Adsense Block Placement - What Works Best?

[Blackthorne]

At the moment, my ugly as shit adsense sites have the large rectangle blocks above and below the first post.

On one site, I even have a large block under the second post as well.

So the main column looks like:

1. adsense block 1

2. post

3. adsense block 2

4. post

5. adsense block 3

I notice that adsense block 2 gets less clicks than adsense block 1. And also that adsense block 3 gets less clicks than 2.

The lower the adsense blocks, the lower the CTR.

I am not showing anymore adsense banners in the sidebar. Sidebars always give you shitty CTR.

I suspect that 2 large adsense blocks on top works best.

Example:

1. adsense block 1 | adsense block 2

2. post

I am going to try this on a few of my adsense sites to see if the CTR will increase.

How do you guys place your adsense? What are your experiences?

[BenK]

For adsense, always make sure you only display 1 post per page.

Keep one large rectangular block right under the post title. Have a large skyscraper ad to the left or right of the post -- i.e in one of the side bars. Put the third ad, either a half rectanglular ad right at the end of the post. I've found that the main add gets the highest CTR followed by the side bar ad. The bottom ad cleans up a few clicks.

[Blackthorne]

For adsense, always make sure you only display 1 post per page.

Keep one large rectangular block right under the post title. Have a large skyscraper ad to the left or right of the post -- i.e in one of the side bars. Put the third ad, either a half rectanglular ad right at the end of the post. I've found that the main add gets the highest CTR followed by the side bar ad. The bottom ad cleans up a few clicks.

Have you done a lot of experimentation with adsense placement?

Is there a theme you could recommend for doing this easy without me having to spend a few hours editting themes?

It strikes me as odd that you'd recommend a sidebar. Those always have around 1% CTR.

Does the large rectangle really have to be under the post title? Right now I have them above. Do you suppose it makes a big diff?

[BenK]

Yes, I've done quite a bit of experimenting with adsense placement. And I've got hundreds of adsense sites out there.

Keep in mind placement may change depending on whether you are using an html site or a wordpress blog. And you may find in some situations and niches, some layouts work better. The bottom line is that you are going to have to do your own tests to maximize your CTR.

Niche is also key. You can have the best layout in the world but if you end up in a niche that's not responsive to clicking ads, you will still make fuck all.

I have found that in general for blogs, the adsense box below the title works very well -- better than above the title in my experience. People see the title and then the ads and a connection may be made between the two and they tend to click more in my experience.

Sidebars can get a lot of clicks as well depending on the theme and how integrated ads look into your site. The more blended ads are, they higher your CTR.

Ads along the very top of your page in a long rectangle can do pretty well between the menu and the text body.

The worst CTR I find is from the very bottom adbar -- i leave on in sometimes to clean up a few extra clicks, but in general I prefer to have 1 main adsense box under the title and two side bar ads, or 1 main adsense box, 1 long horizontal adsense between website horizontal menu and posts, and 1 side bar.

But, if you have a site with a good amount of traffic that's making 5-10 bucks a day, it's good to actually test out different schemes yourself to find what works best.


There is a WP plugin out there called "easy adsense" -- you can add in adsense quite easily to posts in different locations. Of course, sometimes you may just end up having to hack apart a theme -- which does not take very long in most cases. Usually, you just end up having to add adsense code to a few of the files. You then copy those files and use them over and over for every wordpress installation.

One thing to keep in mind is that you may have to balance adsense layouts that score higher CTR with keeping your site from looking like a spam site. If all the visitor sees when they come to your sites is just ads (i.e. throwing two or three big rectangle boxes at the top of the post) and not any content, your site looks like a Made for Adsense site and risk getting deindexed. Also, if you blend your ads too much so that they look like part of your site and menu options, you may score very high CTR, but there is a pretty big chance you will fail a visual inspection by google and end up with the site getting deindexed and all of your other similar sites take down. There is also an issue of breaking adsense TOS that may land you in hot water with getting your adsense account banned.

At the end of the day, it's essential that you don't want more ads than content on your site.

[Phillip]

Have you done a lot of experimentation with adsense placement?

Is there a theme you could recommend for doing this easy without me having to spend a few hours editting themes?

It strikes me as odd that you'd recommend a sidebar. Those always have around 1% CTR.

Does the large rectangle really have to be under the post title? Right now I have them above. Do you suppose it makes a big diff?

Just add the code under the "<div class="entry">" tag. For sidebars, if you have a widgetized them just add a text/html widget and paste it there - you can easily move it to see where it scores the most clicks. It is not going to take you hours of editing to get it done. I have been working with just the big square and getting quite a good CTR for some sites. I think I'll have to add the sidebar ads also..

[Blackthorne]

Blending too much probably means obfuscating the google logo at the end of an adsense block.

Currently, my adsense blocks are bright red with the post title and post urls light blue.

The CTR for some of my sites that look like this is 10%. I figured it couldn't go any higher.

I'll try making adsense look more like the links. I wonder what effect it will have!

[Blackthorne]

Just add the code under the "<div class="entry">" tag. For sidebars, if you have a widgetized them just add a text/html widget and paste it there - you can easily move it to see where it scores the most clicks. It is not going to take you hours of editing to get it done. I have been working with just the big square and getting quite a good CTR for some sites. I think I'll have to add the sidebar ads also..

True, it doesn't take hours for one theme. But a perfectionist can easily be tempted to spend hours on making it just right in lotsa themes!

[Blackthorne]

And also...

What navigational stuff do you have in your sidebars Ben?

I have a recent post list that shows only the last 15 posts max.

But when I get more than 15 posts, some posts are going to be lost from navigation.

Are you a fan of using the archive widget?

It allows easy navigation, but ofcourse it also provides the visitors with non-money-links to click.

Your thoughts?

[Blackthorne]

Also, why is it important to remove the footer to decrease your footprint?

There's adsense on the sites. Google already knows it's me.

Why bother with decreasing your footprint?

[DinoEntrails]

When you put the block under the title, do you make text go around it, or is it all by itself??