There are many ways to increase your Google AdSense income. Our ambitious goal is to cover all possible optimizations in the bright light of the Google logo. But, with all the different ways to increase your AdSense earnings, we still love talking about ourselves.
And our favorite topic to talk about is how AdSense publishers can use our testing platform to increase profits.
The following is a short version of a case study on how we were able to leverage our test platform to increase the RPM of AdSense, one of the largest entertainment news websites on Trendelier.com, by 217% in 5 weeks.
Who is Trendeleier.com?
Trendeleier.com is a classic online arbitration website.
As a website that makes 100% of its revenue from advertising, Trendelier relies heavily on the success of its monetization channels. One of Trendelier’s main sources of income is Google AdSense.
For a while, the website’s AdSense earnings had hit a wall. Your teams spend a great deal of time searching, creating, and curating your content with truly amazing results: millions of people visit your website every month, your content is constantly going viral, and your engagement metrics are … impressive, very impressive. .
With so much on the content front, they have very little time and manpower to fully optimize their ad networks and maximize their ad earnings.
Trendelier’s account manager quickly set up different ad layouts to maximize your Google AdSense CTR:
What experiments did Trendelier perform?
Mobile experiment
The first version they created was aimed at a popular article that receives a considerable amount of mobile traffic. The variation consisted of just 2 ad units.
Why only 2 ad units you ask? Why not use the maximum?
Because a page view is a page view. If you didn’t see a click on the first two ads showing on the page, it’s not very likely that you will see a click on the third ad showing … Go ahead and try this.
Hypothesis: Two ads can generate more revenue than three ads.
1: 2 ad unit layout variance
This variation showed 2 Google AdSense ads. The first was placed below the title, while the second was placed just above the navigation buttons.
This variation recorded an overall click-through rate of 2.67%.
Variation 2: 3 ad unit layout
If the first variation showed two ads, then you guessed it, the second one showed three ads.
The first ad ran above the headline with a second ad just below. The final ad was placed just above the navigation buttons as in the first variation.
This variation recorded an overall click-through rate of 2.08%.
Results
Overall, Variation 1 increased CTR by 28% over Variation 2. This increase in CTR led to an increase in RPM of 44%. The control received almost no traffic during the experiments.
Desktop experiment
Again, this experiment is designed to test a certain hypothesis. One that has become commonplace among most online publishers.
Hypothesis: Ads embedded in content perform better
The whole premise of banner blindness and native advertising is actually based on the notion that readers are blind to ads located outside of the content vertical and have trained their eyes to see only the vertical content on the page.
Variation 1: sidebar ad unit
The first variation consists of two ad units in the content with one ad unit in the sidebar.
The sidebar ad unit was placed outside of this vertical and as part of a sidebar displaying links and ads to other pieces of content. For the purposes of this screenshot, we have disabled all other advertisers, so you see “advertisements” instead of the other advertisements shown, but trust us, they are there.
This variation registered a general CTR of 2.56%.
Variation 2 – Heavy input
So if the first variation showed 2 ads in the content and one ad in the sidebar, then this one, you guessed it, shows all three AdSense ads within the content section, or feed, of the page.
Native advertising owes much of its success to its content characteristics. 53% of consumers watch native ads more often than display ads. One of the reasons, without a doubt, is due to its location within the content feed.
However, in reality, this variance provided an overall CTR of 1.75%.
Results
There is a lot of research that will tell you that your visitors see more native ads than banner ads. All of that can be fine and true. However, what you should be wondering is whether they click on them more.
Judging from previous Trendelier experiments, the answer is no. The “native style” in-feed ad design did not receive a higher click-through rate than the classic design.
In fact, the classic design outperformed “native design” by an astonishing 46%, resulting in a whopping 68% increase in RPM.
But what does all this mean?
Let’s face it, most fashion news websites monetize their traffic with CPC networks, and when your website has a strong focus on ROI, click-through rates that are even a fraction higher can have an impact. significant in your bottom line.
That is why it is important that you take the following two suggestions:
- A page view is a page view. With our system, you can serve the ad with the highest CTR first on the page, and if that ad doesn’t convert a click, the other ads on the page likely won’t either. This unique ability allows our users to show fewer ads on the page and get a higher overall CTR and RPM for the page.
- In-feed means more eyeballs, no more clicks. Ads placed within the content feed are more likely to be noticed, but not necessarily more clicks.
Do you think your website is different? Start using the tips above and see what results you get, then come back here and show us how wrong (erase) right we were.
