Thread: Less ads more revenue? Tale or truth?

Hi

After reading so many threads about better revenue by showing less ads I wounder if that is true.

The fact is:
The best paying ads are the first ads that are displayed on your website.
The more ads you display the less value the last ads on your site have
(comparing to the first ad and depending on your keywords and keyword competition)

But if you only show lets say one Leaderboard to increase eCPM will this really increase your revenue?

If these 4 ads shown in this Leaderboard don't interest the user viewing your site you wont get a click and you wont get money from him/her.

But if you display more then one ad on your site, e.g. a Leaderboard at the top, a rectangle in the content and a link unit in the sidebar then the chances drastically increases that the user is clicking on one of your ads because it is interesting for him/her.
Therefor you wont get as much pay for the click if he clicks a lower ad but at least you get a click.

I for myself am normally using 3 content ads and 1-2 link units on one site blended into the content so that they don't disturb the flow of my forum.

If you want to take a look: ((login for URL))

What do you all think? Tale or truth?

StarBuG

I agree with you, I also put 3 ads and links as well as searches boxes on most of my pages. You can always find contrary examples on some of my pages, but the reason would be lazyness instead of another reason such as I prefer less ads.

This with ONE exception, the front page!

I've learned over the years that the front page needs to have the less ads possible, not because of adsense, but because of other webmasters and also perhaps other people visiting your site. So your site looks less ad cluttered. It's better to get links from other webmasters.
And anyway, the front page is not the page with most earnings, because the truth is that most visitors come from Google directly on inside pages related to their search requests, so not having ads on the home page (or just one) is not a bad thing at all.

Originally Posted by JamesColin ((login for URL))

And anyway, the front page is not the page with most earnings, because the truth is that most visitors come from Google directly on inside pages related to their search requests, so not having ads on the home page (or just one) is not a bad thing at all.

I totally agree.
From 400k + Page Impressions only a few thousand are generated from my frontpage.
That is why I also place only one Ad there.

StarBuG

I found an article I wrote 6 month ago talking about the same subject so here it is...

In so many threads I read the theory about how reducing the number of ADs on a page
results in increase of your earnings. In regard to this theory the less options for ADs to
click on you have the more often the clicks occur on high paying ADs.

Theory:
If you display three Banners, the first gets served the highest paying ADs and down it
goes from there. The more banners you display the more choice the user has to click
on an AD which increases the likelihood of clicks occurring on lower priced ADs.
If you reduce this number to only 1 AD the user only has one choice to click on a
banner and therefor (if he clicks) he clicks on the highest paying ADs served.
This means that less ADs earn you more money.

However I have never believed very much in this theory.

This theory presumes that if a user visits your site he clicks on an AD regardless of
the number of choices. But is this really the case?

Let's take the above Theory and say that we run a site where only one AD is displayed.
A user now visits our site and reads a thread and between two posts is our banner with
3 ADs in it. When the user reaches the AD he has a choice. Does one AD catches his
interest and make him click? If yes he clicks and we get money. If not then he reads
further down the thread and when he found what he was looking for (or not) he is
leaving the thread or even (worst case) our site.

Now with the above mentioned Example let's assume he would make the same choice
and don't click on one of the links in the first AD. He reads further down the thread
and at the end of the thread there is another AD giving him three more links which
have the chance to catch his interest. Now he again has a choice. If he clicks we get
money. Yes it is less money then if he had clicked on the first AD but non the less we
get money from him where he otherwise would have left our site (in the worst case).

There is an article written about this theory that seems to confirm the above discussed
Theory: But this article has one major flaw, see if you can find the flaw in the argument
of this article: ((login for URL))

Did you catch the flaw in his argument?

If this Example of a website would do as the article says it would earn more by reducing
the number of ADs. However in this Example the best performing banner is the last one.
All the Example shows is that the banner with the highest CTR should be loaded first to
get the highest paying ADs. Yes you can do that by removing any other banner on that
page and you will increase earnings if that banner was not the first that was loaded in
your HTML. However if you would simply switch loading order of your banners using CSS
positioning you would not only get the increase in earnings by having the banner with the
highest CTR filled with the highest paying ADs you would also get the money from the
550 clicks on the other banners that you would not if you simply removed them.

Read more about loading order and Ad placement here:
((login for URL))

This is exactly what I did on my patient forum s few years back.
I switched the loading order of the Leaderboard banner below the navigation I was
using back then with the large rectangle placed in the content as second post of each
thread because the large rectangle as second post had a much higher CTR then the
Leaderboard banner. This way I increased my earnings without losing the clicks
on my Leaderboard banner.

So in conclusion my theory is that displaying more ADs should increase the odds
of users clicking on your ADs and increase your earnings not lower it, as long as
you see to it that the AD with the highest CTR is loaded first.

Also people debating that the overall CTR and eCPM has influence on your earnings
and displaying multiple banners is lowering your overall CTR and therefor your earnings.
I don't believe that.

I never really saw a field test which demonstrated evidence to one or the other side.

I believe that Google AdSense grained down its monitoring to the AD unit level and if
clicks convert for Advertisers the CTR is not that important for defining the value of
each click. Read this article to read more about this: ((login for URL))

What are your thoughts?

When I visit other sites I look at their ad layout. If it aggravates me, surely the non understanding members are hating it.

what do you mean by "the non understanding members are hating it" ?

Simple, the majority of the people that visit your site that want everything free and have no understanding the costs involved in running a site or large site. There's a fine line in what you should display to your audience.

You mean how many Ad units to show to your audience/visitors?

how and and where they are placed

There are always people complaining about to much Ads.
However these are mostly tech savvy people like webmasters.

I for example don't show Ads to my registered members.
For one because they most likely don't click on the Ads anyway
and I want them to be happy and produce content which
I then can monetize by displaying Ads to guests that view the
content. Therefor I don't get complains from my members
about seeing to many Ads

I also mention in my welcoming message block (the one with the Ad)
that registration is free and registered members can use the forum
Ad free which hopefully is another small reason for people to register.
It is all marketing