The monster page: how many ads can one page stand?
For the last few months I’ve been told by Google to put more ads on my pages. This is the type of feedback report I get from AdSense:
May 2007 Optimization Report
Dear Publisher,
Here is your optimization report for the month of May. After an automatic review of your sites, we think you might be able to improve your monetization using the following tips:
Placing more than one ad unit on a page often generates more revenue.
Many of your sites only contain one ad unit.
How can I fix this? Dismiss this tip.We hope these tips are helpful, and encourage you to experiment using different layouts and formats–no two sites monetize the same way!
Sincerely,
Google Adsense
The link from ‘How can I fix this?’ has some guidelines as which which types of page can do best with more adverts. It also raises the interesting point that the first group of ads to appear in the page’s source code will be higher paying than subsequent groups:
Maximize ad space with multiple ad units
Multiple ad units can help optimize your performance by leveraging our large inventory of ads. You can place up to three ad units per page (in addition to one link unit and two referral units per product). Remember that the best way to measure the effect of multiple ad units is to examine the impact on your overall earnings. Multiple ad units may prove particularly successful for:
* Pages with lots of text, requiring users to scroll down the page.
* Forum or message board pages, particularly within threads.
* Pages where only smaller ad formats (such as the 125 x125 button) will fit.Tip for maximizing multiple ad units: make sure that the ad unit with the best placement on the page is the ad unit that appears first in your HTML code. This will help ensure that your prime ad real estate is occupied by the ads that place highest in the auction and will generate the most revenue for you.
Best of all, they then lead you to this page, Where should I place Google ads on my pages?, which includes a ‘heat map’ to show which areas of a web page are most successful for ad placements:
(Google heatmap showing the most successful areas for advertising)
In general, the most successful areas for adsense appear to be the places where you’d look for navigation menus and subject headings. This seems like it might conflict with usability, but there’s also a nice block in the centre just above the footer, so I’ve taken their advice and started using that one more.
But I couldn’t just take their sensible advice. I’d been putting together a resources section, but it wasn’t yet organized beyond a single page list. So I thought, let’s try out a monster page to see how many adverts a single page can stand. It’s got the maximum amount possible of Google Adsense: 3 content units, 1 search unit and 2 of each kind of referral unit. But not only that, it’s got affiliate banners and most of the text links are affiliate links as well. And to give it more content as well, it’s got an RSS feed. It’s a dog of a page - it takes a hundred years to load! Click here for a page with an insane amount of advertising!
I’ve since organised the resources into a much more sensible arrangement. Ironically, the total amount of adsense on them now is much more - in some cases, where the categories don’t have as much in them, I’ve even used the content units to fill in gaps until I’ve got more to put there.
I’m not that bothered about having to change things around, so it’s all an experiment. But if Google send me the same report next month I’ll be wondering why.