iZachy » Adsense

Adsense 300×250 Ad Unit

Ken Cheung — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:31:46 +0000

Like ten million other publishers, I got an email from Google last month. In the email, Google suggested I place 300×250 Adsense units on my site. In exchange, they would include my site in their custom placement packs program. Custom placement packs are selections of individually reviewed sites designed for Google's largest brand advertisers. In other words, they want to show more video ads. I doubt video ads will work well on my site and I'm not too fond of running such a big ad in the content area. But I decided to do a test run on three of my sites. All three sites use the same theme (with different colors).

The results below are based on the first 16 days of January and February. In February, I ran 300×250 ads (top right of content) in place of 468×60 banners (above content in January). So "28%" for the 300×250 stat in the first table means the 300×250 ad resulted in an eCPM increase of 28% compared to the 468×60 ad I ran in January. Keep in mind I'm comparing stats from two different months.

January vs February eCPM for Site #1

Site #1	eCPM
300×250 (top right of content)	+28%
160×600 (left side bar)	+51%
Link unit (below header)	-52%
Overall	+24%

January vs February eCPM for Site #2

Site #2	eCPM
300×250 (top right of content)	+70%
160×600 (left side bar)	+16%
Link unit (below header)	+19%
300×250 (bottom of content)	-22%
Overall	+25%

January vs February eCPM for Site #3

Site #3	eCPM
300×250 (top right of content)	+16%
160×600 (left side bar)	-13%
Link unit (below header)	-10%
Overall	-4%

As you can see, the 300×250 ads resulted in an overall increase for two of my sites. However, the medium rectangle ad resulted in a slight decrease for the third site, which happens to be my main site. I'm not going to pull the new ad size yet. I'm going to let it run a little longer to see if being included in Google's custom placement packs program makes a difference.

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Targeting Adsense Link Units

Ken Cheung — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:05:33 +0000

I was playing with the Adsense data today and stumbled on this little stat:

According to Adsense, someone has been targeting my link units from August 10th to November 22nd. I'm assuming it's some sort of glitch because as far as I know, advertisers can't target link units. It's possible I entered the wrong channel code in the Adsense script, but I would expect more than 15 impressions if I miscopied the Adsense code.

And take a look at this ad on my site. It's for the bird flu. What the heck is that ad doing on my site?

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New AdSense for Search Feature

Ken Cheung — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 23:50:02 +0000

Jensense has a post about a new feature in AdSense for Search. Previously, the search results were displayed on a page outside of your site. As a result, visitors were led off of your site. With Google's new feature, the search results can be displayed on your site.

The new feature was not hard to implement. However, I noticed two problems. First, the width of the results page is set at 650. For some sites, especially sites that have side columns, the 650 width is too wide and messes up the layout of the page. I was tempted to change the width, but that would have violated Google's terms about not changing their code.

The other problem I encountered was with WordPress. The Javascript provided by Google works just fine on non-WordPress pages, but do not seem to work on WordPress-powered sites. On the results page, the search box is displayed but there are no search results. At the bottom of the page is an icon indicating a Javascript error. The error message, as usual, was of no help. If you are using WordPress, my recommendation is to test it during a slow period or on a test page your visitors will not see.

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Adsense Test or Glitch?

Ken Cheung — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 01:09:23 +0000

I have noticed for the past two weeks, Adsense occassionally displays text ads without the title. I'm not sure if the missing ad title is yet another Adsense test or a glitch. My guess is it's just a glitch. However, I have seen the titleless ad on at least three sites (two were my sites) in both the 160×600 and 468×60 ad unit. Below are some screen shots of the titleless ads. Has anyone else seen the titleless Adsense ads?

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Why is Adsense Showing a Dot Instead of an Ad?

Ken Cheung — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 18:53:28 +0000

For the past week now, I have encountered an error with my 160×600 Adsense ad unit. As you can see from the screen shot below, the top ad is missing. In its place is a dot. My guess is that the dot is suppose to be one of those new link unit image that Google has been testing. For whatever reason, Adsense can't find a relevant link unit image, so it displays a dot instead. I sent an email to Adsense support about the problem and they told me it was just an error and they don't think I will see the error again. That was two days ago and I still see the dot. It only happens once in a while, but it happens enough to annoy me. Is anyone else experiencing this problem?

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Adsense Tip #457

Ken Cheung — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 20:19:59 +0000

Like many of you, I test my Adsense ads to improve the performance of the ads. In my latest test, I tested blended ads against ads that were slightly highlighted. The blended ads matched the content — white background with blue links. The highlighted ads had a light blue background. First, unlike most publishers, highlighted ads performed better for me in the content area. The click-through rate for the highlighted ads was three times higher than the blended ads. However, the ecpm was slightly higher for the blended ads. Though my guess is that the higher ecpm has more to do with Google serving better paying ads than because of the color of the ads.

Read Adsense Tip #457 (333 words)

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Hello, I am an Annoying Ad

Ken Cheung — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 03:53:41 +0000

Update: Darren over at ProBlogger thought I might get in trouble for running the fake scrolling ad that I mentioned in the post below. After I got a heart attack and was brought back to life by a baby yanking on my hair, I emailed Adsense and YPN. Adsense guy didn't see a problem. However, YPN dude told me I need to pull the fake ad because it was blocking part of their ads. Strange I thought. I tested the fake ad on three different browsers and it didn't block any Adsense/YPN ads. So I sent a reply to YPN dude telling him that the fake ad did not block any YPN ads. I also sent the URL again in case I forgot to previously. YPN dude again sent me another email telling me to remove the fake ad because it was blocking their ads. I was pissed at this point because I concluded YPN dude didn't look at the URL I sent him. Then I had an idea, what if YPN dude didn't have his browser in full screen mode? Sure enough, when I resized my browser, the fake ad did indeed block both Adsense/YPN ads. As you can see, I no longer have the floating ad to show on this post. Thanks for the advice, Darren.

I bet you are having a little trouble reading this post because of the annoying ad in your face. The floating ad is an example of the post-it ads Jensense blogged about today. You scroll down, the ad moves down. You scroll up, the ad moves up.

The new ads by AdImpact look like post-it notes. Unlike real post-it notes, the ads are very annoying. Regardless of how much you scroll, the ads keep their same position. AdImpact offers the post-it ads for $20 a month. However, as Jennifer suspected, there are free scripts available. In case you have not noticed (ha-ha), I implemented a floating ad on this post so you can see it in action. I could have used a graphics instead of text to make them look more like real ads, but I figure you will be annoyed either way.

These floating ads are a good way to drive away your visitors. You might make a little extra money running them in the short term, but you'll pay for it in the long term. These are the types of ads I expect to see on the sites that game the search engines. You go there looking for something, but they don't have any real content — just keywords stuffed all over the page. All you can do is hit the back button or click on an ad. These sites do not expect repeat visitors. If you run floating ads, don't expect your visitors to return either.

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AdSense API for the Big Boys

Ken Cheung — Wed, 31 May 2006 17:26:41 +0000

Google announced their AdSense API on their blog today. The API is in beta, but its free. So, what can you do with the Adsense API? Basically, the API allows visitors to your site to sign-up and manage Adsense accounts without ever leaving your web site. Why send your visitors to Google when you can keep them on your site? Great idea.

But there's more. If you act now, you also get a share of the revenue earned by publishers you sign up. In addition, you get a $100 bonus for each publisher who earns $100 within 180 days. I'm kidding about the "act now" part — couldn't resist.

So, what's the catch? Well, your site needs a minimum of 100,000 page views daily. Ouch! This will obviously weed out just above everyone except for the really big sites. It appears Google is targeting web hosts, blog hosts, Wiki hosts, forum hosts, and web publishers. Now the people behind a service like wordpress.com can make some money off of all those free accounts. I guess we can also expect more ISP's to offer free hosting if you sign up for Adsense on their site.

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Six Suggestions for Adsense Injection

Ken Cheung — Tue, 30 May 2006 05:03:04 +0000

I noticed both Jensense and ProBlogger have a post on the new Adsense Injection plugin today (doesn't anyone respect US holidays anymore?). The plugin, by Dax the big nut, inserts Adsense ads in different spots on your blog. Not only does it insert ads in random spots, the plugin also changes the size of the ads.

Read Six Suggestions for Adsense Injection (420 words)

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Google's Free to Play Video Ads

Ken Cheung — Fri, 26 May 2006 17:17:36 +0000

I'm confused (easy to do for a dad with three young kids). There's a post on the Adsense blog with more details about their new click-to-play video ads. Here's the blurb that confuses me:

Can I watch the videos appearing on my own site?

Yes, you can watch the videos appearing on your site by clicking on the "Play" button–this will not affect your reports. However, please do not click on the advertiser's URL, or on the ad itself, which will also bring you to the advertiser's site. Clicking on the ad or URL could generate invalid clicks on your account and inflate advertiser costs.

Excuse me? I thought these were click to play video ads. It sounds like they are actually free to play ads because publishers do not get pay for clicking on the play button. Shouldn't clicking on the play button count as clicking on the ad? Am I the only publisher who thought clicking on the play button counts as an ad click?

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Color Matching Your Way to the Bank

Ken Cheung — Thu, 25 May 2006 18:31:03 +0000

Boy, that Jen girl (woman) from Jensense is every where. Today she has a post on the YPN blog about color matching ads.

Jennifer outlines four techniques you can use to determine the best color scheme for your site:

1. The blended technique (using same colors for ads and site)
2. The matching technique (ad colors are from the same palette as the site colors, but not necessarily for the same elements, ie – page background color for ad text color)
3. The complimentary technique (ad colors that complement your site)
4. The contrasting technique (using ad colors that look ugly on your site, best to avoid this scheme if you want repeat visitors)

As Jennifer mentioned, its best to setup categories (channels for adsense people) and test your color schemes to see which works best for your site. With the right color scheme, your revenue can increase dramatically.

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Adsense, YPN, Chitika, and FeedBurner News

Ken Cheung — Wed, 24 May 2006 00:19:26 +0000

OK, what's going on? It seems like in the past few days, there has been a flurry of activities from Yahoo, Google, and others. Today, Google announced their new video ads on their blog. If you opt into image ads, you will be opted into video ads as well. Though this doesn't mean video ads will run on your site. The video ads will use the following formats: 300×250 Medium Rectangle, 336×280 Large Rectangle, or 250×250 Square. Hmmm. Since I've started running 3 ad units on some of my sites, I noticed my sites take longer to load. Now, with the video (and Flash) ads, my sites will slow down even more. I might have to decrease the number of ad units and/or go back to text-only ads.

Read Adsense, YPN, Chitika, and FeedBurner News (445 words)

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Google Trends, Clickbots, and Click Farms, Oh My!

Ken Cheung — Fri, 19 May 2006 01:07:01 +0000

I was playing with Google Trends today. First I tried to do a comparison of phrases like: msn adcenter, adsense, ypn, microsoft search, adwords, yahoo search, and overture. Yahoo! publisher network, yahoo publisher network, and microsoft adcenter did not generate enough search volume to graph out. Not surprising, when I tried to compare msn adcenter and ypn with adsense, the graphs for msn adcenter and ypn appear flat and near the zero mark. The search volume for adsense was just too high and out of scale with the other two ad networks.

Read Google Trends, Clickbots, and Click Farms, Oh My! (376 words)

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Show More Adsense Ads on Long Posts

Ken Cheung — Tue, 16 May 2006 01:36:03 +0000

I'm old school. On my static sites, I hand code the side nav bar I want to use. This enables me to use different side nav bars for different situations. For instance, I may want to use a home side nav bar for my home page, side bar Z for section Z, and side bar 8 for yet another section of my site.

Now that I'm using WordPress to run some of my sites, I've pretty much stuck with one side bar for all my pages. Sure I could put in a bunch of if statements to pull in different nav bars, but that could get really messy fast. So, I've come up with two methods that I could use to alter the side nav bar and the layout for single posts and pages. This will come in handle for showing more ads on a long page and disabling ads for a short page.

Read Show More Adsense Ads on Long Posts (608 words)

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YPN Offers Ad Placement Tips

Ken Cheung — Thu, 11 May 2006 18:24:13 +0000

Interesting post on the YPN Blog. In the post, Yahoo suggests that the best placement of ads are:

leaderboard ad above the fold between the top nav and content area
skyscrapers and vertical banners in the right-hand rail or margin
square and rectangle ads placed within the center column (content area)

I'm surprised the click-throughs are higher on the right side than the left side for Yahoo ads. In my tests of Adsense, ads work better on the left than the right. Then again, as the post indicates, actual results will vary with the publisher.

Read YPN Offers Ad Placement Tips (253 words)

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Google Click Fraud Settlement

Ken Cheung — Mon, 08 May 2006 21:20:32 +0000

The Google click fraud settlement is in the news again today. I've heard about it before, but I didn't realized the extent of the problem. According to various articles, the fraud rate is anywhere from 12% to 35%. I didn't realized it was so high. With the fraud rate so high, I can't help but wonder about the future of Adsense, YPN and MSN adCenter. If the current publisher/Google split is about 70/30, Google would lose money if the fraud rate is 35% (assuming Google has to credit the advertiser in full, which I don't think will happen). So, down the road, I would not be surprised if Google started deducting money from publishers as a reserve for fraudulent activities, which means less money for us (duh).

Even though some companies do click on their competitors's ads to drive up costs, it appears most fraudulent activities are actually conducted by publishers themselves (source: cnet). Apparently, some publishers have resorted to click farms (paying people to click on ads for hours), clickbots (software programs written to automate ad clicking), or botnets that hijack numerous machines for purpose of click fraud. So, because of a few greedy publishers (by few, I mean relative to the total number of publishers), the rest of us might have to suffer.

So, is there a solution to the problem? It appears not. Even if we went back to the cpm model, fraudulent activities could occur with that as well. In fact, I think that was a problem when the banner ad went mainstream. Of course back then, most fraudulent activities were limited to competitors on mainstream sites. Now, thanks to Adsense, there has been an explosion of advertising supported sites — some of which are operated by shady people.

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