Five truth you need to know about Adsense
The 5 most asked questons that I answer in my AdSense Reviews are those about the size and positon of ads, how to increase the CPC, using Channels for beter reportng, and implementng ads on mobile optmized sites.
These 5 truths will are going to cover these aspects:
. Ad Sizes
. Ad Positons
. high CPCs
. Channels
. Responsive ads
1. The truth about ad sizes When you visit your AdSense dashboard or if you are subscribed for the optmizaton tps that AdSense sends out per email you might have notced their advice to increase the size of your ads. The truth is, a bigger ad does not always perform beter. When it comes down to the best performing ad sizes, I learned that the following ads are doing well, especially in terms of click prices: Leaderboard 728x90 Medium Rectangle 300x250 Large Rectangle 336x280 Skyscraper 120x600 Wide Skyscraper 160x600 Large Skyscraper 160x600 If you need to use a smaller size, for example on mobile websites, use one of these. Mobile Banner 320x50 Large Mobile Banner 320x100 Full Banner 468x60 I personally find the Medium Rectangle to be a good compromise for responsive layouts because it fits on all devices and has great click prices. Keep in mind that some sizes may deliver a smaller size in case AdSense thinks it might perform beter. Therefore, use Large Formats where you can. In case of the Large Rectangle, for example, it will also display the Medium Rectangle. An example of a bad performing large ad size is the billboard (970x250). Keep away from custom sizes Even though AdSense ofers to create custom sized ads, you shouldn’t take them up on it. You might end up with only low performing text ads in case no premium format fts in your space.
2. The truth about the Ad Positon Even though AdSense has different bid types CPC – price per click – is stll the most common. This means that you will only get paid if a visitor clicks on an ad. But before clicking, the visitor actually needs to see the ad. Many publishers tend to move ads into the header or sidebar, so that they don’t distract visitors. However, if you want to make money with AdSense, you have to be less fearful. The truth is, the closer the ad is to the content, the beter it performs. Therefore, the best positon is within the content. I have conducted experiments with many formats, placements and styles of ads within the content to find that there are differences for every site – even for every artcle. On some pages, banners that follow directly afer the content don’t get clicked at all. On others, however, they get clicked like mad. This is something you have to experiment with. How to inject ads into content? Not many publishers inject ads into the content because they don’t know how. There are a couple of plugins out there, but I am going to suggest one that I know because I wrote it :) My (free) Advanced Ads plugin has a post content injecton opton that lets you choose the paragraph or headline before or afer which you want to inject the ad to. This way, you won’t have to manually change every artcle. You should test the placement of the auto injected ads from tme to tme, trying new positons and see as to which one performs best. You can also inject more than one ad into the content. If ads outside the content don’t perform at all on your site, I would suggest startng by injectng one ad at the beginning, one afer the 3.-5. paragraph, and one at the end of the content. This is a good setup to start with, but don’t forget to experiment further. Ad Sizes that perform well in the content I also tested which of the ad sizes that I mentoned above perform best within the content. If the Leaderboard (728x90) fts, get started with that. Otherwise, I found the Large or Medium Rectangle to be the best ad format within the content. They also work well on mobile devices. Using the rectangle format leaves one queston: how to align it? You could align it on the right of the content and let the text foat around it on the lef side. If you are fearless, center the rectangle and don’t let the text foat around it. This way, it will create the most impact and can’t be ignored. Skyscraper ads Beside the content injecton, I fnd one other ad positon stll to be able to perform well. A Skyscraper lef of the content. If you have your Sidebar on the lef of your content, place a Wide (160x600) or Large Skyscraper (300x600) there. If your content is on the lef outer border and there is stll space lef outside the main container of your site, place the Skyscraper there, beginning a bit below the headline of your post.
3. The Truth about high CPCs The complaint that I hear most about AdSense is the one about too low CPC (click prices). There are actually two truths about that. The frst is that CPC isn’t everything that determines your income. The second is that I bet your AdSense account doesn’t sufer from low CPCs in every aspect. Understanding CPC To understand CPC, you need to accept that click prices aren’t random. AdSense is just the publisher site, where ads get delivered. On the other site – the advertser site – are AdWords and some other ad networks and services. Advertsers are companies and individuals trying to sell something to clients. Ads are just a means of marketng for them – an expense that they try to get the most out of. Advertsers like AdWords, because they only have to pay you when someone clicks on the ad and not, if they just see it. The more likely that people click, a visitor buys something afer clicking or the higher the price of their product, the more likely they are to spend more money on clicks from your site. For you, to generate a lot of income, not only the click price maters, but also the probability of the visitor to click on an ad. Therefore, the really important value – for AdSense and for you – is the RPM, the income per 1,000 ad impressions. It is the result of the clicks multplied with the click price. Now let’s go over to your site. You want to monetze the hard work you put into it and therefore, put some ads into very good positon. Imagine that even the click rates are well, but due to very low click prices your overall RPM is not what you have hoped for. The reason behind these low click prices is ofen that advertsers and AdSense don’t think that your visitors would click as ofen on high paid ads and transform into paying customers. Why do they think that? There are a couple of reasons, which are described in the following.
Specifc Reasons for low CPC One reason for low CPCs is the topic. If you have a website about fowers, it seems unlikely to AdSense and advertsers that one would think about buying an iPad while visitng your posts about fower arrangements. Since fower arrangements are not that easy to purchase through the Internet, competton for this topic is rather low and, therefore, also the click prices. Another reason for low CPCs is the locaton of the trafc. Head over to your AdSense account and check out the Countries secton of your Performance Reports. If your content is in English, chances are you have the best CPC for visitors from the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, but rather low from India, South Africa, or Nigeria. The reason is mostly the lower income in these countries. If we are already in the Performance reports of your AdSense account, check out the platorms secton. I bet that you will be surprised about the huge diference between the CPC and RPM of mobile visitors compared to desktop visitors. Leverage this knowledge by increasing your mobile income with beter ad placements and also try to atract visitors from well-paying devices. To wrap this rather complex topic up, I would like you to ask yourself how likely visitors are to buy something from your website and what this would be. The higher the value of such products and services, the beter your chances are for a high CPC.
4. The truth about Channels Ever stumbled upon URL and custom channels in your AdSense account? If not, you are missing out on a lot of knowledge that can help you grow your income. A) URL Channels URL channels ofer you a way to track performance of specifc URL paterns. They are powerful if you have a hierarchical URL structure. Just one example on how they work. The URL channel htp://example.com would track the performance of your whole URL. If your post URLs contain a category, e.g. “reviews”, the URL channel htp://example.com/reviews will track the performance of all the posts from this category. You could even track the performance for each post or page by setting up a URL channel for a specific URL like htp://example.com/reviews/iphone- However, you can only set up 500 URL channels per AdSense account, so you might not be able to track every post. B) Custom Channels Custom Channels are a kind of grouped ads. Every ad can belong to up to 5 custom channels. Some ideas for channels: • group all ads displayed in a specific section of your site (e.g. blog, forum) • group all ads displayed in a specific position (e.g. header, sidebar, content). You can check the performance of your custom channels in your Performance reports to identfy well performing sections and positions. However, the true value of custom channels is the ability to make them targetable by advertsers. If you allow a custom channel to be targeted by advertsers, they can book ads on your site directly. This can increase the number of ads that bid for a specifc ad space. It can also increase the level of non-CPC ads, meaning that you might increase your RPM with CPM based ads that don’t need clicks to generate income. Since setng up at least a few channels is rather easy, you shouldn’t miss out on this opportunity. Best practce: for beter targetng, the ads within one custom channel should appear on the same spot. When setng up targetable channels, always think about the perspectve of an advertser that might want to buy ads on your site.
5. The Truth about Responsive Ads The Responsive ad banner is AdSense’s answer to the growing number of mobile websites and devices. However, it is not the fnal answer to increase the performance of your income. To create a responsive ad unit in AdSense, simply log into your AdSense account, visit the “My ads” secton and click “New ad unit”. There is a select box labeled with “Showing” from where you can choose “Responsive”. Are you done now? Not really. The tough choice stll lies ahead of you. Smart Sizing vs. Advanced Mode When AdSense started with responsive ads they only ofered a way to set sizes manually. Many publishers were confused by these optons, and so they added “Smart Sizing” so that publishers only needed to copy the ad code and the sizes were determined dynamically. Not long ago, the Advanced mode was removed completely. However, I ofen run into problems when the Smart Sizing mode is simply not very smart. Ads were too big for the available space and either few out of the box and covered some other content or got cut by the parent box’s size. This does not only look bad, it might also be against the AdSense terms of service. So when implementng a smart sizing ad unit, I test a lot with diferent devices and browsers. If I want to be completely sure to prevent the mentoned issues from happening, I serve the responsive ad units using the advanced mode. I did an extensive test about the diferent methods of serving ads on responsive websites called “AdSense Responsive Ad Units tested – almost perfect”. My surprising conclusion at this moment was that this is the order of the best methods 1. Serve statc sizes (e.g. with a soluton like my Responsive Ads plugin) 2. Use Responsive format setng sizes with Advanced Sizing 3. Use the Smart Sizing. The test results surprised me, and some readers also confrmed them in the artcle’s comments. Since AdSense removed the assistant that created the ad tag for Advanced Sizing, you can only check how they are coded in the manual. So if you are able to understand and modify html and css media queries, you can look “Specify an exact size” up here. Another smart alternatve for responsive ads would be to use formats that ft and perform on all devices. The Medium Rectangle (300x250) is the best one so far, but on devices with more mobile users I would also test the Large Mobile Banner. How ever i would like to thank you for your time, God bless you
1. The truth about ad sizes When you visit your AdSense dashboard or if you are subscribed for the optmizaton tps that AdSense sends out per email you might have notced their advice to increase the size of your ads. The truth is, a bigger ad does not always perform beter. When it comes down to the best performing ad sizes, I learned that the following ads are doing well, especially in terms of click prices: Leaderboard 728x90 Medium Rectangle 300x250 Large Rectangle 336x280 Skyscraper 120x600 Wide Skyscraper 160x600 Large Skyscraper 160x600 If you need to use a smaller size, for example on mobile websites, use one of these. Mobile Banner 320x50 Large Mobile Banner 320x100 Full Banner 468x60 I personally find the Medium Rectangle to be a good compromise for responsive layouts because it fits on all devices and has great click prices. Keep in mind that some sizes may deliver a smaller size in case AdSense thinks it might perform beter. Therefore, use Large Formats where you can. In case of the Large Rectangle, for example, it will also display the Medium Rectangle. An example of a bad performing large ad size is the billboard (970x250). Keep away from custom sizes Even though AdSense ofers to create custom sized ads, you shouldn’t take them up on it. You might end up with only low performing text ads in case no premium format fts in your space.
2. The truth about the Ad Positon Even though AdSense has different bid types CPC – price per click – is stll the most common. This means that you will only get paid if a visitor clicks on an ad. But before clicking, the visitor actually needs to see the ad. Many publishers tend to move ads into the header or sidebar, so that they don’t distract visitors. However, if you want to make money with AdSense, you have to be less fearful. The truth is, the closer the ad is to the content, the beter it performs. Therefore, the best positon is within the content. I have conducted experiments with many formats, placements and styles of ads within the content to find that there are differences for every site – even for every artcle. On some pages, banners that follow directly afer the content don’t get clicked at all. On others, however, they get clicked like mad. This is something you have to experiment with. How to inject ads into content? Not many publishers inject ads into the content because they don’t know how. There are a couple of plugins out there, but I am going to suggest one that I know because I wrote it :) My (free) Advanced Ads plugin has a post content injecton opton that lets you choose the paragraph or headline before or afer which you want to inject the ad to. This way, you won’t have to manually change every artcle. You should test the placement of the auto injected ads from tme to tme, trying new positons and see as to which one performs best. You can also inject more than one ad into the content. If ads outside the content don’t perform at all on your site, I would suggest startng by injectng one ad at the beginning, one afer the 3.-5. paragraph, and one at the end of the content. This is a good setup to start with, but don’t forget to experiment further. Ad Sizes that perform well in the content I also tested which of the ad sizes that I mentoned above perform best within the content. If the Leaderboard (728x90) fts, get started with that. Otherwise, I found the Large or Medium Rectangle to be the best ad format within the content. They also work well on mobile devices. Using the rectangle format leaves one queston: how to align it? You could align it on the right of the content and let the text foat around it on the lef side. If you are fearless, center the rectangle and don’t let the text foat around it. This way, it will create the most impact and can’t be ignored. Skyscraper ads Beside the content injecton, I fnd one other ad positon stll to be able to perform well. A Skyscraper lef of the content. If you have your Sidebar on the lef of your content, place a Wide (160x600) or Large Skyscraper (300x600) there. If your content is on the lef outer border and there is stll space lef outside the main container of your site, place the Skyscraper there, beginning a bit below the headline of your post.
3. The Truth about high CPCs The complaint that I hear most about AdSense is the one about too low CPC (click prices). There are actually two truths about that. The frst is that CPC isn’t everything that determines your income. The second is that I bet your AdSense account doesn’t sufer from low CPCs in every aspect. Understanding CPC To understand CPC, you need to accept that click prices aren’t random. AdSense is just the publisher site, where ads get delivered. On the other site – the advertser site – are AdWords and some other ad networks and services. Advertsers are companies and individuals trying to sell something to clients. Ads are just a means of marketng for them – an expense that they try to get the most out of. Advertsers like AdWords, because they only have to pay you when someone clicks on the ad and not, if they just see it. The more likely that people click, a visitor buys something afer clicking or the higher the price of their product, the more likely they are to spend more money on clicks from your site. For you, to generate a lot of income, not only the click price maters, but also the probability of the visitor to click on an ad. Therefore, the really important value – for AdSense and for you – is the RPM, the income per 1,000 ad impressions. It is the result of the clicks multplied with the click price. Now let’s go over to your site. You want to monetze the hard work you put into it and therefore, put some ads into very good positon. Imagine that even the click rates are well, but due to very low click prices your overall RPM is not what you have hoped for. The reason behind these low click prices is ofen that advertsers and AdSense don’t think that your visitors would click as ofen on high paid ads and transform into paying customers. Why do they think that? There are a couple of reasons, which are described in the following.
Specifc Reasons for low CPC One reason for low CPCs is the topic. If you have a website about fowers, it seems unlikely to AdSense and advertsers that one would think about buying an iPad while visitng your posts about fower arrangements. Since fower arrangements are not that easy to purchase through the Internet, competton for this topic is rather low and, therefore, also the click prices. Another reason for low CPCs is the locaton of the trafc. Head over to your AdSense account and check out the Countries secton of your Performance Reports. If your content is in English, chances are you have the best CPC for visitors from the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, but rather low from India, South Africa, or Nigeria. The reason is mostly the lower income in these countries. If we are already in the Performance reports of your AdSense account, check out the platorms secton. I bet that you will be surprised about the huge diference between the CPC and RPM of mobile visitors compared to desktop visitors. Leverage this knowledge by increasing your mobile income with beter ad placements and also try to atract visitors from well-paying devices. To wrap this rather complex topic up, I would like you to ask yourself how likely visitors are to buy something from your website and what this would be. The higher the value of such products and services, the beter your chances are for a high CPC.
4. The truth about Channels Ever stumbled upon URL and custom channels in your AdSense account? If not, you are missing out on a lot of knowledge that can help you grow your income. A) URL Channels URL channels ofer you a way to track performance of specifc URL paterns. They are powerful if you have a hierarchical URL structure. Just one example on how they work. The URL channel htp://example.com would track the performance of your whole URL. If your post URLs contain a category, e.g. “reviews”, the URL channel htp://example.com/reviews will track the performance of all the posts from this category. You could even track the performance for each post or page by setting up a URL channel for a specific URL like htp://example.com/reviews/iphone- However, you can only set up 500 URL channels per AdSense account, so you might not be able to track every post. B) Custom Channels Custom Channels are a kind of grouped ads. Every ad can belong to up to 5 custom channels. Some ideas for channels: • group all ads displayed in a specific section of your site (e.g. blog, forum) • group all ads displayed in a specific position (e.g. header, sidebar, content). You can check the performance of your custom channels in your Performance reports to identfy well performing sections and positions. However, the true value of custom channels is the ability to make them targetable by advertsers. If you allow a custom channel to be targeted by advertsers, they can book ads on your site directly. This can increase the number of ads that bid for a specifc ad space. It can also increase the level of non-CPC ads, meaning that you might increase your RPM with CPM based ads that don’t need clicks to generate income. Since setng up at least a few channels is rather easy, you shouldn’t miss out on this opportunity. Best practce: for beter targetng, the ads within one custom channel should appear on the same spot. When setng up targetable channels, always think about the perspectve of an advertser that might want to buy ads on your site.
5. The Truth about Responsive Ads The Responsive ad banner is AdSense’s answer to the growing number of mobile websites and devices. However, it is not the fnal answer to increase the performance of your income. To create a responsive ad unit in AdSense, simply log into your AdSense account, visit the “My ads” secton and click “New ad unit”. There is a select box labeled with “Showing” from where you can choose “Responsive”. Are you done now? Not really. The tough choice stll lies ahead of you. Smart Sizing vs. Advanced Mode When AdSense started with responsive ads they only ofered a way to set sizes manually. Many publishers were confused by these optons, and so they added “Smart Sizing” so that publishers only needed to copy the ad code and the sizes were determined dynamically. Not long ago, the Advanced mode was removed completely. However, I ofen run into problems when the Smart Sizing mode is simply not very smart. Ads were too big for the available space and either few out of the box and covered some other content or got cut by the parent box’s size. This does not only look bad, it might also be against the AdSense terms of service. So when implementng a smart sizing ad unit, I test a lot with diferent devices and browsers. If I want to be completely sure to prevent the mentoned issues from happening, I serve the responsive ad units using the advanced mode. I did an extensive test about the diferent methods of serving ads on responsive websites called “AdSense Responsive Ad Units tested – almost perfect”. My surprising conclusion at this moment was that this is the order of the best methods 1. Serve statc sizes (e.g. with a soluton like my Responsive Ads plugin) 2. Use Responsive format setng sizes with Advanced Sizing 3. Use the Smart Sizing. The test results surprised me, and some readers also confrmed them in the artcle’s comments. Since AdSense removed the assistant that created the ad tag for Advanced Sizing, you can only check how they are coded in the manual. So if you are able to understand and modify html and css media queries, you can look “Specify an exact size” up here. Another smart alternatve for responsive ads would be to use formats that ft and perform on all devices. The Medium Rectangle (300x250) is the best one so far, but on devices with more mobile users I would also test the Large Mobile Banner. How ever i would like to thank you for your time, God bless you
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