A text ad offers many advantages over image ads:
A. With the right formatting, a text ad 'blends in' with your site content. An image ad will not give you the same freedom with its appearance, as the only thing you can play with is the size and positioning.
B. You can squeeze more text ads into the space that a conventional banner takes. People love to have more choices!
C. Properly formatted text ads don't look like clutter. Banners do!
D. People hate banners and avoid them at sight. Many tests confirm that people are much more receptive to text ads related with your content.
I just can’t think of a reason why anyone would want to take an image ad from Google. Text ads perform so much better, in my opinion, you’re better off sticking with those and ignoring image ads altogether.
Fig. 3.8 This banner ad stands out, but will it get clicked? Dave Taylor, best-selling technology writer and AdSense partner, stands up for text ads in this article at: http://www.free-web-money.com/000449.html You can read more of his AdSense articles on this page.
3.6 Video Ads
There is however, one type of image ad that you should welcome on your website: Google’s video ads.
These are an excellent addition to Google’s inventory and for sites that get them, they can bring very impressive returns.
Instead of receiving the sort of static image that just gets ignored, you’ll receive the opening still of an online video. The video is stored on Google’s servers so your download times won’t be affected, and it only plays when the user clicks the Play button, minimizing distraction to the user.
That’s a good thing. If a user’s eyes keep drifting to a moving image when he’s trying to read your content, he’s going to get pretty frustrated and not want to come back.
Fig. 3.9 Play-per-click: a scene from Google’s sample video ad.
And it’s fine too if you’re being paid on a CPM basis; you won’t care then how often someone sees the video. But you’re not always paid on a CPM basis; you might also be paid on a CPC basis.
Unlike Google’s other ad formats though, you won’t be paid for just one click. Users first have to click the Play button—which won’t pay you a dime—and then click either the screen while it’s playing or the link underneath the screen before you’ll earn money.
In fact, you can’t even track the number of times the film is shown. (Although that does mean that you can watch the film yourself without getting rude messages from Google, and it also means that CPC advertisers are less likely to get free branding at the expense of your page space.)
That extra step might sound like it’s going to hit your clickthrough rate for that ad unit but I’m not sure that’s true.
As soon as someone sees a button anywhere, they want to click it. In fact, I’m sure that if you put a big notice next to the Play button saying, “DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON” you can be sure that your clicks would go through the roof. (But don’t try it; it’s unlikely that Google will appreciate it.)
People will want to click that Play button, and many of them will want to learn more about the company that created the ad. And even if your CTR does drop for that unit, it’s likely that the click price for video ads will be higher than for other units competing for that space.
Video ads are more expensive to create than text or image ads. That’s why they tend to be created by big companies like car giants or Disney. They might even be offering their television ads. If those corporations have gone to the trouble creating an original video ad or formatting a television ad for the Web, there’s a great chance that they’ll go to the trouble of outbidding their nearest rival for exposure.
If you’re getting a video ad, track how long it appears on that page and compare the revenues it brings with the days on which no video ad appeared. You should expect to see a spike in earnings. If you don’t see that spike, you can always opt out.
Unlike text or image ads though, there’s no guarantee you’re going to get a video ad. To qualify, you have to be opted in to receive image ads on an ad unit in one of these sizes:
● Medium Rectangle (300x250)
● Large Rectangle (336x280)
● Square (250x250)
● Small Square (200x200)
● Leaderboard (28x90)
● Skyscraper (120x600)
● Wide Skyscraper (160x600)
(It’s worth noting that with video ads, the bigger the format, the better the results).
If you’re receiving those kinds of image ads and AdSense has a video ad to match your content, you might receive one.
But what if you don’t? You’ll be receiving the sort of image ads that earn a poor clickthrough rate. That would cost you money.
There are two things that you can do to minimize any losses from fishing for video ads and not getting them.
The first is to stop fishing fast. If a week has gone by and your image ad unit hasn’t acquired a Play button, it’s probably not going to. So turn that image ad back into a text ad.
The second is to follow the strategy I use at DealofDay.com. I’ve placed two rectangular ads at the top of the page to make them unmissable but one of them is an image ad.
Google no longer allows publishers to place related images right next to ad units to draw attention to them but you can put an image ad next to a text ad. If that image ad becomes a video ad, you’re going to earn more money. If it stays an image ad, it’s going to pull eyes into your ad zone.
This is about the only time I can think of when an image ad might be better than a text ad.
And when you do get video ads, there are also a couple of things that you can do to make the most of them...
Adding video to your Web pages for example, is a breeze. There are millions of clips available for free use on the Web, and there’s nothing to stop you from shooting your own short.
If your site regularly receives a video ad from AdSense, placing one or two more videos on those pages would help the ad blend into the site and increase clicks.
You could also encourage advertisers to build their own video ads specifically for your site. In Chapter 6, I talk about Google’s “Advertise on this site” feature and recommend that you make use of the landing page to help advertisers create effective ads for your site. You could also add a line or two there about video ads.
Video ads are still fairly new on AdSense, but I’m really excited about them. I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of them in the future and they’re going to really prove their worth.
3.7 Gadget Ads — Clever But Are They Effective?
I’m optimistic about video ads. I’m not sure yet about Gadget ads.
These are rich media ads that might contain animation, Flash games and interactive content. At the moment advertisers are big brands like Coca-Cola and I suspect it’s likely to stay that way. Ads like these cost a lot more to design and program than a text ad, a graphic ad or even a home-made video ad.
They can pay by impression or by click but I’m skeptical that you’ll get many clicks. An early test showed that only a third of one percent of viewers actually interacted with the ad.
The problem is that they just look too much like ads. Most users have learnt to ignore them.
If you do want to test them though, you’ll need to opt in to receive image ads. Apparently the most popular sizes for gadgets are rectangles, leaderboards and skyscrapers.
Some ads might do well — such as those for movies or which have an attractive built-in game — but on the whole, I expect you’ll find that a well-blended text ad unit will do better.
Fig. 3.10 This kind of Gadget ad could do well. But will others — and how much will it cost you to find out?
3.8 Link Units — Great Little Stocking Fillers
An ad format that has already proved its worth, when used correctly, is link units.
If you’ve ever bought Christmas presents for children, you’ve probably bought stocking fillers. You dole out hundreds of bucks on some state-of-the-art electronic gizmo, toss in a couple of toy cars that cost a dollar each just to fill up space and give the kid more to unwrap... then watch him spend 90 percent of his time playing with the car that cost 10 percent of your total gift budget.
Ad Link units have the potential to be equally profitable.
They’re very small, almost unnoticeable... but when used well, they can be extremely effective.
Ad Link units let you place a box on your site that contains four or five links. They come in sizes ranging from 20 x 90 to 200 x 90, and are really meant to be placed on a sidebar.
Because you can place both Ad Link units as well as other ad units on the page, you might find that the choice helps: if a user doesn’t spot something interesting in one type of ad block, he might spot it on another.
Where Ad Links differ from other types of ads is that they only display a list of topics that Google believes are relevant to the content of your pages. They don’t display the ads themselves. When a visitor clicks on a topic, Google pops up a new window with targeted ads.
It can be argued that the Ad Links are ineffective because like video ads, people have to go through two clicks in order for you to get paid. That’s right, once again, you’re only getting paid for the second click (but that does mean you can check to see which ads your users are being served.)
Fig. 3.11 A cunningly disguised link unit at Worldvillage.com.
But it can also be argued that if someone is taking the time to click on a topic, then they are probably very interested in the link, and are likely to click an actual advertisement on the resulting page. Some people have found that just about everyone who clicks on an Ad Link will click on the ads that appear on the next page.
I have tested Ad Links on multiple sites and have seen vast differences in results. That makes it more difficult to say whether or not they are for you.
In the first case, I placed the Ad Links on an information-based site with a very general audience. The results were nothing to write home about. Let's just say that you could just about buy a large candy bar with the CPM I saw.
In the second case, I placed the Ad Links on a product specific site with a narrow audience. The results were fantastic! We're talking about a CPM that is greater than what someone might make flipping burgers in one day.
The conclusions should be obvious. If you’re going to use an Ad Links unit campaign. You need to put them:
1. On a site with a specific field of interest. A general site will give you general ads — and few clicks.
2. Above the fold with few other links. For Ad Links, this is crucial: If your users are going to click a link, it should be a link that gives you money.
It’s also a good idea to keep your Ad Link units for sites with high-paying keywords. If someone comes to your site seeking out information or a product on a top-notch keyword, they tend to be more likely to click as a result.
There are two kinds of link units: vertical units and horizontal units. Vertical link units are great slotted into sidebars. They just look like a natural extension of the link list.
But horizontal link units can be at least as effective. Since they were introduced, they really have become an extremely useful tool.
Some users have reported increases in CTR as high as 200 percent using these units!
Instead of piling the links one on top of the other—which is great for putting above lists of links but stand out too clearly when placed in text—the horizontal ads blend in perfectly when placed on pages with articles.
You can still only use one Ad Link unit per page and users still have to click twice before you get paid but they’re definitely worth slipping into a long article. You probably shouldn’t put them at the bottom of a page where they’ll be very easy to miss, but there are plenty of other places where these sorts of ads can work very, very well.
For example, a horizontal ad unit can be a great alternative to a leaderboard. It’s much more subtle and takes up less space on the page — definitely something to experiment with to see which of the two brings you the highest revenues.
Or you could use them to separate forum or blog entries. As a horizontal unit, they can be very effective as frames that give people somewhere easy to go when they reach the end of a text unit.
One great use for horizontal link units though is on directory pages. If you have a Web page that contains tables of links, slipping a horizontal link unit above or below them — or both — can make the ads look like a part of the directory.
It almost makes you want to build a directory just to try it out!
3.9 Expanded Text Ads — Shrinking Control Or Expanded
Income?
Take a look at the ad format samples on the AdSense site and you’ll see a bunch of squares and rectangles filled with ads. Most of those ad units will contain more than one ad. On those units that do contain just the one ad, like the button or the half-banner, the ad will fill the space neatly and look pretty subtle.
Fig. 3.14 You can’t miss that! An expanded text ad strikes JoelComm.com.
You might be surprised then to put a skyscraper or a leaderboard on your site and find just one giant ad, written in super-sized text.
All the effort you’ve put into picking the right ad for your site, testing to see which formats work best and calculating which will give you the most clicks will have gone right out of the window.
You’ve prepared your site to serve multiple ads that look like content, and instead you’re handing out a single ad that just screams “Don’t click me!”
This can happen sometimes, but it’s not a reason to panic. It might even be a reason to celebrate.
There are two possible reasons that Google is sending you these expanded text ads.
The first possible reason is that you’ve been keyword-targeted. Google keeps track of your results (just like you should be doing) and tries to serve up the number of ads for your page that will bring in the highest amount of income. That might be four ads in a unit. Or just the one.
Frankly, I’m a touch skeptical that showing one ad is going to bring me more revenues than showing several. But I’m prepared to give AdSense the benefit of the doubt.
If I see that Google is giving me one ad, I’ll compare the results for that one ad to the previous results that I’ve had serving multiple ads in the same unit. If I find that my revenues have dropped I can either block that ad using my filters or just ask AdSense not to give me any more single ads.
But if I find that the expanded text ad is giving me more money, I might still be worried. I know that users are more likely to click ads that look like content. I also know that they prefer to have a choice of ads rather than just one option.
If I’m getting more clicks then with just one ad, it could well be that I have been doing something wrong with that ad unit in the past. I would want to look at how well it’s been optimized and whether it’s in the right place to bring in the best income.
It could well be that this single ad is a high-payer and works better with little competition. But it could also be that getting that one ad is a warning that something was wrong with the way you’ve laid out that ad unit on your site.
You might want to try some different strategies to see if they’ll increase your revenues when the multiple ads come back.
There is another possibility though. You might have been placement-targeted.
This is a whole different ball game. It means that an advertiser has spotted your site and asked Google to run their ads on it.
In the past, they could only do that on a cost-per-mille (CPM) basis. You received a set fee for every thousand impressions.
Because you were no longer dealing with tempting people to click, you didn’t care how much your ad looks like an ad. In fact you might even want it to look like an ad, if that’s what will keep the advertiser happy.
That’s no longer the case. Now advertisers can also place ads on cost-per-click basis. That means you should still blend your units into the page so that they don’t look like ads.
The most important point to bear in mind here is that you want to make sure that you’re not losing money. It might be very nice for the advertiser to have exclusive control over a particular spot on your page but if you can make more money serving CPC ads in that space, then you need to make sure that your site is working for you and not for the advertiser.
Again, watch your stats for a week and see if the revenues you receive for your impressions are higher than those you receive for your clicks.
Most publishers do find that ads that placement targeted ads — even those that pay on a CPM basis — pay better, especially sites with high traffic rates. After all, you’re getting paid for every visitor who comes to your site rather than just those that click, so all you have to do to increase your revenue is increase your traffic. As long as each impression pays more than you’re paying for the traffic, you’re going to be making a profit. That should be easy to calculate.
If you find the revenues are lower though, then you’ll want to boot that ad off and go back to serving conventional ads. You can do that by opting out of showing placement-targeted ads (you’re automatically opted in) or even better, use the Review Center to block selected advertisers.
In general, the biggest problem with these sorts of campaigns is not lower revenues; it’s that you’ve got no idea how long they’re going to last, which makes it difficult for you to take advantage of them. If you knew, for example, that you were going to get paid per impression for the next two weeks, then you’d want to buy in as much traffic as possible for that period, provided that you were paying less than you were earning.
And because you wouldn’t care about CTR for those CPM campaigns, You could also lay off the optimization and focus on making your site more attractive to users.
But you can’t tell when your site is going to be used for a CPM campaign and you can’t tell how long it’s going to last either. That means there’s little point in making major changes to your optimization; you might have to rebuild it the next day.
The best strategy then when you spot a placement-targeted ad on your site is to keep a close eye on the cash flows. Buy in more traffic if you can do it profitably but for the most part, just enjoy the extra income!
3.10 Seasons Greeting With Themed Units
The designs themselves vary according to season and location (users in Europe, for example, won’t see Thanksgiving ads).
In general, I always say that your ads should be unobtrusive but I like these themed ads. They’re eye-catching without looking like banners. When it’s holiday-time, it’s always worth checking out the format page again and seeing what’s available.
To sum up the different types of ad format then...
• Leaderboards are best at the top of the page;
• Squares and rectangles can be embedded into text itself;
• Vertical ads and buttons should slip down the side of the page;
• Vertical link units should be placed next to link lists;
• Horizontal link units can go at the top of the page, between blog entries or above and below directories;
• Image ads should rarely be used at all;
• Themed ads can be slotted in at holiday time;
• And Video ads should be used whenever possible.
Those are the general rules governing ad formats. They’re worth knowing because they’re a good place to start.
They’re also worth knowing because you can’t break the rules until you know what they are... and that’s when the fun really begins!
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