India Uncut: An Adsense Case Study
3 Comments Published by Dijo on Saturday, November 04, 2006 at 3:09 AM.
This is a screen shot of his ads. In order to view it just double click on it.For those not in the know ( low probability if you are even remotely interested in India) India Uncut is one of India's best and one of my favourite blogs. Since the time I signed up for adsense placement and ad integration are about everything that I can think about. So when I visited India Uncut a couple of months ago I was surprised that almost nothing had been done to optimize the ads.
Let us first look at the positives that you can take from there:
- The background colour of the ads blends in beautifully with the background of the template.
- The border has been removed. This can have something like a 20% increase in your click through ratios.
- The colour of the text in the ads is the same as the colour in which the content is written.
- The use of the rectangle ad unit. It has one of the highest CTRs.
- The colour of the title is a shade of red while the page titles are not. This doesnot make it look like content generated by the blogger himself resulting in less CTRs.
- The ad unit is isolated with no images or text around it. This discourages the user from going to that exchange.
- The URLs of the ads are clearly visible. If they had been integrated better then it might have seemed like recommended links from the blogger.
- The ads are placed at the end of a post which is a rarely looked at place in blogs.
- The theme of the blog is such that no particular product is endorsed so ad units in the middle of a post must be distruptive. What he can do is to probably place a half banner between posts this could make it look like a link.
Bookmarkz
He has changed some things now.
You prolly dont know what you are talking about. Correct adsense would fetch him more money, but its a pittance to what hed earn soon. There are rumours that there is some heavy venture capital funding of a site which hes gonna establish soon- the site will be a disaster, but he will earn his share, a very very fat sum of money , about 15 years of Cricinfo salary. Negotiations are on, and hard linking work since Dec 2004 is gonna pay off soon.
Some people live lives like leeches- MTV, cricket content writing and now making money of a sure to fail webpage by fooling VC's.
It all a case of penny foolish, pound wise. Makes ad- sense? :)
What you're advocating sound suspiciously like trying to trick the reader into clicking on a link. To an extent, you recommendations would even probably reduce the usability of the site. And increase irritation.
I think one of the reasons India Uncut is good to read, is that the page design is easy on the eye. Following your recommendations would take away from that.