Web publishers are discovering that Google Adsense is a great way to
generate revenue from their content rich sites. Google Adsense provides
a simple sign up process and a simple system that generates cut-and-paste
code that will display ads on the site that are matched to the site's
content. With 15 minutes of effort and a brief wait for approval, a webmaster
will be set to receive about half of his potential revenue stream from
Adsense. The other half of the revenue takes a little thinking and work.
AD LAYOUT
The shape of the ad will have a great affect on clickthrough rate. If
you choose to use a format that is very familiar and easily ignored, like
a traditional banner ad shape (468 by 60 pixels), your performance will
be poor. If you choose a newer format like a tower (120 wide by 600 tall)
you will see better performance. www.CFNewbie.com
utilizes this format. You will also see higher clickthrough rates as the
overall size of the ad grows. If your site allows it, go with the biggest
and newest shapes that Adsense offers.
COLOR
The color of your Adsense ads can affect the way users respond. You can
be subtle and blend into the rest of the page and may draw people to links
as they appear to offer more information rather than standing out screaming
come buy something. The subtle approach can be accomplished by selecting
the standard Google Adsense color scheme closest to your site's scheme
or you can match exactly using the custom pallet.
You may want to attract attention to your Adsense ads. You can do this
by selecting or creating color schemes that stand out. You will also want
to use the mulitple color scheme feature by selecting several color schemes
by holding down your control (Ctrl) key and clicking up to four choices.
The varying color schemes may get more notice than a constant color scheme.
POSITION
The position of your Google Adsense ad can have affect on how well the
ad performs. Avoid blindspots and consider how a visitor exits a page.
The most likely blindspot to avoid is the traditional spot for banner
ads. Visitors will likely ignore a banner shaped ad at the top or bottom
of your page. They will likely ignore a tower placed at the top of the
right or left column if the content extends beyond the length of the ad.
In the case of content rich pages, it would be wise to test placing non-banner
shaped ads at the end of the page where the reader is done with a page
and ready to exit. ChristianMusician.com uses this technique effectively at the end of articles,
offering the reader more articles and relavent ads. It's always a good
idea to give your visitors a path through your site that is relavent and
valuable to both you and them.
CHANNELS
Google recently added channels to Adsense. A channel is just an extra
bit of code that lets you track revenue from a channel such as a site,
a page, or some other characteristic you may want to track.
Prior to the introduction of channels, a webmaster would place Adsense
code on various sites and pages and would only see an aggregate result
of clickthrough and revenues. With channels, you can set a channel for
various sites or various pages or various ad types. By your using your
channels you can determine what ads are working in which location. On
FlashCFM.com an Adsense banner ad
performed very well in some pages and a large Amazon ad performed poorly
so a large Adsense replaced the Amazon ad.
USE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
The Scientific Method can be summarized as Plan, Do, Check, Act. By planning
out your attack by designing and implementing your ads, you accomplish
the Plan Do portion of the cycle. By using Adsense Channels, you can check
to see how your plan worked. You will no doubt see ways to Act or adjust
your approach after checking your results. You may end up modifying your
site or modifying your strategies on attracting traffic. No matter what
the case, you will need to do a little work but the results are worth
it.
Tom Barr, MBA, is a long time
ColdFusion developer and perpetual student of web advertising. He maintains
web community sites including CFNewbie.com
and FlashCFM.com and blogs on web revenue
generation in CPC Blog on his site AspiringGeek.com.
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