Which AdSense ad format performs best?

[nohaber]

The eternal question - Which AdSense ad format performs best for your sites? How important is that the ads are highly visible on top of the screen?

[mobilebadboy]

The eternal question - Which AdSense ad format performs best for your sites?I use a variety of the ads across different sites and can't say I've ever really noticed a difference in CTR between any of them, nothing considerable enough to make me choose one over another anyway.



How important is that the ads are highly visible on top of the screen?The higher the placement the better the chances of clickthrough. Anything above the fold (displayed without having to scroll) has the better odds. But then again the "fold" will be different place for different screen resolutions.

On one of my old layouts, a simple change in placement made all the difference in the world. I had a 2 column layout with a header and menu running across the top of both. At the top of the right column I had some Macromedia stuff and then below that had my Adsense. Eventually I moved the Adsense to the top of the column and it increased the CTR 4 or 5 times. Just the simple swap did it.

With that same site, now with a new layout, my traffic has increased at least 3 times, heavily from Google, but my CTR dropped massively. Mainly due to different ad placements and an overall loss of relevant ads. I'm fixing to redo the site again in hopes to get that fixed.

Different ads and formats are going to perform differenly from one site to another. The best thing is to just experiment. That's what I did for about 3 or 4 months, until I hit a common ground on each site where I was performing better than other areas.

[Chris]

Adsense can perform well below the scroll. It performs much better than other ad types. So if you already have decently paying banner ads up top you can put adsense at the bottom.

[mobilebadboy]

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply they wouldn't perform well below the scroll. Just from my own experience I've found the lower I placed them the lower the performance. Results may vary. :)

[nohaber]

I am designing a new site and it has a 300px wide left navigational column. So I have 2 choices: wide rectangle below the navigational links or banner on top above the content.

Anyone have success with the medium rectangle on the bottom of a page?

[chromate]

I get a much higher CTR than most people, on all of my sites. Personally, I wouldn't be happy with a CTR of 3% or less.

I think you should experiment nohaber. It really depends on how your site looks when it's put together. You should aim to place the ads where people will naturally be looking for something to click. For example, at the end of an article, when people will naturally be looking for their "next click". That's why below the scroll can work quite well - the user has reached the end of the content and wants to take the next step.

[Yoda]

So far, it appears to me that AdSense performs better when not placed in areas of the page usually (and obviously) reserved for banners. They're best when put where you might expect content to be.

[Chris]

I am designing a new site and it has a 300px wide left navigational column. So I have 2 choices: wide rectangle below the navigational links or banner on top above the content.

Anyone have success with the medium rectangle on the bottom of a page?

Yes. In fact on my survival site it made as much as a wide skyscraper on the side.

[ozgression]

I've found that mixing the "square" shaped ads in with the site's content performs better than a 728x60 or 468x60 adsense banner at the top of the page.
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