Ok. This is something I did awhile ago as an experiment. But in the giving spirit started here, I thought I'd share.
I wanted to find a way to get placement targetting up and running. In the past when I tried placement targetting, I barely got any impressions or clicks. So I wanted to do it right.
The target was nationalenquirer.com (yes, the trashy tabloid at grocery stores). I picked it reasoning that they had not only the demographic I wanted to test(females 30-45) but also the much sought after "stupid" demographic.
Here's the layout of the site:
Note the adsense block at the top that allows images. There is another identically sized one at the bottom(that would prove to be my undoing)
The goal for this was to have a high CTR to get really low bids, and hope the traffic would convert over on my end. The product for this was one of the weight loss teas.
So here is the banner I designed.
By flipping the part on their menu, it effectively makes the ad look like a news story for the site. More than that, an important news story.
So let's go to the stats. The first few days were relatively fruitless, since I was only taking the bottom banner ad, which was rarely(if ever) seen, and was a terrible place for something designed to look like a prominent headline. Unfortunately, "Phoenix University" and similar schools were willing to pay out the ass for the same spot, so it appeared like I was going to have some issues.
The peak day I had actually managed to have a .85% CTR, but led to few conversions. That was when I had the top spot. After that, it was back to the universities again, and the CTR hovered around .06%-.21%, depending on how often I was allowed back into the coveted top spot.
Average CPC was 0.50-0.79 depending on the day. A disappointment.
After 2 weeks or so, I killed the campaign. A little cash lost, but a lesson or two learned.
Blending can work great, especially on news sites. But it's important to examine other blocks on the page to make sure you don't get your CTR torched by em. Also going against large institutions trying to do "branding" and not get conversions can often be a losing proposition depending on how much cash they're willing to burn.
If I had to do it again, I would do a few things different. Aside from examining the available blocks/current advertisers better, I would go through the effort of getting a similar domain and creating a "news" story roughly following their template. I have a feeling this would lead to a better conversion rate(which was hurtin on this ad).
I wanted to find a way to get placement targetting up and running. In the past when I tried placement targetting, I barely got any impressions or clicks. So I wanted to do it right.
The target was nationalenquirer.com (yes, the trashy tabloid at grocery stores). I picked it reasoning that they had not only the demographic I wanted to test(females 30-45) but also the much sought after "stupid" demographic.
Here's the layout of the site:
Note the adsense block at the top that allows images. There is another identically sized one at the bottom(that would prove to be my undoing)
The goal for this was to have a high CTR to get really low bids, and hope the traffic would convert over on my end. The product for this was one of the weight loss teas.
So here is the banner I designed.
By flipping the part on their menu, it effectively makes the ad look like a news story for the site. More than that, an important news story.
So let's go to the stats. The first few days were relatively fruitless, since I was only taking the bottom banner ad, which was rarely(if ever) seen, and was a terrible place for something designed to look like a prominent headline. Unfortunately, "Phoenix University" and similar schools were willing to pay out the ass for the same spot, so it appeared like I was going to have some issues.
The peak day I had actually managed to have a .85% CTR, but led to few conversions. That was when I had the top spot. After that, it was back to the universities again, and the CTR hovered around .06%-.21%, depending on how often I was allowed back into the coveted top spot.
Average CPC was 0.50-0.79 depending on the day. A disappointment.
After 2 weeks or so, I killed the campaign. A little cash lost, but a lesson or two learned.
Blending can work great, especially on news sites. But it's important to examine other blocks on the page to make sure you don't get your CTR torched by em. Also going against large institutions trying to do "branding" and not get conversions can often be a losing proposition depending on how much cash they're willing to burn.
If I had to do it again, I would do a few things different. Aside from examining the available blocks/current advertisers better, I would go through the effort of getting a similar domain and creating a "news" story roughly following their template. I have a feeling this would lead to a better conversion rate(which was hurtin on this ad).
