Archive for April, 2009
Talking with AdWords expert @fuzzone about AdSense
We publishers must care about advertisers, once again, another interesting interview that confirms. Originally we wanted to talk about AdSense channels only with Kunle Campbell (@fuzzone) but then we broadened the topic a little. It turned out that we first reviewed his ad placements (Overseaspropertymall.com) and then went on to talk about the original AdSense channels.
We have to care about our advertisers
Yes, you heard right. We need to make sure that advertisers will advertise on our site using AdWords as that will get us a nice CPC. We also must make sure that they get quality clicks, as the more they get the more they invest the more we get.
You guys also wanna make sure to check out his updated ad placements, they are pretty good now :-).
Thank you very much Kunle, you rock!
4 Tips to see whether an Ad program is good or bad
Considering to try out another new advertising program? There are new advertising programs going live weekly but, how do you instantly see whether any of the ad programs has potential or not? This is a video tutorial containing 4 tips of criteria which help you to instantly see whether the ad program is good.
1. Relevancy is the key
Relevancy is extremely important. Only with relevant ads you have the following benefits:
- High Click Through Rate (CTR)
- Ads are interesting to your visitors
- Less banner blindness, people are interested
- Higher cost per click (CPC)
- Clicks convert better for the advertiser
- Thus click is worth more as ROI is higher
- Ads are less aggressive
- Because your visitors are interested they don’t mind more ads.
2. Are you able to customize the ads?
We live in the age of banner blindness with visitors no longer being web newbies. If we are able to customize our ads by using different formats and colors we have the following advantages.
- We can blend our ads
- Ads look less like ads and more like content. => more and higher quality clicks
- We can customize the ad to match our website’s design
- We can use different formats matching our content.
3. How much do we actually get?
Some advertising program take all the money which the advertisers invest – we want as much as possible. If your advertising program takes extremely much, then don’t go for it. Their tactic should actually be to pay you as much as possible to get as many publishers as possible – unfortunately many advertising programs don’t understand the advantages of both more publishers and advertisers. Low payout? Don’t go for it.
4. How is the support?
Support is important, we will have questions asking for assistance, if there is no support then what? I really enjoy having an account manager whom I can contact via skype with any questions I have.
If the advertisement offers you all that, then go for it. Relevancy is most important tough, that’s what you should check out first.
AdSense category filter – should we use it?
Another tab was added for the beta testers under “AdSense Setup” which allows you to filter ads for specific categories. To be more precise read the information below.
Quote from the AdSense Blog:
“Category filtering will give publishers the ability to block ads that fall into specific categories such as dating, religion, and politics. Regardless of how ads are targeted, they’ll be filtered if they’re within one of the selected categories. We’ll also show the percentage of recent revenue that ads in each category generate, so publishers can predict how filtering selections will impact their revenue.” (source)
The images below (click for full view) shows you where to find the Category Filter once it goes online. But as it is a beta test, keep in mind that it may change, including the categories which are shown.
Category Filter for AdSense
Sign up for the Category Filter
Category Filter for AdSense
This might only be a limited improvement for some because of the categories are much more in-depth; for example: video game websites targetted at children games and after filtering still getting mature 18+ games. But that is were the competitive ad filter is for huh? :)
Anyway it looks like a useful tool for most people getting irrelevant ads.
Are You Stupid? 90% AdSense Publishers Screw Up Placements
It’s an average morning on an average day while surfing the web for some info, and by checking out other websites for this we sometimes stumble upon publishers which are screwing their ad campaign around.
Bad ad placements and colors will not get you the money which you could be getting out of your website if you would place them correctly…. colors are important as well – however placements are even more crucial. In our previous post about the best AdSense placements we discussed various placements and ad designs including colors – using case studies and theories as our backup.
Update: It seems that the discussed site’s layout and css has been fixed. However our optimization tips still apply apart from the site’s design changes.
Bad AdSense Placements
How to Fix bad Ad Placements
As always, this will be included in our complete AdSense guide and it will serve as an example for other webmasters who publish ads. We made a list below which includes all the implementations suggested by us. You can use this a reference for your own website(s).
- Footer Advertisements
Probably the most infamous placement for an ad – the footer. Placing your ad here will not only get it NOT noticed, it will also take 1 contextual ad away from the 3 you can have per page. We can understand why people place their ads there, thrown away in corners. The ads are ugly – and in most cases destroy the layout and design of your website. We can only agree, however if you joined an advertisement program, you want to make money online – which won’t be possible if you tuck the ads away in the bottom. Do a little reading on the best adsense placements post we blogged earlier this week and you’ll understand why.
- Sidebar Placements
The sidebar has many placements for any kind of ad, be it direct advertising, affiliate or CPC ads. The problem with the sidebar is that CPC ads will only perform if they are placed above the fold. In this case we talk about AdSense, so blending your ad in the sidebar is important as well.
“Sponsors” and “Advertisement” is often used as a title above the ad in the sidebar. This is used because the site has a large readerbase and it will be easier for them to distinguish content from advertisements. Other sides which get a lot of search traffic would benefit more from removing the title above the ad, making the ad looking more like content, resulting in higher CTR.
Also be aware, the more down on the page you place your ads (especially skyscrapers) the less they get clicked because most visitors don’t scroll down that far. As you can see on the heatmap, placing them above the fold will get you the most clicks because they are placed in the hot zones.
- Coloring your Ad
Red title color, black text and a violet url color. Awesome combination to draw the attention to the ad. However it will most likely scare away the visitor from clicking it because it looks like an ad. Visitors do not like to get monetized, do you? That’s why we need to blend it with our content, making it not look like an ad. Picking a red title color while every other link on that site is blue/black is definitely a good way to make an ad outstanding but not make it perform.
As part of our complete AdSense guide on DuoBlogger we devoted several post – each more progressively detailed – to coloring your adsense units.
- Different Ad Formats
Leaderboards are, although under performing, still as popular as in web 1.0. It is important to understand why leaderboards died several years ago since the internet made it’s big boom. The average internet user got used to anything banner related advertising, making them not click the banners anymore. Have a look on Jakob Nielsen’s Banner Blindness research, and scroll down to the images. What can we see here?
Banner Blindness - notice the ads outlined in green
The people that took part in the experiment all took a little peek at the leaderboard and skyscrapers but weren’t interested in it at all. Now let’s get back to this – the main reason people visit your website is because of the content you share. Now wouldn’t it be smart (note: image) to insert ads inside your content, making it more likely people won’t read over them because all their attention is focussed there.
As of web 2.0 – rectangles and squares are the new and best performing ad formats.
100% AdSense placements – 200% more revenue
Are you using the best AdSense placements? Since starting our consulting service we noticed that almost every publisher screws up with proper AdSense placements. Nonetheless, placements are more than crucial for 100% traffic monetization. Repositioning solely one ad could already have a major impact on your earnings. Don’t screw it up!
As usual for every post part of our AdSense guide we include a video, explaining everything excessively. We recommend watching the videos for relatively unexperienced AdSense users. If you consider yourself an expert you should skip watching and continue reading with the straight to the point explanation below. So, where to place your AdSense ads?
Placing your AdSense ads – video
Placing your Ads the 100% proper way
As previously said, proper placements are crucial. In order to get your ads clicked you have to place them where your visitor looks at. What’s the point of an ad in the footer if your audience can get all the information above the fold?
Check out the following 3 resources. The first one is an in detail scientific eyetracking research which shows where your visitors look at. The second one, published by Google, is more newb-friendly version. The 3rd one is for forums.
All 3 case-studies are different but nonetheless suggest you the following 4 essential points:
- Place your ads in the top left
- …That’s where usually either where your navigation is…
- …Or where your site’s content starts
- Place your ads in your primary content
- Place your ads directly below the content (NOT in the footer)
What are our visitors doing?
It’s essential to place your ads right there where your visitors look at. Your visitors don’t scroll up and down several times just to find the ads (except for the nutless monkeys, which are only 0.001% of your visitors ;P). Furthermore, they aren’t interested in your ads at all.
Do you watch advertisements on television? We have to draw our visitor’s attention to the ads, or else they don’t even have the possibility to decide whether they want to click or not. When your visitors open your website they always look at the top left. It’s an habit, people always look first at the top left for the following 3 reasons:
- People got used to navigating around on websites using a navigation in the top left.
- The top Google search results are in the top left, they catch the visitor’s attention. When clicking on the link and being forwarded to your website the attention remains at the same location.
- Except for the length of the content a website isn’t much different to a book. A book is read from the top left to the buttom right (ever read a book?)
This is where the previously mentioned eye-tracking research comes into play. Look at the pictures, all the pictures show that the visitors at least once look at the navigation, which is placed in the top left usually. When redesigning your website, keep that in mind. People are used to a navigation somewhere in the top (left). Notice, that there is almost no focus on the top right or in general right. So placing your ads right there is an utterly wrong choice. Placing your ads where your visitors don’t look at is an unused click-opportunity.
We want our ads to be noticed
Place your ads in the top left area.
- Short Question: Why do your visitors open your website?
- … because they are looking for information which is provided in your content.
Thus another essential placement (extremely important!) is in your primary content:
- Place your ads in your content to make your visitor notice them
- Wrapping content around your ads (preferably ad left, content right) will get your ad 100% noticed. (Exception: read next paragraph)
- Place your ads directly below your primary content for two reasons:
- Assuming that you have good content (which we hope) your visitor’s will continue reading your content to the end. Voilá what’s there? An AdSense unit!
- As blogs and forums are getting more and more important people know that they can find other reader’s comments below the content. Those comments are usually helpful, so readers scroll down. Placing an AdSense unit there will attract attention.
Analytics together with AdSense
Tweaking placements using Google Analytics
Google analytics provide’s an handy feature: The so called Site Overlay. Using the site overlay you can quickly determine how your visitors navigate around your website and which content interests them in particular. Using that data you can adjust the placements to make your ads draw even more attention.
- Most click activity show high attention regions
- Place your ads there. Go for link units if you have used the other 3 content units elsewhere.
- Link units tend to work extremely well in your site’s navigation
- Don’t forget to blend your link units.
Banner blindness for AdSense users
Our Enemy: Banner Blindness
Yes, there is this so called phenomenon banner-blindness. It’s nothing invented by communists. Many webmasters have excessively used several banner layouts. We call them bouncers because either your visitor’s attention bounces away or in worst case, your visitor himself.
Countermeasures against banner-blindness
- Avoid web 1.0 layouts i.e. leaderboard or in general horizontal banners
- Superior CTR option: Go for rectangles, they attract a lot of attention
- Design friendly: Anything possible, should just be squarish.
- The first impression decides everything, read below.
The first impression decides everything
Opening our website our visitors don’t wait a minute to think whether they should click the ad or not. They subconsciously decide, click the ad, or not and they do so within milliseconds. Using proper placements without a good ad-design can still result in extremely poor-performance. We dedicated several articles to exactly that topic previously on DuoBlogger.
Further Resources
- Previous AdSense reviews done by us. Worth a watch, high learn factor.
- AdSense millionaire
- AdSense tips and resources
- Integrating AdSense into Analytics
- Blogging and Google AdSense
Contact Us
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Mark
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Phone: +1 (310) 734-8977
+31 6 34045081
Skype: MarkDuoBlogger
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Hendrik
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+49 176 48899584
Skype: Hendricius
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