Multiple AdSense Banners Could Cost You Money
On July 19th, 2007 | By Rob

Recent TrackBack: » Plugins and tools to help with SEO and affiliate sales > FiddyP - There’s also a very useful script by Rob Mallon that you can use with htaccess to cloak your affiliate urls, I’ve not got any affiliate products on this site apart from my own elottery and uVme links but the script is useful to know for when/if I do.

You must be thinking “how could it cost me, I’m making money with AdSense”. Indeed you are, but are you making as much as you could be? I want to share a major optimization tip which most of you should be noticing if you keep a close eye on your click statistics.

First let me begin with a site style that looses money. Its the kind of site that puts a regular 468×60 ad at the very top of their page and then has a 300×200 ads tucked neatly into their content followed by a final 468×60 banner way below their content in the footer.

Statistically, every site I have ever worked on has always profited the most from ads stuck right next to the content itself. If you have not already tried this with your own setup you might already be doing something wrong.

Based on the principal that those ads are clicked more you’ll see a major difference in the way that I would set up a more profitable site by actually subtracting AdSense ads. Instead of having a 468×60 banner at the top of your page, move it to the footer of your actual content and retain your 200×300 ad at the very start of your content. If you must throw in a 3rd AdSense ad use a skyline on the right side. Be sure to have an alternate ad for this one setup (if not all of them) as this is the less likely and least paying ad you will have on your page.

From what I understand this essentially puts the highest paying ads in the most clickable spot. This makes you more per click and increases your eCPM because Google always puts the highest bidders first. In addition when you have too many banners filling initial low CTR spots you will usually end up with public ads in your high CTR ad areas. This really depends on your content and the AdWords market within your sites niche. Either way its a very positive money making decision to put your ads in your content first.

Utilize your new found ad space!

You can still continue to monetize the top banner for ads, and the best part is other ad companies pay premium prices for your top ad spot. You could even use that top spot to promote house ads or other pages within your site which ultimately sells a related product from clickbank.com or cj.com (and if you’re lazy you can always just send them directly to the affiliate).