It is a well-known fact that Adsense ads perform the best when placed above the fold. “Above the fold” refers to the exact area of the screen which is visible to the user when the page has finished loading.
The area of your website or blog which gets the maximum focus is “Above the fold”. Hence, it’s common sense that advertisers would prefer sites that place ads above the fold as compared to sites that hide ads in the corners or sidebars.
Brand Advertisers vs Direct Advertisers
There are two types of advertisers – Brand advertisers and Direct advertisers.
a) Direct advertisers look for clicks and conversions and they usually target CPC campaigns. Say Mr. X owns a site about ‘Used cars’ and Mr. Y is a “Direct advertiser”. Mr. Y would like to place CPC advertisements on Mr. X’s site and would be more interested in clicks, conversions, and the Adwords campaign altogether.
b) Brand advertisers would focus on promoting their product and raising self-awareness. They would target image ads that support rich media. In the above example, if Mr. Y had been a direct advertiser, he would like to place an image ad about his upcoming auction of used cars, you get the idea.
Above the fold Ads?
Since brand advertisers are trying to raise awareness about their product, they are obviously selective on the type of sites where their ads are shown. Not only that but they are also concerned with the position their ads are shown on your site.
Now coming back to the “Above the Fold” concept. Since Brand advertisers want visibility, they would prefer sites that have the following criteria and placements of ad units:
- Content is unique, good and the site should have a targeted audience.
- Has a large reader base – means more page views and impressions.
- The ad unit is placed above the fold for greater visibility.
Optimize Ad Placements for Brand Advertisers
If you want to optimize your site for Brand advertisers, here are a few things you should know:
1. Use Adsense placement targeting
Assign unique channels to the ad units you are targeting for the Brand advertisers. Then log in to your Adsense account, go to channels and click “Edit channel”.
Select the checkbox “Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement”.
Enter a custom description of your site and a brief description regarding the placement position of the channel. Believe me, this works.
2. Place above the fold ads targeted to attract “Brand Advertisers”
Place at least one ad unit above the fold. Then use Adsense placement targeting and attract advertisers to show ads on that channel. The placement targeting would not work out if you hide the ads in the bottom of your blog template.
3. Switch to image ads on high pageview pages
Some pages of your site have high pageviews e.g the homepage or maybe the landing page you created for one of your products. Using an image ad above the fold makes sense and appeals to the brand advertisers, as described earlier in the article.
4. Don’t be shy showcasing ads
Don’t hide advertisements in the corner or footer of your blog template. Some of the best placement positions are: under the title of your post, header, top of sidebar, etc. Even big brands like Techcrunch have a big leaderboard in the site header, so why should you feel shy showing the ads?
If the visitor is genuinely interested in the content of the landing page, the advertisements would appear as related links or services.
So there is nothing called an “Annoying Factor”. Dump that idea.
5. Make your Site Advertisement Friendly
While you make efforts to optimize your site for visitors, you should also make life easy for the advertisers. Reserve highly focused regions for the advertisements and remove unnecessary elements from your blog template.
For example, you may want to move the email subscription box, which is placed in the header of your site to the sidebar. Then use a 468 X 70 or 728 X 90 advertisement block in the header and apply “Image ads” for that ad unit.
These are a few techniques that you can use to attract “Brand Advertisers” to your site. Don’t think that you will get the results in a couple of days. It takes some time to build trust among the advertisers and you will gradually see the wheel rolling.
Have you optimized your site for Brand advertisers? Would love to hear your ideas in the comments section.
Guest author Amit Banerjee writes on Blogging, WordPress, and Technology at Ampercent.com. You can also write guest posts here and share your advertising tips.