ProductWiki AdSense Optimization
So yesterday I discover (through a newspaper article) that ProductWiki is based here in Waterloo, where I live and work. Then today they post a note in their blog titled Don't settle for Google AdSense about their experiences with Google AdSense versus Shopping.com and how they prefer the latter. As you might imagine, I have a few comments about their post and how they're using AdSense and what they can do to increase their AdSense earnings.
But first, let me reiterate that every site is different and AdSense isn't necessarily the best ad program for your site. And there are other ways to monetize content, such as affiliate links, that are often complementary to AdSense. You have the find the mix of ad programs that is right for you. AdSense is dead easy to use (especially if you read this book) and has (as the ProductWiki folks state) a very large inventory of ads to draw from. So maybe AdSense isn't the best program for ProductWiki. Or maybe they can do things better. Let's focus on the latter and see what we can come up with.
The Heat Map Is Not Always Right
Let's look at a typical page on ProductWiki, the Nikon D80 digital camera. Using my handy-dandy highlight Google ads Greasemonkey script makes it very easy to pinpoint the AdSense ads on this page. Here's the screenshot: [Click on it to see it full size]
Hey, that looks like optimal ad placement according to the AdSense heat map:
Yes, but I don't think it's optimal for this site. The heat map is a general guideline, not the gospel truth. You have to consider the heat map in the context of the page you're trying to optimize.
The problem is that the ads aren't where the visitor focuses his or her attention. If you're surfing through the ProductWiki, you're probably looking for advice on something you're looking to buy. After reading the product description at the top (above the ad), you focus your attention immediately to the Community area of the page, where the user reviews are found. In other words, you skip right over the ad unit. There's nothing in the ad unit to grab your attention because it's just text, and in fact when you land on the page your eye probably wanders naturally over to the camera image in the right hand corner before looking at the text.
The point I'm making is that I think that the text ads would be better placed after or within the reviews. There are a number of approaches you could take here. One is to put a vertical ad unit to the left of the community section. Or you could put the ads immediately after the last review. It needs to be somewhere noticeable.
Use Multiple Ad Units
Why have just one ad unit on the page? AdSense currently allows you to have three ad units per page. So blend them into strategic locations. Put one beside the reviews and one after the reviews. Do some testing to see what works best.
Use Horizontal Link Units
There is no link unit on this page. A horizontal (728 by 15) link unit could be integrated into the top of the page. It's surprising how well those link units can work, especially if they're close to navigational bread crumbs.
Place Images Near Ads
This is a tricky one to get right, but it works well: place one or more images near the ads. Google wants a clean separation between the two, but our eyes are naturally attracted to images and so the ads that are close to those images are more noticeable. In fact, it may be the images in the Shopping.com ads that are making them perform so much better than the AdSense ads. Take out those images and I bet the Shopping.com CTR will plummet.
For example, you could move the image of the product from the righthand corner to be immediately to the left of the “Where to buy” block, thereby bringing attention to the ad. Or maybe you would place a different image there, since moving the image would leave the voting wheel by itself.
Speaking of “Where to buy”, unless ProductWiki is a premium AdSense publisher (and if they are, why isn't their AdSense rep helping them out with these issues?) then they should really change that label to “Advertisements” or “Sponsored Links”. Of course, they may have received permission to label the ads the way they do.
(Psst. While we're talking about things that don't mesh with the AdSense Terms & Conditions… the AdSense code is obviously server-side generated because it's got blank lines in it… it needs to be tightened up to look identical to what the AdSense console would generate…)
Use Section Targeting For Better Relevance
One of the complaints ProductWiki has is that the AdSense ads aren't always very relevant. Well my answer to that is to use section targeting to highlight the important parts of the page, such as the description, the feature set, and the individual reviews/comments. If you run a simple keyword density test on the page you'll see that words and phrases like “2 hours ago”, “last edited by”, and so on are featured more prominently than the more important keywords. In fact, they should probably use section targeting to exclude those useless phrases around the comments (blogs have similar problems — that's why you often see a lot of “RSS” and “blogging” ads on blogs).
Also, it looks like there's only one heading tag (an <h1>) used on the page, and very little bolding or italicizing. These are are clues that AdSense uses to figure out what's important and what's not. I'm going to send them a free copy of my analysis of the AdSense patent, which explains these things in great detail.
Conclusion
There are some more things that could be done, but I think I've hit on the major points. I hope they'll listen to my advice — I normally charge big bucks for this kind of detailed help! Really, it sounds like they should find a happy medium of integrating AdSense ads and Shopping.com ads together on the same page. As long as the Shopping.com ads aren't contextual — and they shouldn't be, since ProductWiki can feed Shopping.com a hardcoded list of keywords — then the two can co-exist.
As for ProductWiki's wishes for more control of the ads shown, I'd like to see that, too, because it would make it easier to fine-tune the ads than playing with keyword density, the wording of the content, and the inclusion/exclusion of parts of a page.
Sponsored Link: Get your special report and analysis of the AdSense patent today, it's only $14.95!
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?
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4 Responses to “ProductWiki AdSense Optimization”
[…] also the AdSense optimization tips I did for ProductWiki. Let’s hope the AdSense API gets the contributors rolling […]
An alternative that is really worth trying are the audio ads.
Don’t start arguing that this is a bad idea before you learn all the details of this business model.
I tried it and it works nicely.
Have a look here and then you can decide for yourself once you know all the facts.
Good luck.
An excellent example of how to place Google Ads is to be seen on this subtitles site.
Yeah, it’s not bad. Getting close to making the ads look like the links on the page, though, which is iffy. The color variation is a good idea in that case.