More ad units = less money?

[Relevancy]

Does having more ad units lower the cpc? Is it better to only use one instance of google adsense on a page?

[Jenstar]

It depends on what ad the visitor clicks. When you have more ad units, there is a higher liklihood that a visitor will click a lower paying ad, since more lower paying ads will be displayed.

[Relevancy]

Say you have one ad unit at the top and one at the bottom. Does the top ad unit display the higher paying ads or do the ads randomly display over all your ads?

[Jenstar]

The best ads will appear in the ad unit that appears first in the HTML code, regardless of where it appears on the page itself. so if you are running multiple ad units, you will want the unit with the best CTR to appear first in your html code.

[Relevancy]

I see thanks

This is known information? Or what you assume?

[Jenstar]

I don't assume

If you don't believe me, you can find the same information in the AdSense support documents.

[Relevancy]

I believe you... thanks a lot.

[sholto]

so I believe you too. In a technical sense I know you are right, but I also notice with my travel sites, the top payers may not be the best ones for my visitors.

I run destination specific websites (such as Scotland), and the top payers are often large travel companies who bid high even though their offering does not include our destinations. I have found that lower bidders are often more relevant to my visitors. For example, all my visitors know that ebay is irrelevant to a visitor to Scotland.

I would think you would need to look carefully at how advertisers are bidding and then decide whether lower bids are better suited to a niche. Lets face it the big players are advertising more heavily now and yet most of our visitors are escaping those brands.

[I, Brian]

The key about the ads though isn't number, but integration and visibility: the ads should fit naturally into the page, and be very visible, to encourage clicks.

All too often I find myself on a site where the ads are in their default border, making them stick out as ads far too easily, and consequently be overlooked by surfers looking to find information rather than advertising.

[DianeV]

That's a good point, I, Brian.

I can see why people might put Adsense into borders (or under menus), etc., particularly on database sites or sites that use includes for menus.

Given a dynamic site with, say, a CMS, where Adsense has been inserted within the content (say, between paragraphs), what happens if the site owner drops Adsense? It seems to me that the code would still be on the pages, or that there would likely be a gap between those paragraphs. Would this be true?

[sholto]

Diane, I dont why they should. More likely they are being lazy and simply inserting the code as is rather than thinking about it.

With content management templates, it may well be more difficult to insert in the middle of an article where it is most likely to be prominent, rather than around an article.

However, colour integration is not a function of the CMS, or unlikely to be. More likely it is the technicians being a little lazy at the expense of revenue.

[DianeV]

Thanks. Actually, nothing has been inserted so far.

To clarify, I'm not asking about CMSes at all, nor about inserting Adsense in a border, menu section or the like; on the site in question, the menu is an include used across the whole site, so changing it is not an issue.

The question I'm trying to come to grips with is this: if we insert Adsense into an article, then the code is within an article. If we later decide not to use Adsense, we'd have to edit every article to remove the Adsense code. I'm guessing that, at that point, (a) Adsense will not display because the account is closed, and (b) there will be a gap between the paragraphs where the undisplaying Adsense code is.

We could, of course, use an include to insert the Adsense code. However, includes do have a cost in terms of server processes and page rendering time. And we're likely talking hundreds of articles here. I'm just looking at the best way to do this.

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by DianeV

The question I'm trying to come to grips with is this: if we insert Adsense into an article, then the code is within an article. If we later decide not to use Adsense, we'd have to edit every article to remove the Adsense code. I'm guessing that, at that point, (a) Adsense will not display because the account is closed, and (b) there will be a gap between the paragraphs where the undisplaying Adsense code is.

What I would suggest in such an instance is to use a basic include statement, to insert a specified file.

That way, you could change your colours and even publisher, doing little more than editing a single file.

It's also worth noting that when you using multiple ad boxes, there is no guarrantee of any ads showing after the first box. So if you have AdSense above an article, and partway through it, you may find yourself with a big blank box in the middle of the article if not careful. Just something to consider.

[DianeV]

Okay. Thanks for the data.

[toprank]

This might be interesting. I have a blog about my favorite car where I have the banner sized AdSense box at the top and the bottom of the template. I added a 250 x 250 box (without borders) into the blog template so it would show after each post.

My daily revenue was cut in half within 2 days. I only make about $25/day from this site, so it was no big deal to keep it that way for about a week to see if the trend would continue. It did. I removed the 250 x 250 ad unit and the next day, daily revenue was back to what it was.

I know there are many possible variables here, but it seems the extra AdSense unit really diluted earning opportunity by offering another lower CPC group of ads. Does that make sense?