Google Adsense Tips Concerning Ad Placement
November 3, 2006 – 5:02 amIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
A new article by the Google Adsense Team (The illustrious Phoebe Ho) goes into a bit of detail about how the ad units actually work.
Make sure the ad unit with the highest CTR is the first ad unit in the HTML code of your page.
Always a good bit of advice, but there’s a bit of a caveat on determining which unit actually does display first. So she offers this advice:
For the purposes of this post, the first ad unit on the page is defined as the first instance of the ad code within the HTML of the page. Keep in mind that the first ad unit in the source code is not always the first ad unit that your users will see when the page finishes loading in their browser. For example, if you use DIV tags, our system may recognize an ad unit which users see at the bottom of the page as the first ad unit.
So keep this in mind when optimizing your pages for Adsense display. Generally speaking, the order in which you place your div tags in the source code should indicate which ad renders first for Google. The main emphasis should be place on this code.
I’ve found that one ad unit always outperforms the others. Generally, in my findings, the ad units that do the best are 1) above the fold and 2) directly above the content.
Do as Phoebe suggests and create custom channels for each ad unit so you can ACTUALLY SEE what’s going on. Without testing you’ll have no idea what’s true or not for your website. Sometimes you may here info from others that, unless tested, will not work as well for you.
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3 Responses to “Google Adsense Tips Concerning Ad Placement”
My experience with Adsense shows me that by far the most productive ad unit is the first one that shows up on the page. But as Phoebe suggests this may not be true when it comes to google sending us the best priced ads. The best priced ads maybe showing up at the bottom of the page which historically gives the worst payout per click.
By Steve on Nov 6, 2006
I agree with you Steve. If the ad block is 1) Above the fold and 2) on top of the content, it usually does the best.
I think this post from Phoebe is relatively helpful. If you’re using style sheets (which almost everyone is), you probably never gave thought to the order. I know I didn’t.
By Darren McLaughlin on Nov 7, 2006
from my trial and testing I found ad unit wraped with your content has highest CTR. However, wide skycrapers have seen few CTR.
By Netaffiliatebase on Nov 9, 2006