[Marv]

Alan, that?s nice to hear and I have similar numbers. GCS and this mod are both implemented for 6 days now, I started using GCS with this mod. My forums have about 25.000 PI/d and a CTR at about 1,5%.

I was worried that this GCS-Link-Placement in the first post stands in direct competition with the placements Leaderboard_top and in_first_post, which are generating about 65% of the overall revenue.
In fact this mod has an impact on both placements in terms of clicks.

The following 3 screenshots should give an overview, how my site performs regarding display ad-units. Implementation of this GCS-Mod was July, 14th. (Monday):

Revenue (by placement violet: first_post, brown: leaderboard_top):




Clicks (by placement violet: first_post, brown: leaderboard_top):




AdRequests (by placement violet: first_post, brown: leaderboard_top):



So, as you can see, there is an untypical drop at the end of this week. No wonder, the weather in my site-reach area has changed from rainy and cloudy to super sunny. Like always, this has an impact on visitor numbers. Therefor I make the most of my income by Ads, I pray for arctic temperatures and cats n dogs for all of em, while sitting in my beach chair at the bahamas resorts, enjoying my 5th caipirinha. You know what I?m talking about - guess we all share the same dream, somehow
But back to topic.


Google Custom Search - CPC



Google Custom Search - Clicks (orange colour)


The generated clicks indeed are concurrent to my main ad-placements. In total the GCS clicks are stealing 25% of the Ad-clicks from both other concurrent placements.
That?s a large number and I wasn't expecting this.

In total this Mod is deflecting only 4% of all AI's to the GCS-page - generating a CTR of 9,59% there. That sounds pretty darn good, but you have to take in account, that GCS-Ads are paid with only up to 1/3rd of the concurrent placements. On my site GCS has just been implemented and as you can tell by the graphs, CPC seems to raise as a result of gaining more adviters using the GCS placements on my site during the last days via GoogleAdWords.

At the moment I can see a decreasing overall revenue of 15%. This is a result mainly due the unwelcomed good weather (estimated on empiric stats: ~ -10%). So there is a 5% off left, that is related directly to the GCS on my site. Depending on how the CPC evolves in the upcoming weeks, I?ld expect an increasing overall revenue, but at least at the same level as before GCS started on my site.

At one glance:
This mod has the potential to increase your revenue, even if you can?t expect it to be significant from the start. You have to weight between the facts of another Ad-Placement that visitors don?t feel happy with and a potential revenue increase. But especially for sites not using display ads like leaderboard_top or in_first_post, this should be an unintrusive way to make some money out of your foums.

I will keep this mod on my site and watch closely, how things evolve. Hopefully I can give you a feedback in the near future, that shows more significant stats. I?m very positive, that this mod in fact helps increasing your revenue and I say "Thanks, tpearl!" for this mod. Keep up the good work :up: