TOPIC: Optimizing Instablogs

Date: Fri, Oct 5 2007 3:25 pm
From: Inside AdSense Team
http://groups.google.com/group/Inside-AdSense/browse_thread/thread/10a0c2c975a824c8?hl=en
Instablogs is a blog network that publishes more than 200 posts a day
on 136 blogs spanning 16 niche channels, including luxury gadgets blog
Bornrich and technology blog Gizmowatch. With 200+ bloggers blogging
from all over the world, Instablogs has around 2 million unique
visitors per month.Instablogs co-founder Ankit Maheshwari tells us that
AdSense works well with each blog's unique content. "Since our blogs
are very niche-oriented, it's tough for us to sell our inventory
directly to advertisers on blogs with less than 30,000 page views per
month," he says. "AdSense's high CPC offering and huge advertiser
database can help monetize the page views on any site irrespective of
its size."Recently Ankit began to experiment with AdSense optimization.
Although he was doubtful of the results, he tried a few minor tweaks on
his site, such as opting in to displaying image ads and adding link
units to the top of his pages. He also used information from his custom
channels to determine the ad unit with the highest CTR on his pages -
he then placed this ad unit first in the HTML source of each page.
After a week of testing these changes, Ankit found that revenue nearly
doubled. While AdSense revenue used to comprise 15% of the company's
advertising revenue, since optimizing it's increased to 25%.Despite the
success of his first optimization, Ankit has found that there isn't one
standard layout or ad format that is optimal for all of his pages. He
says, "We've seen in many blogs that a few ad types perform better in
different sections. For example, the large rectangle performs 70%
better on the permalink pages of our Tattoo blog, while skyscrapers
perform best on all other pages. At the same time, banner ads have
performed really well on our Parenting blog."Today, Ankit continues to
make small changes and frequently tests new layouts based on his custom
channel data. He feels that "custom channels are not only a useful
feature, but also the most important feature in the entire AdSense
program for publishers."Posted by Bennet Abraham - AdSense India
Optimization Team

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Posted By Inside AdSense Team to Inside AdSense at 10/05/2007 03:26:00
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