CMSmoz

Improve your AdSense results with on-the-fold ads

Posted on 21. Dec, 2009 by nicholas in Joomla

If you manage an ad-supported site, you are probably aware of the problem I’m going to discuss. Some of your ads are stellar, some others are stubborn underachievers, to the extent you might consider them a waste of screen real estate. The truth about ads is that they are position sensitive. Where you put them determines, for the most part, their success. You can’t avoid all bad positions altogether but you can create new competent positions no-one has ever told you about. Implementing this in Joomla! takes 5 minutes and requires no programming skills!

Where the fold should I place ‘em?!

The first step to approaching this problem is to study the traditional theory of ad position performance, relative to the page’s layout. It is usually something like the following picture:

Black means “don’t bother”. Red is minimal results, yellow is medium yield and green is king performance. This approach leaves us with positions which are near the main content, or inside it. In all fairness, they are too few, leading us to place ads in poor performance positions. Usually, this space is found either in the header, or the sidebars.

Wait! Are these all the positions there can be on a page?

The answer is no and I don’t mean variations of this theme, like ads injected between the main content’s paragraphs. What I really mean is that there is a new position which is neither above the fold, nor below the fold: it’s on the fold. Imagine an ad position which scrolls with your content and always stays on the lowest part of your browser’s window, showing your ad throughout the user’s visitor on the page.

The benefit of this approach springs from the way people browse the web. Usually, people focus their eyes on the main content, scrolling the page a little so that this content is in the centre of the window. As they focus on the content, their effective viewport is much more narrow than the page, in some kind of tunnel vision, eyes scanning the main content top to bottom. By inserting an ad on the fold, you force your visitors to look at it, much like the ads inserted inside the main content’s body. For a real world example, just visit http://www.joomlapack.net and see it in action.

Normally, such novel positions require JavaScript to be implemented. The trick here is that we do not want the ad to disappear on people who disable scripts stemming from our site, e.g. Firefox visitors with NoScript. We also do not want to sacrifice a good position. We can do this instead: place the ad on a poor performance spot (e.g. header) and use JavaScript to move it on the fold. If JavaScript doesn’t work, we still have a header ad. If JavaScript works, we have an on-the-fold ad which yields better results (about 75% – 150% better according to my experiments).

The Joomla! implementation

As I promised you, implementing the on-the-fold Google AdSense ads is surprisingly easy. You need two key ingredients:

• JoomlaSpan’s Google AdSense module (ClickSafe) in order to easily display Google AdSense ads as a Joomla! module.
• Cmsmoz’s Visitor 2 Buyer module for on-the-fold positioning.

The setup process is extremely simple and makes use of faux module positions, one of my most favourite Joomla! site building techniques – and a major reason as to why I always use Joomla! on every but the most trivial of sites I build. Let’s take it step by step:

• Install both modules on your site.
• Create a new module of the JoomlaSpan’s Google AdSense type. Fill in all the details pertaining to your ad’s display. You may want to experiment with the ad format. I have found that the Leaderboard format works the best. Don’t try using a rectangle or large rectangle, as it looks really ugly! Before saving, click on the Position combo box’s text area and type in a fake module position which doesn’t exist in your site’s template, e.g. “bottomad”. Note that position down and click on Save.
  This is how it looks; click on the thumbnail below to show it in full-size:

  

• Create a new module of the Visitor 2 Buyer type. By default, Visitor2Buyer is configured to limit the number of displays per visitor and show the message in-line with the content. We can override this behaviour by choosing the following settings:
  • In “Details”:
    • Show title: No
    • Enabled: Yes
    • Position: footer, or any template position you like
    • Access level: public – fine tuning of access level is possible with V2B’s advanced parameters

• • In “Module Parameters”:
    • New user visit limit: 999999
    • Unique Identifier: bottomad (or something descriptive, it’s used with cookies)
    • Display Mode: Catfish banner

• • In “Advanced Parameters”:
    • Cookie expiration time, in days: 1
    • Maximum impressions per session: leave blank
    • Minimum display group: Public
    • Maximum display group: Registered (if you want registered users to see the ad) or Public (if you want registered users to not see the ad)
    • JQuery library source: Local
    • Catfish height in pixels: 100 (note: this should be approximately ad height + 20 px)
    • Catfish timeout (seconds): –1

• • In the “Custom Message” area just type:
    {loadposition bottomad}

• Make sure you don’t forget to publish both modules.

Upon visiting your site, you should see your newly created ad appearing right on the fold, just like this:

The picture above is taken from JoomlaPack.net on December 21st, 2009. It is the first live site on which I implemented this idea.

Taking this to the next level

Having just an advertisement appearing on the fold might not be as effective as you’d like. The best way to attract clicks to your ad is to force your visitors to look at it ever so frequently. Granted, we are not ultra-powerful mentalists, imposing our will on other people. The truth is, we don’t have to be!

One easy to implement idea is to put useful links and quick navigation widgets in the on-the-fold area, next to the ad. That is, move part of your site’s navigation to a footer-like area. For example, you can have a big RSS icon linking to your site’s syndication feed; a link to a contact form; a short list of the most popular articles. The ideas are endless, but you have to find which works best for you through some trial and error.

Tags: AdSense, How-To, joomla extension