Ad optimization has been enjoying growing attention in the media, as publishers seek to maximize the online ad revenue potential of their traffic. The continued growth of the contextual advertising mainstays, Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN), alongside a proliferation of generalized and niche display ad networks, has given publishers plenty of options to mull over.If your goal is to maximize the total revenue of your site, here is a list of work you have to do:

• Decide which ad size, color, and format ad to display
• Choose the most lucrative ad network for each spot on each page, and deciding when is the best time to run it.
• Pick the right location for the ads, which involves:- The right number of ads (avoiding a cluttered page)- The right mix of ads (ensuring different ads work well together)- Determining the point at which visitors will ignore the ads, and preventing it from happening.- Creating visibility across ad networks and monitoring performance

There are four variables that affect your ads’ performance (something we call The Four Pillars of Online Ad Optimization):

• Ad Size: altering an ads dimensions can affect its performance, although bigger isn’t always necessarily better
• Ad Format: background colors, border styles and colors, fonts, and other visual characteristic optimization can yield an over 10% improvement in performance alone
• Ad Placement: where ad units show up, even at the pixel level, can affect performance, although some general rules (like keeping ads above the fold, and near navigational elements) will help most publishers
• Ad Network: different ad networks will pay out differently, although each might have requirements for placement, caps and other restrictions that must be complied with

Because this is an exceedingly complex problem space, but there’s so much to be gained by solving it for your site, many publishers use YieldBuild, which does all this work automatically for them. Others prefer a more manual, hands-on approach, and instead try their hand at homegrown optimization, using either A/B or multivariate testing. There are rules of thumb, however, that will generally give you solid performance, although with plenty of room for additional gains by using YieldBuild or a rigorously-applied optimization program. Here are some rules of thumb—tailored for AdSense, but that have pointers that will work with any ad network—that will help you get started:

• AdSense Formats & Formatting – selection of colors, border styles and ad unit sizes
• AdSense Placement – selection of optimum layout and positions for your ad units
• AdSense Optimization – selection of a testing protocol and optimization methodology 

 And, if you’re using a popular forum or blogging platform, take a look at these specific recommendations:

• AdSense Optimization for Forums (Discussion Boards)
• Optimize AdSense for your Blog
• AdSense for Blogger (Blogspot)
• AdSense for WordPress

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 7:42 pm and is filed under Online Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.