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Ad Positioning: Tactics to Increase Your AdSense Earnings Overnight

Posted By Darren Rowse 10th of May 2008 Adsense 0 Comments

increase-adsense-earnings.jpgIn this series I’m examining tactics that can be used to increase AdSense earnings immediately. Read the introduction to this series here.

Today I want to talk about positioning your AdSense ads – something that has a very significant impact upon the amount of money that they are able to earn.

I learned this lesson after I’d been using AdSense for some time – I often wish I’d discovered it earlier – because not thinking it through earlier cost me a significant amount of money!

My Story of Learning about AdSense Positioning

I remember clearly the time that my AdSense earnings almost doubled over night through me simply moving them from one part of my blog to another.

Up until the point where I made this discovery my AdSense ads had been largely in a banner position on my blog. I don’t remember my exact reasoning for putting it there but it was probably because that’s where I saw all the big sites doing. My blog’s post pages looked like the diagram to the right.

Ad-Positioning 1.jpg

Performance with this positioning was OK – but then again, I didn’t know any different so while I was earning enough on my blog at this point to make a day or two a week of earnings I was blissfully unaware of the potential that my blog had to take me a step closer to going full time as a blogger.

I’m not sure of why I decided to experiment with my ad positioning but after a while of positioning my AdSense ads this way I decided to have a ‘play’ with other positions. I began to think about where on my page my readers would give their full attention and decided at the top left hand side of the content area would probably be the most logical position for people to look at a web page (as that’s where they start reading). This was at a time before AdSense brought out their ‘heatmap’ which confirmed that this was a wise move.

So late one afternoon I decided to move my ad unit from the banner position to this spot at the top left hand side of my post area.

My ads now looked like the diagram to the left.

Ad-Positioning 2.jpg

I was actually a little nervous about making this move. What if my earnings went down and I started going backwards?

I decided to give the new position a couple of days testing. I could afford to lose earnings for two days but if they didn’t at least match the previous positioning I’d switch it back.

That night just before I went to bed I decided to log into AdSense to see what the results were like after a few hours.

Imagine my surprise when I saw my CTR 40%!

40% more readers were clicking my ads and this was obviously already impacting my overall earnings!

I didn’t sleep too well that night as I realized the power of what I’d discovered. I could potentially see a 40% increase in my earnings with a simple move of my ads.

The next morning I awoke earlier and logged into AdSense and found that the CTR was now up by just under 50%.

That day I’d increased my earnings enough to dedicate at least another day a week to blogging by simply changing the position of an ad unit!

Tips on Ad Positioning

general_sm_en.jpgAd positioning is vitally important to the performance of ad units like AdSense.

In general – the positions that are ‘hot’ can be seen on the heatmap to the right (this is the official AdSense heatmap which they put together from their own research and observations of where ads work best. You can see how anywhere at the top of content can work best (the brightest orange area) but that in general above the fold and to the left seems to be the ‘hotter areas’.

This does vary from blog to blog and there are some specific spots that work best on blogs (I’ll show them below). The key is to try different things and to find what works best on your blog.

Further Reading on Ad Positioning:

Next week I’ll continue this series of tips for increasing your AdSense earnings overnight with the continuation of my own story of learning to use AdSense and some more tactics that took my earnings to even higher levels!

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. I have made all posible add position as you explain. Based on my experience, they add is appreciated with low per click (CPC) (adsense ads) if we lay the add captivate. For my case, I laid them between the Title Post and Author Box.

    Would someone here can make me know why it appreciated with low cpc?

  2. i liked this post. i will try implement on my blog

  3. Thanks, Darren!

    very nice post with a lot of information.

    One question?How do you put adsense in the top right hand area of the post?

  4. thanks for the information rich post.Cheers

  5. Hi Darren, let me first say that I am now blogging because I saw an article on you and thought..”I can do that!” I appreciate all your information/advice. I have four blogs created through blogger/blogspot but the layouts only let me place ads down the right hand side or across the bottom of the page. How can I move ads to the hot spots you mention?

  6. Thanks Darren, very useful post.

    I tried lot of ways to place Adsense on the Red area (just above the post) and finally succeeded :)

    I have posted the method here:

    http://atoztoa.blogspot.com/2008/07/placing-adsense-in-blogger-post.html

  7. I think colour combination and place of Ads play big role to earn better. Please see my website, you can get better idea.
    Good luck

    rajeev

  8. I think colour combination and place of Ads play big role to earn better. Please see my website ( Agranews), you can get better idea.

    Good luck

    http://www.agranews.com

    rajeev

  9. Thanks for the post. I am just starting…I’ve got nothing right now. This is great to get started. Love the Mommy Blog post where you have all these very helpful links to past posts.

    Thanks!

  10. Thank you so much Darren, for the good ideas, I will be using this as much as possible on my website!
    Do you have any other good tips for anyone starting up a travel-experience website?

  11. thanks for sharing tips….I always change the position ads one page with other page, still evaluate….change position also modification color….I hope getting progressing…thanks

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