For small to medium size bloggers and website builders Adsense is a wonderful source of revenue. All it takes is a few simple steps -  

Select the ad type you want to display, Place the code given on your website, and Optimize things a little to get better targeted ads. 

But, somehow, most of my few bloggers and web-developers that I recommend Adsense to, come back reporting very low revenue even if their site is relatively popular. When looking at their site and ads the same problems keep coming up, and I keep referring them to all the points written in "The quick guide on how to optimize your Adsense ads", but there is one major mis-understanding that is usually a bit difficult to grasp. Here it is…

Some website owners and blogger overdo it, or simply put ads in places that do not convert to clicks. They figure there’s no harm, maybe someone will click on those once in a long time and they’ll own another buck or so, but that’s failing to understand how the Google bidding system works - it will actually cause your total income to drop with a much lower eCPM.

Thing is, Google will place the highest bids for the keywords offered on your site. If you have 2 open slots, it will put the highest paying 2 ads it can find for you. If you have 20 open slots, it will put 20. Now, consider you’re running a 4 ads banner in your footer where most chances are no body will ever read, Google might place your highest paying ads there, and the ads that pay less in the ad slots that users are more likely to click. So, it is possible, and very likely, that by having less Adsense ads on your site in the right places you’ll increase your eCPM significantly. So, the key is finding the right balance between reaching a high CTR and a high eCPM. Note that link units are especially problematic as a link open up to a page full of ads which include both high and low paying ads.

Example for things you can try:

• Remove link units, use the same ad space to display one ad unit.
• Remove all ads that are under the fold or far away from the content.
• Replace Adsense CPC with some other advertising company, like Adbite.
  
• Track ads through channels to check both CTR and eCPM stats. Remove, replace or redesign the ads that are showing low CTR or eCPM.
• If advertisers are targeting your ads - remove an ad or two.

It so happens that a few times, once this week, the person I told this to found this hard to believe. So, I took a few minutes to search the web for posts about this and here’s a quick collection of what I found to support this :

Less Adsense Ads Means More Money For You by Daily Web Ideas

I have done an experiment this whole week to test the theory that having less Adsense ads on your site gets you more money and I have found it to be true.

Make More Money With Less AdSense Ads by JohnTP

I removed the link units from this blog leaving just the 336×280 ad unit below the post title and within a few days my AdSense earnings almost doubled!

How to Make More Money from AdSense with Fewer Ad Units by Sabahan:

How to Determine Which Ad Unit to Turn Off?

Easy, if you are tracking your ad units using channels that is. Just remove those that do not perform well.

Instead of turning off certain ad units and giving up that inventory permanently, you could replace them with ads from other company. As you can see below this post, I’ve replaced the AdSense banner with another banner ad from AdBrite.

Less AdSense is more AdSense :

Let’s imagine there are fifty advertisers bidding for the keywords associated with your site. The higher these advertisers are bidding, generally the more likely they are to appear on your site. Therefore, if you are running a 468×60 banner, it is more than likely that the two advertisers that are appearing are paying the highest amounts to appear there (and consequently you are being paid the highest amounts for each click).

As you can imagine, as you place more ad units all those advertisers who have bidded lower amounts will start to appear on your site. Whilst you may be getting a few more clicks by adding more ad blocks to your site, you will invariably make less money for each click as you are now allowing advertisers who pay less to have access to your site.

Some more relevant Adsense tips are given by SEO-book’s "Website Publishers: Learn How to Make More Money Publishing Less Pages & Showing Fewer Ads":

If your site is mostly an AdSense site, and you are getting a strong CPM, you might be able to make more by showing fewer ad units. Use the advanced AdSense reports to see if people are site targeting your website. If advertisers are site targeting consider pulling back one ad unit to see how that affects the CPC and CPM of the remaining ad units. Advertisers competing for less ad inventory should drive up the prices. If the gain nearly offsets the loss you are still ahead because you can replace that other ad unit with an affiliate ad, an ad for a branded advertiser, or an ad marketing your best content.

So, Adsense might be a bit more than cut and paste. Place Adsense wisely.

Related posts:

1. Adsense Beautifier for Drupal
2. The quick guide on how to optimize your Adsense ads
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