AdMoolah News and Views

Good news for people who run AdSense ads on forums. Google is conducting a “forum optimization study”. The owner of VBWebmaster Forums (who I blogged about earlier) has been contacted by AdSense to be a part of this study. They will be testing different ad placements and targeting options. Joeychgo, the administrator of the VBWebmaster forum has details about it at the forum.

Publishers often complain that the CTR for ads in forums is very low, so this will hopefully result in findings that will help this situation.

Found via: JenSense

As a sort of follow up to my last post.

It seems Google won a lawsuit against a click fraudster back in May. This didn’t seem to make much news whan it happened, which is surprising. Google should have been talking a lot about this to show that they are actively combating click fraud and to try to scare off others who are considering getting into the click fraud business.

I found this from Search Engine Watch blog.

JenSense is reporting that Google now allows people to report suspected click fraud against a publisher via the “Ads by Google” link that appears on AdSense ads.

This has my head scratching for a few reasons.

First, it allows for anonymous reporting, which makes easier for a unscrupulous competitor to try to bring a competing website down. Why would Google want anonymous reporting? If there really is click fraud going on, people should be willing to report it without hiding behind anonymity.

Second, how are people supposed to know about click fraud? The JenSense posting mentions a few things like click rings and emails soliciting clicks, but if that was the case, wouldn’t you want to send the email or the location of the click ring to Google? Why would you want to report it through the publisher’s web site?

This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I can understand why Google wants to get a handle on click fraud, but this doesn’t seem to be a good way of doing it.

It’s July 1st so it’s time to submit your AdSense earnings for June. Just got to the input page.

Thanks!

The VBWebmaster forum site apparently was targeted by an attack that generated invalid clicks. Google banned the site, but then re-instated it after the webmaster sent an explanation email. It is good to see that Google will listen when something like this happens.

The whole story is posted at the VBWebmaster forums.

We have introduced two new special queries. The Grouped by Category and Grouped by Language queries let you view the data in the database by groups. I find this a very interesting way to view the data.

Some things to note:

• English language sites average more than double the money of the other languages.
• The two most popular categories are blogs and computers. The computer category averages almost 5 times more than the blog category

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.

AdSense has added some new ad formats into the mix, see images of them below. They are horizontal versions of link ads. It will be intersting to see if publishers have any luck with them. The general consensus about link ads seems to be that they don’t perform as well as regular ads, but these might do a little better.

New! (468×15) Displays up to 5 links

New! (468x15_4) Displays up to 4 links

New! (728×15) Displays up to 5 links

New! (728x15_4) Displays up to 4 links

Found via: JenSense

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!