AdSense is a great way to monetize your content, but only if you know where to place the ads on your website. AdSense placement is one of the most important factors for making money with Google ads. This is quite natural – if your AdSense units are not visible, nobody will click them and you won’t be making money.
On the other hand, no matter how well you position your AdSense units, if your content is not well-targeted, no placement can compensate for this. If your content is not optimized for the right keywords, or if it is very diverse and the ads you get are a mixture of many niches (e.g., dating, health, money, computers), then your click through rate (CTR) will be low. We’ll assume that your pages are optimized properly and don’t rank equally well for both “dating advice” and “cash advance Nevada” or “cheap credit cards” for instance, because if they are like that, no AdSense positioning will help to get a decent CTR and generate money from your site.
Before we discuss the best places to put AdSense ads on a page, there is one more thing that needs mentioning. We discuss the Top 5 places for AdSense ads but this doesn’t mean you have to put 5 AdSense units on a page. Beware! As per the terms of service of Google AdSense, you can’t place more than 3 ad units on a page, or you risk your AdSense account being terminated.
This is why you need to pick only 3 out of these 5 places and see which of them work for you. The fact that these 5 places generally work, doesn’t mean that they will automatically work for you as well. You need to test where AdSense ads convert best for you and put them there. Here are the 5 places where your AdSense ads stand a higher chance of being noticed and clicked:
Top 5 Positions for AdSense Units
1. On the left, under the menu and above the fold
If the menu of your site is in the top left corner, the space right under it is a top location for AdSense ads. When visitors access the menu to navigate the site, they will notice the ads. If the ads are well-targeted, the chance to be clicked is very high.
A vertical bar (120×600 or 160×600) is the best AdSense unit you can put under the menu. Of all the 5 places listed here, this place is the best because even the visitors who visit only the homepage and leave your site right after they land on it will be exposed to the ads, and therefore might be tempted to click an ad before they leave.
2. Inline before the first paragraph
Another place where AdSense units stand a high chance to be noticed is in the very beginning of an article. When a visitor has come to the page with the article itself and there is a block of relevant AdSense ads right before the first paragraph, this also increases the chance for the ads to be noticed and respectively clicked. Depending on the layout of your site, the options you have are one of the square units or a half vertical banner (if your text columns are narrow and even the smallest square doesn’t fit).
3. Right under the article title
The article title is usually in a larger font and/or alternative color to be more noticeable. When relevant ads are put right under the article title – i.e. between the title and the first paragraph – they are also more noticeable. For many sites, AdSense units under the article title don’t work as nicely as the inline units right before the first paragraph, but you need to see how it is for you.
It is true that, with AdSense units between the title and the first paragraph or inline before the first paragraph, you might lose the visitors who click on the ads because when they click an ad, most likely they will leave your site before they have read your article. But if a click is worth it, then you can’t complain. If the visitors really liked your site, they will come back again, right?
4. Under/Next to an image
Images draw attention and this is why ads near an image are also easier to spot. However, keep in mind that you need to use a high quality still image, not an animation because animations smell like ads and visitors just skip them. Still, for many web masters AdSense units near an image don’t work, so you need to experiment to see if this works for you or not.
5. Right under the last paragraph
Finally, one more place where AdSense units have a decent chance to be noticed is a very surprising one – under the last paragraph of your article. Usually this position is way below the fold, but it does work. Why? Because when people have finished reading your article and they are looking for something to read next, a block of targeted AdSense ads stands a good chance of being noticed (and clicked). Vertical banners work best here and sometimes even image ads manage to attract attention.
Summary
These 5 places have proven successful for many webmasters. Of course, CTR depends on many more factors than the mere positioning but experience shows that there are places where even the best ad has little to no chance of being noticed. These places include the lower left corner, the right sidebar (especially under the fold), and obviously the bottom of the page (the footer) because readers generally ignore these areas completely and ads there aren’t noticed. This is why you should ignore these places and put your AdSense ads in the Top 5 places instead.
These basic principles of AdSense placement have been consistent for years, and with a little work they should help you too.
A great read, I’ve always been amazed at the difference we get in returns from different placements and setups. I must admit I didn’t think much of Adsense for a long time, but lately it’s been delivering decent returns for us here at Envato.
The difference between various positions is amazing indeed. The ROI can vary strongly even at the same position: I used to have a skyscraper format on the far right that worked nicely at the beginning, but when I changed some other elements of the design, the ROI of the very same banner went south dramatically…
I would say this is post is really useful , recently i have just change my ads placement to “Inline before the first paragraph” and immediately see the increasing of ads click.
Good post, but I guess it is not an good idea to place an image next to an AdSense ad. It is a violation of the AdSense policy:
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/12/ad-and-image-placement-policy.html
Proof in the pudding that website’s are like books viewed from top left to bottom right. We’re looking to run something similar on one of our websites so will have to see which areas perform best.
Thanks for the heads up
Regards
Rob
Really good post.To improve your click through ratio, you may need to move the ads to different places on your website or blog.
I’m starting with adsense, and this will help me a lot.Thanks for sharing
Good post, will come in real handy if Google ever gets around to reviewing my AdSense application.
Thanks for the tips. These should come in handy for a future redesign
Good post but you did focus on only one point of the story. There are lot to do: Optimize keyword/content, the colors, size and font….
I would gather them and create an A/B testing engine. It would change ads automatically (position, colors, keywords…) and select a different channel for the ad. Then download the Adsense report (you should have some K views to create averages!) in CSV and open in Excel and study the results for each channel, merge together and create the most converting channel.
Cost Per Click comes down after that
That is a great idea, but not every webmaster have the skills to do such piece of software.
In the other hand, it would be great if you do it and then publish to the public (as a free or paid app).
The difference can be really drastic – I have experienced it many times. Well, sometimes AdSense income is low, no matter what you do but any tips about how to squeeze the maximum from your existing inventory can make a difference. This is why I shared the positioning tips I know.
As a reader, I can’t stand AdSense anywhere within the articles that I am viewing. I ignore them completely and my respect for the website drops. It is frustrating, as often it is not obvious what is an ad and what is content.
Great Post! I would just ad that these kind of things need to be changed over time due to the fact that users become ‘blind’ to the ads.
Some things work at certain times, there is a great interview with Carol Bartz by Mike Arrington where she explains what they are doing to improve CTR and how they are creating dynamic algorithms based on several factors.
I agree with Katie that I practically never click on adsense for the simple fact that I know what it is and how it works. I’m glad we are not the majority.
Placement is just one of the many factors. Sometimes simply there are no suitable ads in a given niche and in this cases neither great content, nor placement help a lot. I also agree that visitors don’t come to a site because of the cool ads they see there but since there is no free lunch, a site can’t exist if there are no ads or sales.
Great post! Thanks for that. I will try it out on my websites, too.