Expanded Text Ads — Shrinking Control Or Expanded
Income?
Take a look at the ad format samples
on the AdSense site and you’ll see a
bunch of squares and rectangles filled
with ads. Most of those ad units will
contain more than one ad. On those
units that do contain just the one ad,
like the button or the half-banner,
the ad will fill the space neatly and
look pretty subtle.
You might be surprised then to put a
skyscraper or a leaderboard on your
site and find just one giant ad,
written in super-sized text.
All the effort you’ve put into picking the right ad for your site, testing to see
which formats work best and calculating which will give you the most clicks
will have gone right out of the window.
You’ve prepared your site to serve multiple ads that look like content, and
instead you’re handing out a single ad that just screams “Don’t click me!”
This can happen sometimes, but it’s not a reason to panic. It might even be
a reason to celebrate.
There are two possible reasons that Google is sending you these expanded
text ads.
The first possible reason is that you’ve been keyword-targeted. Google keeps
track of your results (just like you should be doing) and tries to serve up the
number of ads for your page that will bring in the highest amount of income.
That might be four ads in a unit. Or just the one.
Frankly, I’m a touch skeptical that showing one ad is going to bring me more
revenues than showing several. But I’m prepared to give AdSense the benefit
of the doubt.
If I see that Google is giving me one ad, I’ll compare the results for that one
ad to the previous results that I’ve had serving multiple ads in the same unit.
If I find that my revenues have dropped I can either block that ad using my
filters or just ask AdSense not to give me any more single ads.
But if I find that the expanded text ad is giving me more money, I might still
be worried. I know that users are more likely to click ads that look like
content. I also know that they prefer to have a choice of ads rather than just
one option.
If I’m getting more clicks then with just one ad, it could well be that I have
been doing something wrong with that ad unit in the past. I would want to
look at how well it’s been optimized and whether it’s in the right place to
bring in the best income.
It could well be that this single ad is a high-payer and works better with little
competition. But it could also be that getting that one ad is a warning that
something was wrong with the way you’ve laid out that ad unit on your site.
You might want to try some different strategies to see if they’ll increase your
revenues when the multiple ads come back.
There is another possibility though. You might have been site-targeted.
This is a whole different ball game. It means that an advertiser has spotted
your site and asked Google to run their ads on it on a pay-per-impression
(CPM) basis.
You’re no longer dealing with tempting people to click, so you don’t care how
much your ad looks like an ad. In fact you might even want it to look like an
ad, if that’s what will keep the advertiser happy.
The most important point to bear in mind here is that you want to make sure
that you’re not losing money. It might be very nice for the advertiser to have
exclusive control over a particular spot on your page but if you can make
more money serving CPC ads in that space, then you need to make sure that
your site is working for you and not for the advertiser.
Again, watch your stats for a week and see if the revenues you receive for
your impressions are higher than those you receive for your clicks.
Most publishers do find that ads that pay by CPM pay better, especially sites
with high traffic rates. After all, you’re getting paid for every visitor who
comes to your site rather than just those that click, so all you have to do to
increase your revenue is increase your traffic. As long as each impression
pays more than you’re paying for the traffic, you’re going to be making a
profit. That should be easy to calculate.
If you find the revenues are lower though, then you’ll want to boot that ad
off and go back to serving conventional ads. You can do that by opting out of
showing site-targeted ads (you’re automatically opted in).
In general, the biggest problem with these sorts of campaigns is not lower
revenues; it’s that you’ve got no idea how long they’re going to last, which
makes it difficult for you to take advantage of them. If you knew, for
example, that you were going to get paid per impression for the next two
weeks, then you’d want to buy in as much traffic as possible for that period,
provided that you were paying less than you were earning.
And because you don’t care about CTR, You could also lay off the
optimization and focus on making your site more attractive to users.
But you can’t tell when your site is going to be used for a CPM campaign and
you can’t tell how long it’s going to last either. That means there’s little point
in making major changes to your optimization; you might have to rebuild it
the next day.
The best strategy then when you spot a site-targeted ad on your site is to
keep a close eye on the cash flows. Buy in more traffic if you can do it
profitably but for the most part, just enjoy the extra income!
Income?
Take a look at the ad format samples
on the AdSense site and you’ll see a
bunch of squares and rectangles filled
with ads. Most of those ad units will
contain more than one ad. On those
units that do contain just the one ad,
like the button or the half-banner,
the ad will fill the space neatly and
look pretty subtle.
You might be surprised then to put a
skyscraper or a leaderboard on your
site and find just one giant ad,
written in super-sized text.
All the effort you’ve put into picking the right ad for your site, testing to see
which formats work best and calculating which will give you the most clicks
will have gone right out of the window.
You’ve prepared your site to serve multiple ads that look like content, and
instead you’re handing out a single ad that just screams “Don’t click me!”
This can happen sometimes, but it’s not a reason to panic. It might even be
a reason to celebrate.
There are two possible reasons that Google is sending you these expanded
text ads.
The first possible reason is that you’ve been keyword-targeted. Google keeps
track of your results (just like you should be doing) and tries to serve up the
number of ads for your page that will bring in the highest amount of income.
That might be four ads in a unit. Or just the one.
Frankly, I’m a touch skeptical that showing one ad is going to bring me more
revenues than showing several. But I’m prepared to give AdSense the benefit
of the doubt.
If I see that Google is giving me one ad, I’ll compare the results for that one
ad to the previous results that I’ve had serving multiple ads in the same unit.
If I find that my revenues have dropped I can either block that ad using my
filters or just ask AdSense not to give me any more single ads.
But if I find that the expanded text ad is giving me more money, I might still
be worried. I know that users are more likely to click ads that look like
content. I also know that they prefer to have a choice of ads rather than just
one option.
If I’m getting more clicks then with just one ad, it could well be that I have
been doing something wrong with that ad unit in the past. I would want to
look at how well it’s been optimized and whether it’s in the right place to
bring in the best income.
It could well be that this single ad is a high-payer and works better with little
competition. But it could also be that getting that one ad is a warning that
something was wrong with the way you’ve laid out that ad unit on your site.
You might want to try some different strategies to see if they’ll increase your
revenues when the multiple ads come back.
There is another possibility though. You might have been site-targeted.
This is a whole different ball game. It means that an advertiser has spotted
your site and asked Google to run their ads on it on a pay-per-impression
(CPM) basis.
You’re no longer dealing with tempting people to click, so you don’t care how
much your ad looks like an ad. In fact you might even want it to look like an
ad, if that’s what will keep the advertiser happy.
The most important point to bear in mind here is that you want to make sure
that you’re not losing money. It might be very nice for the advertiser to have
exclusive control over a particular spot on your page but if you can make
more money serving CPC ads in that space, then you need to make sure that
your site is working for you and not for the advertiser.
Again, watch your stats for a week and see if the revenues you receive for
your impressions are higher than those you receive for your clicks.
Most publishers do find that ads that pay by CPM pay better, especially sites
with high traffic rates. After all, you’re getting paid for every visitor who
comes to your site rather than just those that click, so all you have to do to
increase your revenue is increase your traffic. As long as each impression
pays more than you’re paying for the traffic, you’re going to be making a
profit. That should be easy to calculate.
If you find the revenues are lower though, then you’ll want to boot that ad
off and go back to serving conventional ads. You can do that by opting out of
showing site-targeted ads (you’re automatically opted in).
In general, the biggest problem with these sorts of campaigns is not lower
revenues; it’s that you’ve got no idea how long they’re going to last, which
makes it difficult for you to take advantage of them. If you knew, for
example, that you were going to get paid per impression for the next two
weeks, then you’d want to buy in as much traffic as possible for that period,
provided that you were paying less than you were earning.
And because you don’t care about CTR, You could also lay off the
optimization and focus on making your site more attractive to users.
But you can’t tell when your site is going to be used for a CPM campaign and
you can’t tell how long it’s going to last either. That means there’s little point
in making major changes to your optimization; you might have to rebuild it
the next day.
The best strategy then when you spot a site-targeted ad on your site is to
keep a close eye on the cash flows. Buy in more traffic if you can do it
profitably but for the most part, just enjoy the extra income!
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