Learning curve – Testing ad placement
When I first started to look at learning to develop some websites to create a passive income I read a few articles by some people who had succeeded in their ventures. In one of the very first articles there was mention of testing different things… one of which was ad placement. So I tried it and saw that numbers reacted very soon after.
On one site in particular I had decided to try the experiment of placing Google AdSense ads in different locations and see how it affected the site’s eCPM. I was inspired to try this after reading John Chow’s article “How to make more money online”.
I had a wide skyscraper banner ad on a site and decided to take it out. The skyscraper banner was a bit low on the page, so I put a 250 x 250 square ad higher on the site then the skyscraper was and also moved a 468 x 60 banner to a different location.
I used this Google AdSense ad placement tip and figured the new placement might be better.
To my amazement my eCPM started going down. It actually went way down. I figured I would leave the ads “as is” for several more hours just to see if it would in fact change but it didn’t. It got a little worse.
So by the day’s end I had decided to revert to the way it was and I did that. After reverting it I had the idea of rearranging the navigation menu so that the skyscraper would be a little higher then it had been previously.
After several hours in it’s new position there was a change, going back to being consistent with where the eCPM had been prior to my experiment and to my surprise it has actually increased in the days that followed. It’s still not very high but I have noticed that since placing the skyscraper just a bit higher it (the eCPM) is now averaging higher then it had.
From what I’ve been reading there are several factors that go into what the eCPM number is for a website. So I’m not expecting it to reach really high numbers but it helps to motivate me by reading great information (such as that article by John Chow) and by experimenting.. and learning by it.
It’s not rocket science… but it takes time and effort!
Related article:
How to place website ads – my beginning
When placing any ads, it takes me a while to figure out where to put them to get the best results. Sometimes I run my test for a month or two. Some ads do better than others and some are just a waste of time.
BTW, Thanks for visiting my site
Certainly is a learning experience.
I’ll be experimenting more and more as time goes on I’m sure.
Enjoy your site George!
Thanks for the comments!