Adsense 300×250 Ad Unit

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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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Upgrading to WordPress 2.1 Tip

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I upgraded to WordPress 2.1 recently and I want to share a tip. I uncompressed the new WP 2.1 files into a new directory. I name it wordpress2.1 then I upload the entire new directory to my server. When I was ready to switch to the new version, I jus renamed the current wordpress directory to something like wordpress2.07. Then I renamed the new version to match the name of my official wordpress directory (ie – wordpress). This way, I have a clean install and I still have the old version to cut back to if something went wrong.

If you look at the WordPress upgrade instructions, it'll tell you to delete certain files and don't delete certain files. Seems kinda of messy to me. Below are the steps I took. Keep in mind my situation will be different from your setup, so you will need to modify the steps to suit your needs.

  1. Download and extract WP 2.1 to a new directory named wordpress2.1
  2. Back up the database by using the WordPress backup plugin or phpMyAdmin
  3. I made a change to template-functions-post.php in the old version of WordPress to alter the behavior of the more tag, so I had to make the change in the new version. In WP 2.1, I had to make the change in a new file called post-template.php.
  4. Copy the following files from the old WordPress directory to the new directory:
    • wp-config.php (it's in the root wordpress directory)
    • plugins (except Akismet because WP 2.1 comes with a new version of Akismet)
    • theme files
  5. Deactivate the plugins (don't forget to write down special codes, like the Akismet api key, in case you need to re-enter them after you re-activate the plugins)
  6. Rename the old wordpress directory (ie: wordpress –> wordpress2.07)
  7. Rename the new wordpress directory (ie: wordpress2.1 –> wordpress)
  8. Run the upgrade script (load …/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php in the browser)
  9. Reactive the plugin one by one

Remember, the above steps are for my situation. You will need to look at the WordPress upgrade instructions and modify the above steps for your setup.

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Bloglines Problem

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[Update: Bloglines fixed itself overnight. The problem does not appear to be related to CoolPlayer 9, WP 2.1, or FeedBurner 2.2.]

It appears the CoolPlayer 9 plugin may be causing problems with Bloglines. This is the error message I get in Bloglines:

Bloglines has encountered an error trying to fetch the latest version of this feed. Bloglines handles errors automatically, no action is required by you. The error was:

The feed does not appear to exist. This can be caused by the feed URL being incorrect, or it can be caused by a configuration issue with the server hosting the feed. If this error continues, you should check the feed URL and, if it is wrong, subscribe to the correct URL.

The plugin does not seem to affect the other RSS readers, like Google Reader and NetVibes. I'm posting this in case you are using Bloglines and didn't see my previous post on CoolPlayer 9. This is also a test for me. I'm guessing the problem is related to CoolPlayer 9. It could also be related to upgrading to WordPress 2.1 and FeedBurner 2.2 plugin. I'll know in a few minutes if I can see this post in Bloglines. If it's the plugin, hopefully it will only affect the post with the coolplayer tag and not all posts.

CoolPlayer 9

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Andot just rolled out version 9 of his cool CoolPlayer plugin for WordPress. With this new version, you no longer have to hack the plugin to use a local version of the RPC Server. You can specify the location of the server in the admin area (options -> coolplayer). By default, the plugin points to a RPC Server in China. But you can easily change it now. Not only that, you can also set options and test the plugin from the admin page:

CoolPlayer 9 admin menu

Note: It appears your web server needs to support php mbstring and sockets extension in order for the RPC Server to work locally. So if you can't get the RPC Server to work locally, you will have to use the RPC Server in China.

coolplayer tag from WordPress post menuThe new version of CoolPlayer supports both the plain text editor and the rich text editor in WordPress. Now you can insert the coolplayer tag directly from the create/edit post page by clicking on the coolplayer button. This version also fixed the auto play problem in FireFox. Now the video doesn't auto start unless you want it to. The audio player also has a new skin:

CoolPlayer audio player

The embedded player supports these types of files: rm, rmvb, ra, rv, ram, smil, smi, rtsp, rpm, asf, wm, wma, wmv, wax, wvx, ogg, ape, avi, mid, midi, wav, mms, m3u, asx, mov, qt, mqv, m4v, m4a, m4b, mpeg, mpg, m1s, m1v, m1a, m75, m15, mp2, mpm, mpv, mpa, flc, fli, cel, aiff, aif, aifc, cdda, bwf, rts, 3gp, 3gpp, 3g2, 3gp2, au, snd, ulw, smf, kar, qcp, sdv, gsm, amr, caf, amc, mp4, sdp, pdf, fdf, xfdf, xdp, xfd, gif, jpg, jpeg, bmp, png, xpm, dir, dxr, dcr, cst, cct, cxt, w3d, fgd, swa, swf, spl, mp3, flv, rtmp, rbs, xml, rss, xspf, atom.

It also supports YouTube, Ifilm, VSocial, TuDou Video, Evil Chili, Wildko, Yikers Videos & Games, Red Balcony Videos & Games, Live Video, Odeo Audio, Revver, MetaCafe, MySpace, GoEar, Break, Stupid Videos, DailyMotion and Google Video.

The installation is fairly simple. Just download, extract, upload folder to your plugin directory, and activate. I recommend testing the player plugin first before uploading the RPC Server locally. To install the RPC Server: download, extract, upload the files to your coolplayer folder, and activate. Then change the location in the options -> coolplayer menu.

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Here's an example of the video player in action:

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