All the elements for a successful optimisation

Many of you might remember our April post featuring Ivan Heneghan, a member of the AdSense UK Optimisation Team. Ivan discussed a science website that was able to dramatically increase AdSense earnings through a few simple changes. Well, Ivan's back to share more details about that story with you:

When UK-based WebElements.com started using AdSense in late 2003, their earnings averaged out at a low daily rate. In January 2005, WebElements began to focus on optimisation, experimenting with different ad colors, ad styles, and page locations. They found success by adding link units to each page of their site, placing Large Rectangles directly before and after their content, and adding a Wide Skycraper to their left sidebar.



In the week following the optimisation, WebElements saw revenue increase by 500%. They then made other small placement changes to the site, which resulted in a spike doubling the revenue yet again -- as a result, the site was earning over 1000% its original earnings for some of the year.

Today, this ad revenue enables WebElements to further develop their site. The company advises that "it is important to experiment with colors, ad sizes, and locations on the page, as the audience for one type of web site may well respond to ads differently to another. It is worth experimenting with colors that blend with site design and others that show some contrast. It is also a good idea to use Adsense channels to run different color schemes in different channels at the same time and to wait for a week or so before deciding which colors work best. And, of course, content is king."

Posted by Ivan Heneghan - AdSense UK Optimisation Team

Spotlight on... TakeABreak.com.au

To continue the Australian theme from last week's post, we'd like to share a recent case study which focuses on an Australian publisher. Craig Davis, General Manager of TakeABreak.com.au, saw an increase of 30% in his AdSense revenue after he changed his layouts and introduced image ads. Now, AdSense revenue makes up about 10% of his company's overall revenue. Craig noted that AdSense was "a key element that helped us to move quickly from just another start-up to a leader in the online accommodation industry."

Read more about Craig's story here.



Posted by Julian Sonego - Country Marketing Manager for Australia

Insight into your site

We hope you've gained insight into the various tools and products Google has to offer for increasing the visibility of your site. As Boyar promised, we’ll close out this week's theme a little differently, by sharing with you the story of a publisher who used a number of Google products to increase his site's audience 50-fold in just two months.

Ryan, webmaster for TropicalYarns.com, had been using AdSense for content and AdSense for search to monetize his pages. However, he noticed that his site’s visitors consisted mainly of existing customers. Using Analytics, he was able to better understand his new and returning visitors. After pinpointing the most popular page on his site in June, he added an email newsletter sign-up form to that page and saw the subscription list grow by 20%. In just one month, he watched new visitors grow to 75% of his audience.



At the same time, Ryan used AdWords to advertise his site’s offerings. After experimenting for three weeks to optimize his ads, he was able to achieve a higher clickthrough rate and bring more engaged users to his site; in July, 14% of his site’s visitors arrived via an AdWords ad, and these visitors made up 22% of pageviews for the month. Plus, by using his Analytics reports to determine the search keywords which brought users to his site, he was able to make informed decisions about his ads. For example, because the search phrase "free patterns" drove organic traffic to his site, he knew he didn’t need to run ads for that phrase.

Since Tropical Yarns is a retail store, Ryan also decided to experiment with products such as Google Base and Google Checkout. By listing more than 1,000 products on Base and offering customers a way to purchase them online, Ryan reached out to new users; although the store is located in South Florida, interested buyers from all over the United States can now visit the site to make purchases.

Recently, Ryan has been experimenting with Google Video to engage users on his site – future plans include a short commercial for the store, videos of classes, and more. Ryan's story serves as a great example of how you can improve your site's content and visibility through many Google products.

When asked about his overall experience, Ryan commented that "one by one, each of the dozen Google products we used has increased awareness of our website and helped to drive more quality traffic. No single item was overnight magic, but doing them all has proved to be a huge success!"

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Optimization Team

On the ball

Like many of you, we have "World Cup fever" and wanted to feature a publisher who is successfully using AdSense on a football (that's 'soccer' to all our American readers) site. We asked Ralf Möbius of Fussballportal.de about his experiences with AdSense:

Can you tell us briefly about how your portal got started?

Fussballportal.de was launched in August 2004 as an addition and alternative to those football sites that were already successful and established on the net. Over the last 2 years, we've built a following in the competitive area of football sites.



Why did you decide to use AdSense?

Online marketers often aren't able to fully book-out existing ad space. Therefore, AdSense is a great alternative to increase a website's revenue. Since ads are relevant to the content of your pages, AdSense provides a meaningful addition for content-rich sites with loyal visitors. You also don't have to deal with acquiring and maintaining relationships with advertisers, which can be time-consuming.

What is your most important optimization tip for AdSense publishers?

Try to blend your ads by removing the border and using the same color as the background of your page. With this simple measure you can avoid ad blindness and also considerably boost your revenue.

Does the World Cup have any effects on your AdSense stats?

With the world here on our doorstep in Germany, we've seen very positive effects since we always provide up-to-date content, interactive games for our users, special features and services surrounding the World Cup.

Who is going to win the World Cup?

Brazil. The "ball artists", behind coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, will improve their performance from game-to-game like they already proved they can do at the Confederations Cup 2005 in Germany, and they'll be at their best by the semi-finals and finals.

Posted by Walter Palma - AdSense Publisher Support (Translated by Michaela Tomberger)

Do you see video ads in your future?

Terri Wild from thecarconnection.com was one of the first publishers to beta test click-to-play video ads on her site.

When Wild participated in the beta test, video ads were only supported for the 300x250 Medium Rectangle ad format, so she had to switch to Medium Rectangles from the Squares she'd previously been displaying on her site. (Video ads are now supported by Large Rectangles and Squares as well).

When video ads began to appear on her site, Wild had a positive first impression.

"The quality of the video was good," explained Wild. "It was unobtrusive and complemented the site well. It was the only video content we offered so it was not lost amongst clutter. I knew since it was coming from Google it would be the highest quality visually and technically."

Not only did Wild see a revenue gain from the click-to-play video campaign itself, but switching to the larger Medium Rectangle format resulted in an additional jump in clickthrough rate and a 42% increase in eCPM.



"The AdSense team's research is excellent and they understand how to integrate ads without intruding on the user's experience," said Wild. "All of their recommendations regarding ad size and placement have resulted in significant increases. In fact, our revenues are six times higher than they were a year ago when we had limited Google text ads!"

Wild says she would be excited about showing more click-to-play video ads in the future.

Got an interesting video ads story? Email us. Your valuable feedback allows us to further improve our product for all our publishers. Want to beta test one of our upcoming products? Let us know and we'll keep you in mind.

Posted by Sandra Tsui - AdSense Publisher Support

Unobtrusive ads can boost revenue

Sharon Maguire expected that matching her Google ads to her site, dogbreedinfo.com, would give it a cleaner look and feel that her visitors would appreciate. What she didn't expect was the large revenue increase spurred by her changes -- AdSense revenue nearly doubled, to $650 per day.

When generating her ad code, Maguire chose a white background and white borders to blend her ads more effectively into her site's overall color scheme. "Originally I'd chosen the standard 'Mother Earth' palette with the thin outline of a border," Maguire said. "I was happy with performance, but could see the revenue potential of the ad units. I discovered by simply removing the border around the ad units the AdSense revenue doubled."

Before:


After:


Many publishers have found that visitors are more likely to see and click on Google ads when the ads themselves blend cleanly into a site. At the same time, the "Ads by Goooooogle" tagline clearly distinguishes the Google ads from the site content, so users aren't confused.

You can create a custom color palette to help combat "ad blindness" and increase your site's revenue potential. If you've already seen similar successes, please share your story with us.

Posted by Sandra Tsui - AdSense Publisher Support

Spotlight on... GPSworld.com

Troy Peterson, Web Operations Manager of GPSworld.com, saw a 100% increase in AdSense ad revenue when he optimized with placement and format changes. Specifically, he added link units, increased the number of ad units per page, and matched ad unit colors to his site. Troy says of the program, "AdSense has become our standard means of generating immediate revenue ... and once other advertising takes off, AdSense continues to deliver a steady stream of income."

Read our newest case study.



Posted by Susan Taing - AdSense Product Marketing

Woot's up (in revenue, that is)

Woot.com has built an online community around its unique ecommerce business model. Every day the site sells only one product and discussions revolve around that product in its blog and forums. For Woot, Google AdSense not only monetizes well but also complements the Woot community by providing useful information through relevant ads. When the product-of-the-day is still in stock, Woot users can compare to it to other similar products when making their purchase decisions. And after the product has sold out, they can find other places to buy it.



Through AdSense optimization, Woot has made significant increases to its revenue: optimized ad units saw increases from 5x and even up to 10x. The Woot team has opted into Onsite Advertiser Sign-up and now advertisers are creating site-targeted ads tailored specifically to their site with headlines like, "Like Woot? You'll love [us]. Save money at 1000s of stores."

Read their case study for more information.

UPDATED for accuracy

Posted by Susan Taing - AdSense Product Marketing