Okay... so I got a site that I have some pages that have a vertical left because well, it fits well and the pages aren't primary to my site. They get 3 times the click through rate of my run of site verticals in the same location on the right side of the page. I feel like Im missing out on big $$$ here... but when I redesign the site to have the vertical left, I cringe, it is horrible. Since my site is more focused on it's free services and has a long history and large user base - while the whole google ads thing is much newer I feel almost dirty sacrificing the "image" of the site for what could amount of $20 - $60 per day gain. (I really don't know, just my guess on given performance). The vertical lefts make my site feel like a "ad" site, while the veritical rights make my site feel like any other site with some standard ads. Anyone else find themselves in the same boat? What was your experience?
I hear you. I made the decision to go with ads on the left for one of my sites cause it was bringing at least 2x as much revenue as when the ads were on the right. If you don't care about the extra $$ and are more concerned with long-term goals of the site, switch it back. And, yes, it is a bit uglier but i'd hate to lose the extra income and remember what's ugly to you is not necessarily ugly to your users.
You could compromise by using a smaller vertical ad format on the left. Instead of using a full skyscraper you could use a half or even a single. You might even seea higher CTR than the full and keep your site cleaner at the same time.
I'm a firm believer in vertical ads on the left. I have them on a couple of my sites and I think you can implement them in a way where they don't look too bad. They actually are my best performers on forums.
Yeah i feel you dude...i wonder why people only click on left ads....because i have a site which have left and right ads and the right one generate 0 earnings...weird. Maybe human brain works like dat lol...
or maybe because right handed people will use left brain? thats why they click left ads? lol im not sure
It could be either of those things, but my guess would be that people are simply used to text links on the left hand side (typically in the form of navigation). That's the first place people look for more content on a site they are interested in. To be honest, though, I don't really care what the reason is behind it as long as it continues outperforming other link locations, etc.