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Rant: Google Ads
Nothing drives me away from a site faster than a page embedded with Google ads all over it. How many places do you really need to place those ads, people? Inside the first post, at the top of the page, at the bottom of the page on the sidebar - all at once.
Have admins become so despirate for what little CTR forums give Google ads that they are trying to improve their number by fulling more than half the page with ads? Get a clue people! Going from .3% to .4% isn't going to generate you that much more money, folks. You're killing your users experience by bombarding them with ads that interfere with reading your site. <rant off /> |
www.getfirefox.com + Adblock Plus + Filterset.G
For all I know tehre could be google ads on this forum :p |
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TOS dictates only 3 on any page and they cannot be mixed with other contextual ads. If an admin does it properly it can be non-intrusive but I agree, a lot of sites appear to abuse it.
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Something has to pay for the hosting!
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wErd, i think one a page is more then enough, if they dont click that one, they arent going to click the other 2 |
Good rant MPDev.
I avoid Google Ads on forums because they're bloody annoying! I see no real point in them. I would give more explanation, but you hit the nail right on the head. Good rant. |
I was making over $400 a month from them with no more than three ads per any page. That's a good enough point for me to use them ;)
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need to make $$$ man to cover our server costs... man!
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I put a pretty healthy dose of them in my archives, but none on the main pages. The few clicks I receive aren't worth the clutter.
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I was taking $1600-$2000 a month on Google Ads with only one ad per page, but my CTR was less than 0.02%! Thats just 2 clicks per 5,000 impressions and a horrible conversion rate. Sure, you can rationalize it that the money is good but it's really a huge waste of resources - it's like the SPAM mentality, send out 10 million emails and if only 0.001% click its a money maker; but its hugely ineffective. Anything less than 2% really is a waste of space and can probably be better utilized with a little effort.
My rant doesn't suggest that people shouldn't have ads in an effort to make money; it's how they place their ads. One in the header, one in the footer, one is a sidebar and at least one embedded in the posts themsevles (as if putting them in between posts isn't annoying enough, some even put them actually inside posts to make them appear as part of an actual post). One ad per page I can live with; three or more and it's unlikely there is anything of value on the site that would keep me looking any further. |
I have been adless for a few months after ditching my previous ad company as it would have taken something like 200 years to get to an amount where they would send me a check for my earnings. Last week I was appraoched by a company who wanted a single advert below the navbar for a fixed monthly fee. I have accepted that as it is not intrusive, but after having the completely cluttered approach, I'm not going back down that road. My site has taken a more professional look and manner recently, and so adverts on the whole are detrimental to this professionalism.
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There is a thing called ad blindness. I have them show at the top 2/10 of the time, on the left 2/10 of the time and the other 6/10 of the time there are no ads.
I acutally got more clicks that way. It's kinda like, how many times do you even look at the navbar? But if that area is where the first post is 80% of the time, those 20% of the time ads are going to get 100% face time as oppose to 0 with ad blindness. Also people read from left to right, so the left side is the best place to put them. Try to not make them blend in as much. Different color links work better. I like the white border with white background, and then wrap a typical vB table border and header around them. |
I have always targeted guests because they are the least ad blind. Normal users are used to tuning them out. I used to run different colors, outside of the normal theme and after blending them in, my revenue tripled almost over night.
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cool thx!
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