Google AdWords chief economist, Hal Varian, says this about the same ad appearing in different positions in search results or in an ad location.

We have used a statistical model to account for these effects and found that, on average, there is very little variation in conversion rates by position for the same ad. For example, for pages where 11 ads are shown the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions. In other words, an ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position, would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on average. Ads above the search results have a conversion rate within ±2% of right-hand side positions.

As Publishers, our job is to prime the pump of the conversion funnel by sending clicks.  A well placed block of ads may have many more clicks than an ad tucked in the right hand bottom location of a page.  It’s good data to have that the clicks on these ads are likely to convert at the same rate or better as a block of ads in a low click through area.  If this holds true, publishers should see the revenue per click hold steady as they place ads in places with better click through rates since the amount AdSense pays out is based on the auction of the ads and the quality of the traffic (how well it converts).

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 10:19 am 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.