Left-hand column is *not* the hot spot!

Looking at Google's advice, they say that the left-hand column should be the top performer, but even with a 160x600 skyscraper I get almost no clicks for $0.50CPM, whereas my 336x280 at the top of each story gets massive clicks - around $4-$6 CPM. Even when I use a 486x60 banner in the same place I get $2 CPM or so.

(I give search visitors a big ad, non-search visitors the banner)

Is the average blog visitor blind to side-bars these days? A friend of mine with close to 10,000 visits per day on a blog in the same field, but with only side-bar ads makes a CPM of only around $1-$2.

 

I have always liked the "boxes" 336x280 etc. But honestly the 160x600 does really really well for me on some days.

Most days I have around a $18-$30 ish CPM and that's with mostly boxes and 160x600's.

I have NEVER liked the 468x60's - they just look like ads.

 

For me I like the right channel

I feel familiar with it

 

google suggest the left side is better and in my experience rigth side is better to get better results

 

Yep, 336x280 at the top do best for me.

 

Funnily enough, I entered ProBlogger's top 5 writing contest, and from traffic generated through that I saw an increased number of clicks on my LHS column rather than the header that day. I wonder if people were using it as a tip jar? All the clicks were under 5c, however!

Anyway, I've binned the LHS AdSense for now, and am trying out AuctionAds. There's definitely a higher click-rate, but perhaps it's just the novelty? I'm not losing clicks on the 336x280, though.

 

I just relaunched my site with a left-hand column skyscraper. I thought for sure that that would be a winner. In the past couple of days, it has not performed much at all.

 

I've not noticed much difference between left and right hand columns with the 160x600, but the 160x600 has always been the best performer on my site.

 

Well folks it appears we all have different experiences. Google's 'sweet spot' is a suggestion only. We each have different website with different audiences, different layouts and different results. The only way to be sure you have chosen your adsense placement wisely is to test various ad formats, colours etc ON YOUR OWN SITE and then choose the best performers. This is what we do in professional direct marketing. Before we send out a letter to a million households we will have tested any number of variations of wording, imagery, layout, font and even paper weight on thousands of test customers to give us a good idea of what combination works best. On the web, if you follow the old direct marketing methodologies and apply them to adsense, you can really clean up. Best of all, you will be acting within the rules and won't be attempting to scam anyone, so you can go to bed with a clear conscience... And wake up richer than you were the night before.

keep up the good work guys and girls

Chris