Ad Placement

[jeremycurtis]

I put together this site - www.childrenwebmag.com site in a bit of a rush as I was asked to take over the monthly production of getting the articles online. It is know a bit of a mess and will be overhauled this month. I would very grateful for some specific advice on what should be improved/changed/removed in the experts opinion. I've read the very helpful articles on this site and will put them into practice this month. Should I include a 250x250 ad at the top RHS of each article?

many thanks in advance
Jeremy

[KLB]

The first thing I observed about your site is that it is designed for monitors that are 1024x768. This means that anybody using a monitor that is 800x600 will have to horizontally scroll and your ads will be hidden unless the user of a smaller monitor scrolls to the right. From an usability standpoint this is bad and from a revenue generation standpoint this is bad.

The next thing I noticed about the main page is that you are trying to compress too much into too small of a space. The ads are getting lost in the noise and it is hard to know where to focus the eyes first. Sometimes less is more esspecially when it comes to the main page. The text on the main page needs to be slightly larger to make it easier to read.

On article pages the text is a better size and the AdSense ad placement is good from a revenue perspective, but I'd recommend adding a subtle boarder or giving the AdSense ad a slightly different background color to help the eye better read the article. I'd also recommend placing a second AdSense ad at the bottom of each article. I've found the bottom of articles to be a very successful place to place AdSense ads as people are more likely to click on an ad once they are finished reading an article.

[jeremycurtis]

Thanks Ken,
Yesterday was a bad day to look as I ran a few updates through but I think from your comments you looked at a good time as they describe how it is.

I know exactly what you mean about 1024 wide display. The problem I found was that there just was not enough space to squeeze it all in a 800 wide display. I worked in the basis that the in the 800px the user can see all the important stuff, menu, content and ads. Its only jobs/newsletter/rss that go off the RHS. If I could rebuild it again (had the time) I would do it different.

I used Joomla and I've found that it creates "duplicate content" (multiple urls pointing to the same article) which is obviously bad news. So I'd build a more bespoke system next time now I know what I want. But it server its purpose to build a system quickly.

Small font on home page - fair point. I shall put in less text in a larger font next month.

Onto Ad layout. Your comments on the articles ad placement/layout are helpful. I followed the "blending" advice given elsewhere which is also done on this forum. You say put a light background under the ads. Would that apply to the ads on the homepage too?

You also suggest I ad an ad at the end of the article. What there should be is two 468x60 ads in each article as well as the 300x250 at the top. One of the 468x60 is after paragraph 2-3 and the 2nd 468x60 ad is at the end. I have noticed google failing to deliver sometimes so I've added my own banner alternative ad. Presumably you were just seeing a blank?

The "editor" commented that the 468x60 ads break up the flow too much and would prefer a 250x250 or 300x250 ad mid way through the article. I don't mind doing this coz its got more ads in it but do you think it will improve CTR?

My earnings are not worth talking about because my readership is so low still (another topic) but by eCPM & CTR are about $2-3 and 1-2% respectively. Shouldn't I be able to get that higher?

Thanks