and error.
But that’s the worst-case scenario. Why go through all that trouble when you have someone who can take the blindfold off, let you see exactly where you are, and show you the path to exactly where you want to go? (Me, in other words.) When I get you to understand the ad formats in AdSense and understand
what works best where, it’s like taking off that blindfold.
The infinite variety of AdSense ads
AdSense gives you dozens of different types of ads and ad formats to choose from. Options include
* Text ads
* Image ads
* Video ads
* Link units
* Referral buttons
* Themed ads
Each of these categories includes 8 to 12 different sizes of ads, and then you can further customize ads by choosing the referral partners — the folks whose products or services you want to recommend to your Web site visitors — or the colors of the ads. There are enough choices to keep you busy testing different types of ads for a couple years, at least!
Text ads
Text ads are the most popular type of AdSense ad. If you’ve seen a Web site using AdSense, you’ve seen text ads. It gets a little confusing, though, when you step back and try to determine exactly what kind of text ad would be best for what space on your Web site. Should you use a leaderboard ad or a medium rectangle? What’s the best placement for a vertical banner? When
considering options on your Web page, you could probably come up with dozens of potential places for placing ads, but really knowing what works best — rather than just guessing — can be a little tricky. Here’s where I come in. Table 5-1 shows you at a glance what types of text
ads are available and what the best placements for those ads are. Note: The size of each ad format is noted in pixels (or the tiny little squares that make up online images). It’s not essential to know this, but I thought I’d mention it in case you were curious.
Obviously, you won’t use every single one of those ad types on your page. Instead, you should select two or three of the ads that seem to work best in the natural flow of your pages. For example, if you have a Web site that regularly features articles about products or just provides information for site visitors, it might be best for you to consider using a skyscraper ad — an ad that’s tall and narrow, just like a skyscraper — on the right side of the page and a
rectangle ad — a shorter and wider fellow — at the beginning of an article. The size of the ad and the size of the space that you have available for an ad determine which ones fit best where on your page. The first four ads in the table (leaderboard, banner, half banner, and button) are horizontally oriented, as shown in Figure F12. Okay, so the button ad is squarer, but it fits
really well in the screen shot.
The best places to put horizontally oriented ads are at the top of a page, between articles or blog entries, and sometimes at the bottom of the page. Don’t expect much by way of performance out of ads that you place on the bottom of the page. On rare occasions they do well, but for the most part, you want to remember the rule about keeping your ads above the fold of your page.
Figure F12
Remember, the fold is considered the bottom of the Web browser window. The idea is that you don’t want your visitors to have to scroll to see your ads because they’ll often only look at the top of the page without scrolling further down. If you need a refresher about the importance and function of the fold of the page, flip to earlier webpages. The exception to that fold rule is with a blog,
where you can (somewhat successfully) place ads between blog posts.
Here’s my take on five of the most popular ad formats:
* Leaderboard: Probably the most successful format — so much so that you’re sure to have seen them everywhere. Publishers — that means you or anyone who signs up with AdSense and publishes ads to a Web site — usually put leaderboard ads at the top of the page because they
fit nicely there. They’re designed to be about the same width as a Web page, and they can blend underneath the header of a page very well.
* Banner: I’d say banner ads are the least successful of the top five. That’s not to say banner ads won’t work at all. Your circumstances might make them work beautifully for you. However, site visitors tend to hate advertisements, and the banner ads of old are the reason. When Internet
advertising first started to take off, banner ads were one of the first types of ads to appear — and they were a pain in the rear. Too often, early banner ads were graphically challenging to Web browsers, slowing users down when they went from one Web site to another. Back when
dialup was the main way to access the internet, downloading anything with large graphics was a pain. Most Internet users today use broadband (you know, cable and DSL), but the bad taste left by those early banner ads still remains. Users can spot a banner ad, and out of sheer habit will usually avoid them like that smelly compost heap in the back corner of the yard.
Another problem with banners is that they’re not the full width of your Web site, which leaves lots of open space on one side or the other of those ads. That’s another factor that makes them look like ads. People will click your ads, but only if they don’t glaringly look like ads.
* Half banners: Half as bad as banners, but that still doesn’t make them good — and they leave even more open space around them than banner ads.
* Vertical banners: Standing a banner upright doesn’t make it any less banner-ish, it just changes the orientation, but vertical banners still work on some Web sites in the right column. They’re more graphic than skyscraper ads, and are somewhat more acceptable than their horizontal counterparts.
* Button: Useful little buggers for any small space that you have available. Usually, that small space falls in the sidebars of your pages, on the left and right sides, which is the best placement for those ads. If you have a small spot on your sidebar where your links don’t reach or there’s open, empty space, a small button ad fills that space nicely without being overbearing.
Okay, so that’s the top five. On to the next type of text ads from Table 5-1: the two vertical ads — the skyscraper and the wide skyscraper, as shown in Figure F13. (I treat them both at once.)
I think its okay to place vertical ads on either side of your Web page, right there in the sidebar area; but in my opinion, the wide skyscraper seems to do best on the right side of the page. Some experts suggest that could be because most visitors tend to be right-handed, and the right side of the page is technically closer to their hand, making it easier to click the ad. I’m not
sure I buy that line of reasoning.
Figure F13
I think it’s more accurate to say that the wide skyscraper on the right side of the page feels right. Flip back to where I talk about the way that users tend to
view a Web site (earlier webpages, I believe). Users look first at the top of the page, and then at the right, and finally at the left side of the page. Only after glancing at those three areas do they look to the content in the middle of the page. On the right side, the wide skyscraper just fits well. It looks like it belongs there, and that’s where users expect to see it. One key to success with any
online endeavor, including with AdSense, is to meet the visitor in her comfort zone. It’s one reason that so many business people in the real world no longer do business in the office — business types go where their clients are most comfortable: the beach, a restaurant, Starbucks, or into the client’s home. Potential customers (which are what your Web site visitors are) are more likely to be agreeable to your terms or to purchase your product if they’re
comfortable, so make them comfortable. Put the skyscrapers on the outer edges of the pages and use the wide skyscraper on the right.
Going down the list in Table 5-1, you see a set of square and rectangular ads, represented in living black and white in Figure F14.
The square and rectangle ads are the most versatile of the AdSense offerings.These ads do well when placed in text, as long as the text is wrapped around the ad, making it look like part of the article or blog post. Of the six ads shown in Figure F14, the large rectangle is usually the most successful when placed in text, with the medium rectangle being the next most successful.
The thing to remember about these ads, though, is that just because others find that one type of ad performs better over another in their case, the same might not hold true for you. Testing is the key to determining what your best choices are. Look at the space in which you plan to use the ads and then, based on the space that you have available, try a few different configurations.
If the traffic flow to your site is already established, testing each ad will probably only take about a week. Put up an ad, watch the numbers for a week, and then try something different for another week. After you test several different configurations, you can tell what works well, what works great, and what doesn’t work at all. Remember though, the effectiveness of your ads could
change over time and with changes to your site, so testing will likely be a constant process.
To make it easier to keep up with your results over time, write down everything. Keep track of the dates, the ads and placements used, the format of the ads (colors and styles, in other words), and anything else that might be pertinent to the results that you see. After a while, you’ll instinctively know what will work on your site and what won’t. Until then, you have a written record to help you keep track.
Figure F14
Image ads
I have this feeling that image ads are what you probably think of when you think “Ah, yes, Web advertisements!” You have your nice image and your pithy text, just like the banner ads I mention earlier in the webpage. And, as is the case with banner ads, everyone has them and everyone ignores them. Does that mean you shouldn’t use image ads? Not necessarily. Just don’t
expect them to generate as much income as text ads do. Image ads include pictures or other images that can be very eye-catching, like the ad shown in Figure F15. No mistaking it for anything else; you know at a glance that it’s an ad.
Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with visitors knowing that your ads are in fact, ads. Most users will recognize all kinds of AdSense ads for what they are. However, visitors really do tend to hold a grudge against image ads of all kinds, so the better you can blend them into the content of your site, the less likely they’ll be ignored.
Figure F15
Fortunately, there are several different sizes of image ads that you can add to your page. Table 5-2 gives you a quick overview of those sizes and how they’re best used. (If you notice some similarities with Table 5-1, your eyes
aren’t playing a trick with you. The formats are pretty much the same.)
Table 5-2
Image ads, like text ads, need to blend into the surrounding elements of your page as much as possible. You don’t want to make them invisible — if that’s your goal, you might as well not put any ads on your site. If you can make them appear as if they belong on your page, your site visitors will be less
likely to shun them completely.
For horizontal placement, the leaderboard and banner ads are your best options. These ads, as shown in Figure F16, work well at the top of pages, usually directly below your page header, or between articles or blog posts. The thing to remember with these horizontally oriented ads is that they have to be really great ads that work really well on your pages, or users will ignore
them for the most part. It might take some tweaking to get the ad just right for your page. If you have a choice, text ads are probably the better option. Save the image ads for other areas on your Web site.
Figure F16
The next set of image ads — the skyscrapers — are also likely to be ignored if not integrated well into your site. Such ads, as shown in Figure F17, are best suited to the edges (the right and left sidebars) of your pages. And much like the text ads, the wide skyscraper is always better suited to the right side of the page.
Figure f17
As for square and rectangular ads, they work best embedded in (or surrounded by) the text on your page. These ads, when placed in the text and matched to the color palette of your Web site, can actually look like they belong with the article or blog post. When they look like they belong, that’s when visitors’ old
The square and rectangle ads you see in Figure F18 are the least evil of the image ads. Test a few of them in your text and see how they work for you. If they don’t do well, you can always switch back to text ads.
Video ads
Video ads are one of the newest additions to the AdSense family. Technically, though, the ad is not the video. Yes, videos are streamed for advertising partners that have YouTube accounts, but the actual ads are displayed in the video player that’s embedded in your content, not in the video itself. To see what I mean, check out Figure F19.
The formats available for video units include
* Leaderboard
* Skyscraper
* Wide skyscraper
* Small square
* Square
* Rectangle
* Large rectangle
Figure F18
Figure F19
I won’t subject you to another table because the size and placement of these ads are the same as the size and placement of the image and text ads shown in the earlier tables in this webpage.
When a site visitor clicks the video player, the content from the advertiser’s YouTube account is shown, along with a link to his site. The video player also becomes a large graphical link when the video is finished playing. For you to get paid, your site visitors must click through the video player to the advertiser’s site. It’d be nice if these types of ads were shown on an impression
only basis — you’d get paid each time someone viewed the video — but that’s not the case. The click actually has to happen.
That doesn’t mean video ads aren’t good for your site. Today’s Internet users love video content. If the content of the video units on your site isn’t too advertise-y, you may find that these units are good for your AdSense income. Of course, that also depends on how well they work with your Web site content. Test them to see how they perform. If you don’t like the results, you can always go back to image or text ads.
Link units
Probably the second most used ad type in the AdSense program (after text ads) is the link unit. Link units are very cool because — when used properly — you can make them look like they belong on your page, so users are more likely to click them. Making a link unit look like it belongs on your page is pretty simple. You adjust the template colors of the ad to match the template colors of your page. Then, when the link units are displayed on your page, they look like
links that are related to the content of the page. Link units come in several sizes, as detailed in Table 5-3. (In the table, you see some ad sizes followed by the number 4. This indicates there are four links in that ad display. All others have five links displayed within the ad.)
Table 5-3
Although there are several sizes of link units, there really are only two types — vertical and horizontal.
Vertical link units are best used in the sidebars of your page. Use them at the top or bottom, before or after any set of links that you might have in your sidebar. The ads, as shown in Figure F20, work well when matched or blended with your template colors. In essence, users think those links belong with the links surrounding them, and they’re more likely to click those ads
than most other ads. Several different sizes of vertical link units make it easier to integrate them
into the sidebars on your Web site. When you tweak colors with the color pallets provided by Google, you can make them appear as if they’re an intentional part of your site design.
Figure F20
The horizontally oriented link units, as shown in Figure F21, work essentially the same way — they just work better on the top and bottom of your pages, and between articles and blog posts. Like the vertically oriented link units, tweak the colors of these, and they’ll blend well on your Web site. The key is to make them look like they belong.
As with everything good, there has to be a catch. Link units are great to blend in with your Web site, and they look less like advertisements than anything that’s available in the AdSense program. But here’s the rub — with link units, site visitors have to click twice before you get paid. They must first click a link within the link unit, which takes them to a page that looks very much like a search results page. The real difference is that the results shown on the
page that the link unit leads to are all advertisements. For you to get paid, users must click through one of the links on the results page.
Figure F21
Here’s the trade-off, though. If users are inclined to click through the links on the results page, it’s also likely that they’ll click through more than one of those results, meaning you could get paid for more than one click. With link units, they either work really well or they bomb completely. The only way to know is to test link units on your site and see how they perform for you. Try different configurations and locations. If they’re going to work, you’ll find your sweet spot. All you have to do is watch the change adding up.
Referral buttons One last type of AdSense ad that you should consider is the referral button.
These ads, shown in Figure F22, are small buttons that refer site visitors to a sponsored program.
Figure F22
The ads shown in Figure F22 show specific types of programs, such as Google Pack, AdSense, and AdWords, but Google has referral buttons from hundreds of different advertisers that want you to endorse their products. All the referral ads are basically the same, with the exception of the text link variety. The text link referral ad is literally a line of text that displays a referral.
You can place this text link anywhere in your content. The remaining ads
are all buttons of various sizes:
* 120x240
* 180x60
* 468x60
* 120x60
* 125x125
* 110x32
When you’re setting up your referral button ads, you can select up to 15 different ads to rotate through the referral button. So, if you choose to use a 125x125 square referral button, you can have referrals from up to 15 different advertisers. That doesn’t mean you have to choose 15 companies to refer visitors to. You can select just 1, 5, or 12 if you like — whatever works best
for your site.
As an added bonus, with referral button ads, you get to choose exactly the companies that you want to show referrals for. You’re not surprised by an ad from a competitor or a company you’re not willing to endorse. When you’re making the selections for your referral ads, you can browse the different categories of vendors and even look at the products and URLs that you’ll be supporting. Referral values are also listed next to each product, so you’ll have a ballpark figure of how much you’re paid for each referral.
Themed ads
Themed units are basically text ads that have a specific theme. Google offers these around holiday times, and they just appear in your ad structure. You don’t have to do anything special to use themed units — they’re automatically enabled in your ads when you set up your AdSense account.
You’ll find themes that surround the various major holidays on your calendar. How themed ads work varies from the way that text ads work, however. The theme makes it obvious that an ad is an ad, unless you’ve changed your whole site to reflect the holiday theme. If you’re into decorating for the holidays, you might consider using themed ad units. If your site stays the same (appearance-wise) day in and day out, it’s probably best if you just avoid the themed unit altogether. If you decide you’d rather not have the themed advertisements showing on
your Website, you can disable themed ads (they’re enabled by default) using these steps:
1. Point your browser to www.adsense.com and log on to your AdSense account.
2. Click the My Account tab.
You should be automatically taken to your Account Settings page. If not, click Account Settings in the link strip below the tabs.
3. Scroll down the page to the Ad Type Preference section, as shown in Figure F23, and then click the Edit link, next to the Ad Type Preference heading. You’re taken to the Ad Type Preference page.
4. On the Ad Type Preference page, as shown in Figure F24, select the Display Text Ads Only in All Ad Units option.
5. Click the Save Changes button.
That’s it. Themed ad units are disabled and won’t show during holiday periods. Of course, neither will any other kind of picture ad, so you have to decide whether you want text only or if you’re okay with themed units on occasion.
Figure F23
Figure F24
With any of the AdSense formats, only half the art is knowing what ad to place where. The other half is knowing how to format your ads to make them more appealing to site visitors. Because the name of the game is garnering clicks
on your ads, you want them to appeal to site visitors — the color, style, and placement should all entice the visitor to click the ad. So, there’s way more to it than just placement. The fine details make all the difference, and those details are covered in later webpages.
aversions to image ads are less likely to rear their ugly heads.
