AdSense Tips
Recently Imran and I went along to the Google AdSense Roadshow. This was a free event held in London to give website owners and marketers a chance to meet Google AdSense representatives and get tips on how to improve revenues and site monetisation.
Here are some of the tips we gleaned from the event.
- Check site every 6 months (or more often) to remove inappropriate ads – this can result in slight increase in revenue
- Also check competitor ad filters to make sure you aren’t blocking potential good advertisers
- Keep filter list short
- Filter only real competition
- Edit filter list regularly
- You have only 1 filter list per account – beware that adding a site to the list means banning it across all your domains
- Change content and variety of ads to keep it fresh – reduces ad-blindness
- Compare the % of ad revenue with the amount of page space the ads take up to decide if it is worth keeping
- Video ads are the future, but more advertisers are needed
- URL channels (domain and subdomains)
- Custom tracking (recommended)
- Unique id in code
- Enables you to view every page and ad
- Use heat-maps to decide where to place ads – move ads around to get the best CTR
- Wider formats perform better than narrower ones as they are more visible
- Offer a variety of ads
- Ads in text do well
- Ads below articles do well
- Larger ads generate higher CTRs
- Removing borders increases CTR
- Image and videos add interest to pages
- Blend ads into site design
- Beware that blending too well can lead to ad-blindness
- Use site colours for ads
- Use site search ads as high % of users will use search
- Use an iframe so users don’t leave the site
- Use link units to add variety
- Don’t take up much room
- Offer best revenue per pixel
