Ad Placement Strategy: An Introduction

A large number of web publishers have no concrete ad placement strategy. They simply paste their ads at well known locations and forget it. A good ad placement strategy is not formulated in one day. It is an evolving process and is refined after analyzing the ad performance data on regular basis.

Image Credit: ktheory

Outline The Basics

Make sure you first make a heat map of your web pages and find out where visitors click most in your pages. Use Clickheat to track it. Once you have collected the sufficient data about meaty click zones of web pages, you can initiate the next step. At this point many web publishers do a big mistake by replacing or shifting the existing content and stuffing ads in place of it. Instead of doing that, concentrate on areas around it and fit in your ads in those places.

CAUTION: Do not stuff excessive ads around heat zones.

Watch And Refine

Once you have updated the heat zones of your web pages, its time now to watch and crunch lots of data. The more high traffic you get, more it is easier to refine your ad placement strategy because you get large set of data for analysis. Remember, if you are getting good clicks on some part of your page do not stuff additional ads there. Just change the color, format or size of your ad at regular intervals to avoid ad blindness. You can use the palette rotation facility given by Adsense to serve that purpose.

Keep On Refining

It is a never ending process and dividends are great. A bit of extra effort in formulating ad strategy for your web site can increase your earnings exponentially.