AdSense Ad Placement Targeting - Great Results!

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  • SEO
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First post and I had to share something I just learned!

For the past few years I've heard about "Placement Targeting" for AdSense. I always thought my sites were too niche and too small to really benefit from it so I never invested the time to setup my custom channels to be available for ad placement targeting to advertisers.

Well, a few months back an AdSense Optimization Rep contacted me and ran through a few suggestions. Most were pretty basic (more ads, better locations, etc.) but he also strongly suggested I give ad placements a try.

So, I spend a little time setting up the ad placements for my top 10 custom channels (by volume) and never thought much about it. Today I learned you can run a performance report on "contextual" vs. "placement" targeting...

WOW

You should see the eCPMs that come from the ad placements vs. the standard contextual. Contextual still gets a lot more volume, but the placement targeting is really growing well.

Now that I've seen this I'm going to put a bit more time into cleaning up my ad placement settings and setting them up for all my custom channels. I just wish I had done this years ago!

Anybody else have experience with ad placement targeting in AdSense?
#adsense #great #placement #results #targeting
  • Profile picture of the author flipfl0p
    what is that? Can you explain a little further?
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    • I can't post links yet (too new). You can get the info from the AdSense help page by searching for "placement targeting"
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  • Profile picture of the author flipfl0p
    oh is that the guide of google of where to place the ads and the colors of them? oh ok...
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    • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
      Originally Posted by Rayson14 View Post

      oh is that the guide of google of where to place the ads and the colors of them? oh ok...
      No. Search for Placement Targeted ads. It's basically when advertisers choose ads to display specifically on your site. They usually look kind of funny and have more background space around them. They will always pay more per click, but in my experience they have much lower CTR's. Maybe it was just my sites, but I never got a better CTR from placement targeted ads.
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      • Jacob, that's an interesting point! I just ran my reports again on a per-channel basis and found that you were right, the CTR's were definitely lower in all cases except for one. With that said, my eCPMs were higher in all cases except for 2 cases, and it looked like Google's algorithms were able to pick up on that and not give very much inventory to those ads.

        I'll keep an eye on it just in case, but some of the eCPMs are up to 3 times higher than contextual!
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  • Profile picture of the author Jacob Martus
    Originally Posted by OutsourcedMyLife.com View Post

    First post and I had to share something I just learned!

    For the past few years I've heard about "Placement Targeting" for AdSense. I always thought my sites were too niche and too small to really benefit from it so I never invested the time to setup my custom channels to be available for ad placement targeting to advertisers.

    Well, a few months back an AdSense Optimization Rep contacted me and ran through a few suggestions. Most were pretty basic (more ads, better locations, etc.) but he also strongly suggested I give ad placements a try.

    So, I spend a little time setting up the ad placements for my top 10 custom channels (by volume) and never thought much about it. Today I learned you can run a performance report on "contextual" vs. "placement" targeting...

    WOW

    You should see the eCPMs that come from the ad placements vs. the standard contextual. Contextual still gets a lot more volume, but the placement targeting is really growing well.

    Now that I've seen this I'm going to put a bit more time into cleaning up my ad placement settings and setting them up for all my custom channels. I just wish I had done this years ago!

    Anybody else have experience with ad placement targeting in AdSense?
    In my experience placement targeted ads don't earn as much over time as contextually targeted ads. Placement ads do pay very well, in some cases $5.00+, however the CTR for them is much much lower than contextual on all of my sites.

    I get more than double the CTR from contextual over placement targeted making it much more lucrative for my site to display contextual. It seems Google feels this way about the earnings potential too, as only 2 of my sites show placement targeted ads anymore at all now.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbsb
    I noticed my CTR & eCPM has dropped recently and it seems to coincide with the existence of placement targeted ads on my site.

    How do you run the report to find out which ads are providing what revenue? I cant see how to do it in adsense reporting.
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    • Login to adsense
      Advance reports
      select "Show data by" and choose "Individual ad"
      this will bring up a check box: "Show data by targeting type - contextual or placement"

      My data for today (all sites, all channels)

      Placement has 16% of the impressions, only 2% of the clicks, 12% of the CTR, but 145% of the eCPM.

      So, with 16% of the traffic to placement targeting, even thought the CTR is much less, it accounts for 23% of my revenue.

      Numbers don't lie!
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      • Profile picture of the author JoshuaG
        Placement targeting is great if you are high volume site.
        Small niches sites are less likely to benefit.
        Grizz has a post on his adsense blog and he explains how placement targeting is the difference between several dollars a click and several cents a click.
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        • JoshuaG, I think you are correct. Also, I believe the niche will play a part in that as well.

          Can you quantify what "high volume" is? I am curious if I factor into what you consider "high volume".

          1 million impressions a month? 10 mil? 100 mil?
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