Wow! Placement REALLY is everything!

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Mike

Mike

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Jun 27, 2006
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On the firing line
I realize that this does not come as a surprise to anyone, and it didn't really surprise me. It was seeing the difference in black in white though, that really drove it home for me.

This is for a site I just purchased a short while ago.

Nov 24 - 26 I didn't change the ads or locations at all - 4% approx
Nov 27 -28 Put a 468x15 under a large graphic - 5 -7 % approx
Nov 29 - 30 Removed large graphic and replaced it with a banner ad. under 1%
Yesterday - complete reshuffle of ads 12% +

In all of these I've made sure that there is an obvious separation to comply with Google's Adsense TOS. I didn't use any small images above or below the ads.

Just thought I'd share. Back to work now.
 
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Juicify said:
If you could also show all those placements it would be helpful too. ;)
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I didn't get screenshots of the old placements. The latest version is on the homepage of Wii Point.

Basically, all the versions were in the same location (at the top) with some differences.

Version 1 - Used the 250x250 Adsense box on the left and just an image of a Wii on the right

Version 2 - YouTube video with 468x15 under it.

Version 3 - The current banner ad with a large space under the banner and a large space under the Adsense links

Current version - I eliminated the large spaces because it looked like shit. Was probably going to eliminate the banner ad altogether, but then noticed that my coversions were back up and even better than before. So I figured we'll see how this works for a week and tweak as needed.
 
Normally a change in ad position or color on a content driven site that yields a HUGE (like double) spike in CTR normally is short lived as the users are not "used" to the new ad design/placement yet. For your sake I hope not ;)

Keep expirementing because even if you double your CTR to 15% and it settles down to 8-9% still a nice increase... I am just saying don't expect it to stay as high as the first day you made the changes.
 
ToddW said:
Normally a change in ad position or color on a content driven site that yields a HUGE (like double) spike in CTR normally is short lived as the users are not "used" to the new ad design/placement yet. For your sake I hope not ;)

Keep expirementing because even if you double your CTR to 15% and it settles down to 8-9% still a nice increase... I am just saying don't expect it to stay as high as the first day you made the changes.
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Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So, we'll give it a week and probably mix it up again. Sure would be nice if it's not short lived, but I wouldn't be too upset with 8 - 9% from Adsense on a forum. I'd be pissed if the CTR were that low on an Arbi site.
 
stoxup said:
Nice site Mike, I remember when it was up for sale.
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Thanks! I'm really enjoying it. I owe Scheme a big thanks for selling it to me.

TheCableMonkey said:
Okay, Now how can you make it 4x more effective than this?
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Working on it, but I doubt it. If it's converting at 48% or so, then that means nobody is sticking around to enjoy the site. :D
 
But what's the traffic like? I have sites with low traffic that jump around all over the place, some days 1%, next day 12%, with no change in placement or content. And a medium-ish traffic site (just over 1000 page views a day) that can go anywhere between 8% and 15% day to day with no changes in placement or content.
 
Mike, I've checked out WiiPoint a few times in the past week cause I've got some Wii blogs I'm working on. I must say the way it looks now is much more clean. It's encouraging that you both improved the appearance and the performance. Keep us updated.

Question: So you're only running that small adsense banner and your CTR is way up? That's all the adsense you've got on there now?

Also, this I know is a total noob question, but is your CTR only referring to the adsense clicks or does this include clicks on aff ads?

Nice work Mike, your site rocks.
 
DrHowe said:
Mike, I've checked out WiiPoint a few times in the past week cause I've got some Wii blogs I'm working on. I must say the way it looks now is much more clean. It's encouraging that you both improved the appearance and the performance. Keep us updated.

Question: So you're only running that small adsense banner and your CTR is way up? That's all the adsense you've got on there now?

Also, this I know is a total noob question, but is your CTR only referring to the adsense clicks or does this include clicks on aff ads?

Nice work Mike, your site rocks.
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Thanks DrHowe!

CTR is referring to just the Adsense CTR. To be honest, I haven't checked my LinkShare, Amazon, or Azoogle ads yet. So, I'm not sure if they are getting any clicks or not.

I've got Adsense under the contest banner, that shows on the content pages. Adsense in the welcome message, before you login to the forums, and Adsense in rotation with some Azoogle and LinkShare offers that shows up after the first post and every 10th post in each thread.

PM me about your blogs, maybe we can set up some link exchange or something.

Thanks!
~Mike~
 
Wow. More changes. Looks awesome. Those are some of the best looking myBB forums I've seen. Usually they look like crap compared to vBull, but hey you can't beat the price...

When I get the blogs up I will PM you.
 
It is crazy what will make a difference. I had a PPC ad where I did split testing and changed a single word (nothing like free just a synonym), and my CTR rate doubled. I still couldn't tell you why, but if it works it works.

So you got to test, test and test some more.
 
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