Comments on: Advertising 101: Placement

By: Derrick R

Derrick R — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:01:07 +0000

There is a lot of great stuff here. Although I would like to point out. There is definitely a saturation point where adding more ad space won’t generate more revenue, however it isn’t at 1 skyscraper ad. After I stacked 2 skyscraper ads and dropped a banner between my comic and my blog, within one week I was making more than just the single skyscraper. I’m experimenting with a leaderboard above my comic now to see how it adversely affects my other ad spaces. So far, the competition isn’t dropping out.

By: Winged Wolf Studio − Adding Project Wonderful to an Ad Chain

Winged Wolf Studio − Adding Project Wonderful to an Ad Chain — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 03:25:39 +0000

[...] of contention on many-a-forum that I frequent. Having been introduced to advertising already (in a series of 4 articles), you should know the terms I’m about to discuss [...]

By: Winged Wolf Studio − Advertising 303: Generating More Revenue

Winged Wolf Studio − Advertising 303: Generating More Revenue — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:35:04 +0000

[...] Advertising 101 took you through how and why to set up your site to display ads from any ad provider [...]

By: delos

delos — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:40:13 +0000

As for ads in the middle of articles, I think that works best for content providers which routinely put images in with their long text articles, like magazines.

These days, heavy text needs something to break it up for readers. A 125×125 ad might not be the worst thing to put in there.

By: JGray

JGray — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:22:10 +0000

More advice to consider as I work on designs for both my comics. Thank you!

By: KEZ

KEZ — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 04:37:56 +0000

Hey Mike! I realize I was unclear in my first paragraph about this article. Since this is from the publisher’s perspective, it is not about places to bid, but instead, places to put ads on your page where they will make the most money.

You may ignore the ad in the middle in the page, but then again, if everyone did that no ads would be placed there. Yet, you see such ad placements in news articles, forums (between posts, like at Something Awful) and “text heavy” publishers. Some people may stop reading when they come to the ad, but if they want to keep reading, they will have no choice but to glace over the ad. That is why the space sells.

Also, you can’t really place ads in the middle of content for sites that publish webcomics…not unless you want to split your page in half, which I suppose you could do if you were really interested. Most people who publish ads between content must do so in their news posts, or right beneath the comic itself. Anyways, I totally agree, ad placement should be the least disruptive for the most amount of revenue generated.

Ad blindness is indeed a worry for sites that depend on ad revenue. Luckily, since most advertisers other than PW pay by CPM, so long the impressions keep coming and you place ads within the guidelines presented, left or right is of no consequence unless you are publishing performance-dependent ads (CPC or Project Wonderful advertisers, if they’re on top of things).

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 04:25:22 +0000

I’m glad you posted about this, KEZ. I’ll disagree with placing ads in the middle of content, however.

Seeing an ad right in the middle of a block of content (like your example above) is just about where I stop reading. Ad placement that breaks up content is an awful idea, because it’s disruptive to what your sites primary goal should be: conveying information (if you can make loads of cash while doing that more power to ya’ ;) ).

I’ll also mention that ad blindness makes splitting content like that dangerous. Until just now I didn’t even realize your sidebar had links in it other than the “Pages” menu at the top; I assumed the rest was ads and ignored it. XD