The use of AdSense Channels has played a very important role in ad placements. This feature/tool allows you to review your site’s clickthrough performance so you can quickly respond to it and save precious clicks or even earn some more. Sure, there’s the Google Heat Map I mentioned in my entry about “Getting the best out of AdSense“, but each has different layouts and designs that a blog’s success may not translate to another.
Three weeks ago, I wrote an entry about why I think AdSense Ad Link Units will get your nowhere.
Well, after some insights from those who posted comments on that entry, I tried to re-think my ad layout and see what AdSense could make of it.
Now, I guess I’m taking back what I said earlier. Experiments are far better than plain old theories and after seeing my total AdSense earnings for July, the Ad Link Units got almost 13% share of my $125.33 total — that’s the 3rd spot on the list. My full ads at the bottom of each entry got the top spot at 30% while the occasional ad inserts on long entries took the 2nd place (26%).
Though I have not really optimized the placements of the Ad Link units, the initial 13% share is significant enough to prompt me to re-evaluate ad placements across the entire blog. More experiments on this in the coming weeks.
I’ve not had enough clicks on the Ad Links to check, but I’d reason that advertisers will pay more for people who have had to go through a two-click process.
The ‘traditional’ AdSense goes straight to the advertisers site, so they’ll get a lot of people who are just wondering what the site is and don’t really intend to look around. But if someone clicks an AdLink they then get a list of advertisers to choose from, so the casual clicker is more likely to go back to the home page than go further.
But that’s just a guess and could be totally wrong.