Mel Ann and Tim are two AdSense Optimization Specialists from the Google office in Sydney, who work with publishers to help them improve the performance of their ads. Today, they’ll walk you through a 5-step process to optimize the AdSense ads on your sites, and will also share tips that many publishers have found successful.

Step 1: Analyze your webpages

The first step to a successful optimization is to analyze your
webpages. Ask yourself the following questions as you think about where
to place ads on your site:

- What type of content do you have? People interact differently on
articles, forum, and video sites, for example, so think about how
people will be interacting on your site.

- Where is visitor attention likely to be focused? You should place ads
where your users are most likely to look, but as Ricardo Prada
mentioned in week two of this series, make sure that they won’t get in
the way of users trying to complete tasks on your site.

- How can you integrate ads into an area without getting in the way of
your users? You can view a heat map we’ve put together showing where
ads perform well, and keep in mind that above the fold ads and ads
close to primary content tend perform better.

- Don’t forget to think about how advertisers would like to appear. If
you can make your site more appealing to advertisers, while keeping the
above tips in mind, you’re more likely to be able to attract
advertisers and placement targeted ads.

Step 2: Set up custom channels

Custom channels will help you figure out how different ad units are
performing based on a number of variables you can choose, like
placement, size, and color. Create a channel for individual ad units
and categorize them to see how they’re performing. For example, you can
track your leaderboard and medium rectangle to see which performs
better, and use this information in step four below. Custom channels
will also allow you to track and measure results from your
optimizations.

Step 3: Optimize your ad unit design and placement

The next step is to look at color, position, and size of your ad units
and optimize these for user experience, advertiser experience, and
performance. We’ve found that the medium rectangle (300 x 250), wide
skyscraper (160 x 600), and the leaderboard (728 x 90) tend to perform
best. You can also opt in to image ads to receive rich media and video
ads, which tend to perform well too. It’s important that you implement
your ads in a consistent manner and in a way that is desirable to
advertisers. Use colors effectively. Blend ads in, but not too much
that users don’t see them. Borderless ads tend to work well, as does
highlighting the link and URL. Test different colors and placements,
and then keep the changes that perform best.

Step 4: Maximize revenue from multiple units

We recommend adding multiple ad units to your pages, while still
keeping the user experience in mind when deciding on placements. You
can use custom channel reporting to determine which ad unit performs
best, and structure your page to optimize performance based on that.
The highest paying ad we have for your site will be shown in the first
ad unit that shows up in your HTML code. If you have a leaderboard at
the top, but learn with custom channel reporting that a medium
rectangle halfway down the page is outperforming it in terms of CTR and
eCPM, try putting the medium rectangle first in your HTML code. You can
do this by switching the location in the HTML if you’re comfortable
editing the code, or by changing the actual location of the leaderboard
on the page.

Step 5: Track and measure results

The last step is to understand whether your optimizations have made a
difference. Here, use the custom channels you set up earlier to
generate reports on your different ad units. Generate reports on your
custom channels and group results by channel (remember, this depends on
how you’ve set them up) to see how different sizes, colors, and
placements are performing. You can also look at placement targeting
reports to see which ad units are receiving placement-targeted ads, and
if they’ve resulted in improved performance.

We hope these steps and tips are informative, and strongly encourage
you to take the time to try an optimization on your own.

Source: Google Adsense Newsletter