Tastybuds

Google’s two products, AdSense for Search (AFS) and AdSense for Content (AFC), have much in common, but there are also some key differences. Most people who signup start with AFC, but they are missing out if they don’t implement AFS.

AFC targets content pages, and tried to find a relevant advertiser given everything you put on that page. It is a difficult task, but Google does a fairly good job of matching advertiser to publisher. To help, you can implement Section Targeting, which gives Google a better idea of what your true content is, and can increase CPC (better advertiser match) and CTR (more relevant).

AFS is triggered when a user searches through you site, and in these cases, Google really excels. Google is given an exact keyword or phrase that the user is looking for. Also, Google has more advertises paying into AFS specifically because it is better targeted. The payouts are almost always higher, and because the ads are way more relevant, the CTR is usually way higher.

Most sites do not implement AFS, even though it is fairly easy to set up. Once you are set up, there are several things you can do to optimize. First of all, just like any other ad, you should test several styles and locations on the page. You wihout a doubt will find something at least 20% better than where you started, and often more.

But after doing these basic optimizations, you might realize that one of your main problems is not enough traffc to the search results pages. To fix this, you need to play around with where your search boxes are. Add more of them, put them in different locations, and start testing how they are styled. Once again, you will fairly quickly see large gains to traffic, which then leads to revenue.

One last tip is to start playing around with forced keyword searches. This is where you create a direct link to a valuable search results page. This page might be valuable because it has a ton of good article results which you users will like, or because of high paying AFS ads. Use <a href=”https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=3″>Google’s Keyword Tool</a> to find the best paying, but still relevant terms, and start trying them out. Don’t forget to once again test style, location, and which terms you are using to maximize your Google revenue.

One of the most critical aspects of a testing and optimization is choosing proper segments. You can lump everything together, and run one test for your entire site, but the gains will be far less than if you were to run 3 or 4 tests, one for each segment you are interested.

You can segment on just about anything. One of the most obvious variables is pagetype. For example, if you run a blog, the front page may be structured different from your article pages, which might be different from your links page. Each of these pages might be able to comfortably fit a different amount of ad units (for example, your homepage might get one below each article, while your article pages might only have one on the right side). Even if you do have the same initial layout on all your pages, you will find out that the same exact ad unit will perform different on each page.

Another variable you can segment on is whether a user is logged in. Regular visitors behave differently than casual ones, so you you should treat them as such. Often, the best style for one set of visitors will not perform as well for another set.

Time of day, or day of week, is another thing you can split on. If your site is business oriented, you might see different types of users during regular work hours than on weekends. Weekend users might be better optimized for multiple units, while business users for a single precise unit.

The point is that you have a ton of information about your users, and you should use that information segment. Each of these segments may perform different, and you should optimize accordingly. Other ideas dr segmentation include:
Time on site
Browser type
Country of origin
IP
Users from Google
Category or topic of page

Not all sites will be able to segment on all of these variables easily. Also, some of these variables might or might not have a huge impact. But the point is that you should be testing as much as you can, and when performing your tests, you should break things down as granular as you can.

Optimizing AdSense is a fairly simple procedure to get started on, and you will notice the results very quickly. But as you begin to do more of it, you have to take into consideration the possible negative effects of your optimization. Many sites have multiple revenue streams, including display media, leads, and sponsorship. Is your optimization hurting those other revenue streams?

In order to get a good idea of the effect you are having, it is necessary to segment users into groups, and see how those groups are monetizing with AdSense, along with any other useful metrics you have access to. For example, how many pageviews per user are you getting with each test style? How many leads are these users generating?

Depending on your site structure, and what tools or partners you are using, getting the answer to these questions will be different, but the overall methodology should stay the same. One simple way to look at the overall site performance is to start each page with a cookie. If a user already has a cookie, you check which test group they belong to, and assign that value to a variable. If they don’t yet have a cookie, you randomly put them in one of your test groups, and give them the cookie for later pages in their session.

Once you have established a user in a group, you then make sure to pass this information anywhere it applies. For AdSense you will show the test style associated with that group. If you use a partner like shopping.com, you can pass in the test name for tracking leads from these users. For your analytics software, you likewise segment based on this test group.

Now instead of looking how just AdSense is performing, you can start to see a larger picture. In my experience, often what is best for AdSense often is a net gain for sites, but there are definitely exceptions. Using this framework, you can make sure that your testing gives you results that optimize your entire site.

Jason Menayan over at the YieldBuild Blog wrote a series of Ad Format Myths posts which are all very insightful.  I’d recommend reading them all:

Myths
1. Bigger ads produce better yields
2. Ads that blend into the page background perform better
3. Optimization’s goal is determining one “best” ad layout
4. Once you’ve created an optimized set of layouts for a page, you’re done
5. All site visitors respond to ads in the same way
6. The more ads on a page, the greater your overall ad revenue

The common theme, which I believe is one of the most important things when using AdSense, is that testing is key.  Common sense works much of the time, but in the world of advertising, there are endless combinations of things to try, and many of them are bound to work better than what you would think to use.  Another great point is that users act differently from each other and even sometimes from their own past behavior.  You really need to be in a mode of continual testing of as many variables as possible, and breaking down pages and users and anything else you have control over into as many groups as possible.

This kind of testing can get complicated, but it has enormous return for a site of any size.  You will never get to the holy grail of fully customizable tests that segment users completely and try every variable, but you can work to get close, and thats what counts.