AdMoolah News and Views

The first part of the webinar was a best practices presentation. Most of these tips have been talked about on many blogs and discussion groups, including my own AdSense tips series. It’s always good to have a review though.

Positioning

They showed the AdSense heat map and discussed how you should consider how visitors read your site and where their eyes are drawn too.

Format

Generally, wider ad formats are better than narrow ones. They have fewer line breaks in them so they are easier to read. The best ad formats are 336X280, 300X250 and 160X600.

Ad Color

The best ads often blend-in with the rest of the site. Ads that don’t blend in tend to cause ad-blindness and visitors will ignore the ads. Another trick is rotating several color palettes, each of which blend. This can also help fight ad-blindness.

Which Pages Should AdSense Go On?

As many as possible. Consider putting AdSense ads in places like forums, shopping and search results pages.

Tools

There are several tools which AdSense provides which can help optimize ads.

Channels
Channels are useful for experimenting with different positioning, formats and colors.

Image Ads
Most image ads are run on a CPM basis (which pay per impression), this can be good for sites that have low click-through rates.

Link Units
Link units can be good because of their small size; they take up less screen real estate. Link units can be placed in addition to the three regular ad units allowed per page.

AdSense for Search
This is another option available to help monetize a site.

The AdSense optimization webinar took place today at 5:00 PM Pacific Time. It consisted of three main parts:

1. A best practices presentation,
2. Case studies, and
3. Questions.

I will post about each of these in separate entries in the next little bit. I tried to jot down as much of the information as I could, but I’m sure there is plenty I missed.

Update: here are links to the posts:
Best Practices
Case Studies
Questions and Answers: Part 1
Questions and Answers: Part 2

Knowing what keywords pay a high price-per-click is very useful for AdSense publishers to know. As we saw in the last post, it may be impossible to determine the exact price that a click will pay. We can, however, get a general idea of which keywords are likely to pay more than others. This post will examine some ways in which we can do this.

Keyword Lists

There are several sources of keyword lists that can be obtained on the Internet for free or for sale. Keyword lists supply a large number of high-paying keywords and the maximum bid prices for these keywords. These lists can be a good place to start brainstorming for content ideas. Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell how accurate these lists are because they rarely reveal their sources and are sometimes out of date.

Here are some free lists that are available:

http://www.keyword-list.com/ (Update: This site stopped updating in July)
http://www.keywordsense.com/
http://www.adsenseheaven.com/

Other Tools

Overture (which is now owned by Yahoo!) has a system that allows advertisers to bid on keywords in the same way that Google’s AdWords does. Luckily for publishers, Overture is not as selfish with their data as Google is. They have a tool which allows anyone to view the current maximum bids for any keyword. Bid prices in Overture’s system might not exactly match the bid prices in AdWords. Both Overture’s bidding system and AdWords are open marketplaces, so the relative value of one keyword compared to another should be similar. That is, if one keyword is more highly valued in Overture, it will usually also be more highly valued in AdWords. The tool is available at the following URL:

http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/index.jhtml

Another pay-per-click bidding system that allows the public to view the current bids on keywords is 7search.com. This tool also has a useful feature that shows not only the maximum bids for the search term you are interested in, but also shows a list of related terms. For each of these terms, they list the top 5 bid prices and the number of searches that were done for that keyword in the previous month. This gives a good indication of the popularity of different keywords. The 7search.com tool is available at:

http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Google’s AdWords program has a Traffic Estimator tool that can be used to estimate bid amounts. Unfortunately, this tool is only available if you sign up for an AdWords account, which currently costs $5.00 to join. The next section assumes that you have an AdWords account.

To use the Traffic Estimator tool to find maximum bid prices:

1. Log into your AdWords account and click the “create new AdWords campaign” link.
2. Enter in dummy data for the names of the campaign and ad group. Dummy data is used because the names do not influence the results we are interested in. Then select your desired target language and location. Hit continue.
3. Select your target country and click continue.
4. Create an ad with dummy data in it.
5. At this point you select your keywords. Enter the keywords you are curious about into the text area, one per line. Hit continue.
6. In the “Enter your own maximum CPC” text box enter “100.00″ (the maximum bid in AdWords) and click on “View Traffic Estimator”.

The tool will show the average CPC that position #1 would cost. This indicates what level the current bidding is on that keyword.

Comparing the Tools

I did a search for three different, but related terms using all of the above methods I have mentioned. Here are the results:

As you can see, the results for the various methods do vary. Overture’s prices are quite a bit below the results found from AdWord’s Traffic Estimator, and 7Search.com’s are even lower than Overture’s. The results from www.keyword-list.com do seem relatively accurate. One important thing to note is that all 4 of the sources had the prices in the same order, “house” is the lowest, “real estate” is in the middle and “las vegas real estate” is at the top.

Using a combination of methods can be the best way to use these tools. Keyword lists can be used to start brainstorming. Using 7search.com’s feature that shows related keywords is an excellent way to quickly explore a large variety of keywords in a subject area. After finding the top paying keywords in an area, more accurate results can be found using a keyword list or Google’s AdWords.

What’s Next

Now that we know how to identify high paying keywords, the next post in this series will discuss how to effectively apply this information to help increase your AdSense revenues.

Getting high paying clicks is something every AdSense publisher wants. The more a click on an ad earns, the easier it is to make money. This tip will walk through the process of what determines the amount a publisher will receive for a click.

Where the Money Comes From

The AdSense system relies on two groups of people: 1) Publishers, who show ads on their site and receive money every time someone clicks on an ad, and 2) Advertisers, who create ads and pay money every time one of their ads is clicked. Advertisers are the most important part of the Google advertising economy. Without advertisers there would be no money. Since Google makes almost all of their earnings from advertisers, they need to make sure the advertisers are happy.

Google has a program called AdWords that advertisers sign up for. AdWords allows advertisers to create ads and then bid anywhere from $0.05 to $100.00 on keywords associated with the ad. When it comes to showing an ad, Google uses three factors to determine which ads have the best earnings potential: the advertisers maximum bid for the ad, the click-through rate for the ad, and the relevancy of the ad text. All three of these factors help publishers earn more money. The higher the bid price, the more the publisher will make; better click-through rates mean more visitors will click on the ad; and better ad relevancy will mean that visitors will be interested in the ads and click on them more often.

Earning per Click

The amount a publisher gets paid for each click is difficult to determine. Since the bid amounts that an advertiser submits are just maximum bids, it means that the price of the click is usually somewhat less than the bid amount. Since the current maximum bid for any particular keyword is driven by the market, it tends to vary quite a bit from day to day and month to month.

Google has also introduced something called Smart Pricing which can reduce the price of a click. When advertisers get clicks on the ads they have placed, they expect a certain percentage of the clicks to result in an action such as buying an item or signing up for a newsletter. Advertisers are not happy when clicks do not result in the action they were hoping for, so Google sometimes gives a discount to the advertiser in certain conditions. Smart Pricing attempts to use factors such as which keyword triggered the ad and the type of site to determine which clicks would result in sub-optimal results.

As an example, if an advertiser is selling MP3 players, clicks from an MP3 player review site might result in 10% of the people from the site buying an MP3 player, while clicks from a personal blog would result in only 5% of the people actually purchasing a player. Google might attempt to compensate for this difference by reducing the price of the clicks from the personal blog. The amount that the price is reduced by is only known by Google, so it makes determining an exact click price very difficult.

Another piece of the formula that Google does not reveal is what amount of the click price is given to the publisher and what amount it keeps for itself. It seems to be in the general neighborhood of 50%, but no one except Google knows for sure.

What’s Next

With all of these variables going into determining the the amount a publisher is paid for each click, none of which is in direct control of the publisher, it can be frustrating. In the next tip, I will look at ways publishers can influence the amount they get paid per click.

Experimentation is the only way to find out what ads work best on your site. We have talked about different ad colors, positions, and formats. There are some general tips that can be given for each of these topics, but the only way to learn what really works on your site is to try different variations.

Custom Channels

Google’s custom channel feature is the key to experimenting with ads. This allows you to view reports for one particular ad unit. For complete details about setting up custom channels and viewing reports, see Google’s channel support page.

An Example

Let’s say you are curious about which color palette works best on your site. For example, you may want to know if a “blending in” color palette works better than a “standing out” color palette.

This experiment is divided into two phases.

Phase 1: Testing the “blend-in” ad setup.

1. Create a new custom channel called “blend-in”.
2. Create a color palette that blends in with your site.
3. Create the code for the ad layout using the “blend-in” channel and color palette.
4. Place the AdSense code on your site.
5. Run the ad for a chosen amount of time.

Phase 2: Testing the “stand-out” ad setup.

1. Create a new custom channel called “stand-out”.
2. Create a color palette that will stand out on your site.
3. Create the code for the ad layout using the “stand-out” channel and color palette.
4. Replace the AdSense code on your site with this new code.
5. Let this ad run on your site for the same amount of time.

Now you will be ready to see which color palette performed better. You can use AdSense reporting to view the “blend-in” and “stand-out” custom channels side-by-side. You will be able to easily tell which one received a better click-through rate. You can apply this same technique to ad positioning and formats as well.

Length of Experiment

I didn’t specify how long to run each ad setup on your site, because the length of time depends on the level of traffic your site receives. More traffic can shorten the length of the experiment. To determine an ideal length of time to run the ad setup, the click through rate should stabilize at the end of each phase.

Consistency

An important rule is to vary only one thing at a time. Don’t compare a blend-in banner with a stand-out skyscraper. If the blend-in banner had a 50% higher click-through rate, how would you know if it was the ad format or the color palette that made the difference?

It is also important to make sure that the days for the two different phases of the experiment are similar. For example, don’t run the first phase on Saturday and Sunday, and then run the next phase on Monday and Tuesday. Click-through rates typically vary from weekends to weekdays. Also, be wary of holidays and the beginning and end of the month. Selecting consistent time periods ensures accurate results.

Ad Rotation

Instead of running your experiment in two different phases, you can run both ad setups simultaneously by using ad rotation. This avoids the potential problem of choosing inconsistent time periods for each phase of the experiment. Ad rotation is achieved by creating a program that will randomly select which ad setup to show to the user each time the page is viewed. In order to be able to compare the results, be sure to use separate custom channels for each ad setup as explained earlier. The disadvantage of this technique is that it requires some server side programming to implement. If you are comfortable with this type of programming, I would recommend ad rotation.

Here is an example of a PHP script that does simple ad rotation:

function getBannerAd() {
  $adtype = rand(0,1);
  switch( $adtype ) {
    case 0:
      echo '< -- Insert Google code for ad setup 1 here -->';
      break;
    case 1:
      echo '< -- Insert Google code for ad setup 2 here -->';
      break;
  }

Summing-Up

Trying different ad setups is a great way to boost your AdSense revenue. By running well controlled experiments, you can learn how to increase your AdSense earnings. Don’t be afraid to try something different, you never know what might work best!

So far we’ve looked at choosing ad formats and ad colors. Today we are going to look at ad positioning. Where on the page you place your ads can dramatically affect your earnings.

Above the Fold

“Above the Fold” is a term from the newspaper industry. When folded newspapers are on the newsstand, only the top half of the page is displayed. The most important headlines are put “above the fold” so that they can be seen without turning the newspaper over. The Web industry has adopted this term to refer to anything on the page that can be seen without scrolling down. Anything you want visitors to your web site to see should go above the fold.

If your ads are currently at the bottom of the page, and users need to scroll down to see the ads, you can see dramatic improvements by moving the ads to the top of the page. This is probably the best thing you can do if you want to increase your AdSense revenue. In a comment to an earlier post in this blog, John Henshaw reported a 500% increase by moving his ads up to the top part of the page.

Where do users focus?

Another way to get users to see your ads is by placing them where the users focus naturally on the page. The trick is to find out where that is. Some help may come from studies such as the Stanford Poynter Project on eyetracking. This study gives details of where users look on a page and what order they look at them. Another similar but simpler form of this is the Google Heat Map that I blogged about earlier. The key thing to realize is that different areas of the page are viewed more often than others, and can lead to more clicks on your ads.

How your ads are placed on the page in relation to other elements on the page also have an effect on how often they are noticed. AdSense publishers have reported good results by placing ads beside key elements such as navigation elements or graphics. A useful forum thread at Digital Point discusses the technique of using images beside ads. Another common technique is to place ads in the middle of content blocks.

Of course, each web site is unique so what works on one site may not work on another. As I’ve mentioned in the past, these tips should be used as starting points for your own experimentation.

AdSense allows you to customize the color palette of the ads that are placed on your site. There are five different color elements on each ad: Border, Background, Title, Text and URL. The colors that you choose can affect how often the ads are clicked, which directly effects your earnings.

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to the color palette of ads: 1) make them blend in with your site, or 2) make them stand out.

Blending In

The thought behind blending in ads with your site is that people will not be able to identify them as ads right away and have a tendency to look at them more often. To make your ads blend in, make the borders of the ad and the background color of the ad the same color as your web page’s background. Then make the Title and URL of the ad the same color as links on your page. Finally, make the text of the ad the same color as the text on your page. Doing this will give the ads a very natural appearance on your page.

Standing Out

The other school of thought contends that ads that stand out from the rest of the page will get noticed more often, and therefore they will be clicked more often. There are many ways to choose a color palette that stands out, but it’s usually best to stick with something that is complementary to your overall website design. You don’t want to have an ugly site just for a few extra clicks per day!

I have experimented with ads that blend in versus ads that stand out and found that the ads that blend in had a click through rate of about 30% higher than those that don’t. Not a huge amount, but definitely worth trying out. I encourage you to experiment to see what works best on your site. Use the comments feature of this blog to tell us the results of your own experiments.

AdSense has many different ad formats to select from. See Google’s list of ad formats for a current selection.

Different ad formats work better than others. Some people may report getting high click through rates with leaderboards, while others may report getting good results with skyscrapers. Which one is best for your site? Unfortunately, the answer is: it depends. There is no way to determine which one will perform best on your site unless you try out different ad formats. You have to experiment to find out which is best for you (there will be a separate tip on experimentation later in this series).

There are some general rules that may help though. When it comes to ad formats, the old adage “bigger is better” seems to be true. People seem to consistently report that the larger ad formats work better than smaller ones. The 336×280 Large Rectangle generally outperforms the 300×250 Medium Rectangle. The 160×600 Wide Skyscraper generally outperforms the 120×600 Skyscraper.

Balance Ads with Design

Of course, when choosing ad formats it is also important to remember to choose ads that fit in well with your site. If you compromise the design of your site, the user experience will be worse and you may lose visitors. When going to a site, nobody likes to be confronted with a barrage of large ads at the top of the page with content that can only be seen by scrolling down. Keeping a balance between ads and content is important.

Figuring out which ad formats are best takes a lot of experimintation, but finding the right combination of ads on you site will pay off with higher earnings from the AdSense program.

Google can and will kick you out of the AdSense program if they find out
that you have been violating the terms of the agreement with them. The rules are outlined
in policies of the AdSense program.

Not only will they kick you out of AdSense and ban you for life, they will
keep any money that you have earned in the program. It’s worth the effort to
play by the rules!’

Some of the things you need to make sure you avoid are:

• Clicking on you own links. This is known-as click fraud and is probably the
  fastest way to get banned from AdSense.
• Encouraging other to click on you links. You can’t say ‘Please click my links so
  I can buy a beer today’. Google even frowns upon having an arrow pointing to
  your ads.
• Displaying ads on an error page, registration page or thank you page.
  The page must be a real content page.

These are just a few of the ways to get onto Google’s bad side. I strongly encourage
you to read the policy yourself, and re-read them whenever you make major changes
to your site.

The best way to not make any money using AdSense is to get kicked out of the program,
so be careful. If you have any doubts, email Google with your questions, they
are always very helpful.

I’m going to write a series of entries about getting the most out of AdSense. Most of the information in here will be familiar to those who have done a lot of reading about AdSense, but some beginners might get something out of these entries, and the more experienced users could always use reminders.

The list of topics that I’ve currently got planned are:

• Complying with AdSense policies
• Ad formats
• Custom colors
• Ad positioning
• Experimentation
• High paying click
• Ads per page
• Relevant ads
• Asking Google for help
• Alternate ads
• Emulate success
• Search boxes
• Blogging

No guarantees that the topics will stay that way, or of the order.

Look for the first entry within the next few days.