Improve Google Adsense Earnings - Disable Section Targeting
While browsing my site, www.bloopdiary.com, I noticed an ad that just kept re-appearing. It was for NIKE trainers, allowing you to customise your own pair with your country’s flag (at least that’s the impression I got, I’d nevert click my own ad guv’ner!) I wondered if somebody was targeting the channel given its location at the end of all diary entries - probably one of the most exposed slots with the highest chance of a click.
I considered the benefits of site targeted advertising, somebody wanting to advertise on my website is quite the ego boost! And if they’re advertising then they must be advertising with a product that is worthwhile, or so you’d think. The question I have to pose is: are these ads going to be relevant to everybody, or even anybody at all?
Personally, I wouldn’t buy a pair of Nike shoes unless they were on discount at a store. It’s an ad I’d never click, and yet I’m seeing it - what a waste of an impression, what a waste of the perfect ad slot! I noticed the ad on an entry that referenced Star Wars - and what really stuck the icing on the cake was the amazing graphic ad I found at the bottom of the page about a Star Wars fan site! I was shocked! The ad was in the same slot size, and I’m sure that AdSense displayed the NIKE ad because it had a higher click value, but my opinion is that the Star Wars ad would have received more clicks.
I checked up on the reports, and after comparing CTR between contextual and placement ads the click ratio was virtually the same. The click value of the placement ads was about four times greater than the contextual ads, this is of course subject to your own experiences and wouldn’t be the same across the board. Nonetheless, I decided that giving the ad slot that appears on almost every page that is most likely to get a click to a non-contextual advertisement may be a bit of a retarded idea, and promptly disabled the site targeting on that channel. At this point I had only received one click in more than twelve hours. A couple hours later after going for a walk with my wife, I had received another eight clicks! Have I released an AdSense beast?
I think that leaving targeting on for less visible channels may be a good idea, but have not tried turning these off yet so I’m out of statistics for the time being.
Maybe somebody else would like to try this and report on their results? It’s worth mentioning that when you turn the channel targeting off that you lose the advertisers targeting that channel, so if your earnings go down you’ll need to take a deep breath. I, on the other hand, had nothing to lose.
I’ll keep you posted.
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Tags: Google AdSense