it is the total sum on the check each month that only matters and whether you can pay easily all bills and progress with your work
google stats allow you to look at individual ad units, and the $2 was just a random number. go to any ad network and try to find cpm ads that'll pay you better than $2 per thou, tho... you'd be lucky to get $1 per thou, so i can't see why adsense would be able to pay much better than that for cpm ads? contextual adsense is where the real money is at, not this cpm stuff.