Less Ads = More Money

Many AdSense publishers make the mistake of fitting as many ads as possible to their webpages. Sometimes this does work, especially for big articles, but sometimes less is more...

Google’s policy is you are allowed at max 3 ad units, 3 link units, and 2 search boxes. While it may seem like not that many, this is actually way more than you need.

The reasoning most people have is, “the more ads, the higher chance of someone clicking”. That is stellar reason skills, but the problem is ads are displayed with the higher keyword bidders first. So a lot of ads mean a good chance of clicks, but it also means a good chance of more low-paying ads.

If instead you cut down, and display 1 to 2 ads, your click through rate (CTR) might drop, but each click is more likely to be on a high-paying ad. Thus, those fewer clicks are worth more total money. Trust me, the difference between $0.01-$0.06 clicks and $0.30+ quickly builds up.

But hold on; let’s go back to that CTR effect. Theoretically, fewer ads will result in fewer clicks (forget about money for a second). Yet people are not a simple game of chance. By lowering ad count, you reduce the amount of clutter on the page, creating a cleaner look. As people get more and more aware of ads, they are hesitant to click on ads of pages that have ads everywhere.

So basically fewer ads can sometimes lead to more clicks! This is something you have to go ahead and test. Also try to experiment with combinations of small and big ads. 3 big ads is a lot more clutter than 3 small ads...

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