Chris Garrett

When discussion turns to which template works best or which ad format works best with adsense, you can usually rely on me to spout my default piece of wisdom; “test test test”. Problem is I am not sure everyone knows exactly what I mean. How do you test your adsense tactics?

One of the real benefits of online advertising for both advertisers and publishers is the detailed tracking that is possible. No need for focus groups and clipboards here, the data is all there in real time in black and white. You know what works and what doesn’t almost as soon as you have done it.

The problem is this immediacy can make you jump to conclusions. Clicks increase on the day when you post a picture of your cat dressed as Elvis and you think “hmmm … must post more rock and roll pets”. There are any number of factors that influence how many clicks your blog will get on any given day, not least being pure chance.

Reduce the effects of chance

To test any changes to your blog you need to compare results with all other factors being equal, as far as is humanly possible. This is where A/B split testing is useful. Split testing is where you compare one new change to the existing status quo. Your existing template or ad format is the “control”, your mission is to beat the results you get from that control with your change.

This requires two things;

1. Consistency – you need to know that the only thing being tested is the new change element. If other factors leak into the results you will not be able to make good decisions. It is easier to ensure consistency if you randomize what the visitor sees using programming.
2. Good Data – you need to be able to record the differences. Make sure you have good tracking in place. If testing ad formats give each their own channel name, if you are testing templates give all the ads the same channel name, one name for the new layout and another for the control layout, and implement a good tracking solution.

I mention using programming to ensure consistency. If you show randomly one version or another then you have effectively excluded time of day, referrer, content, etc from the equation. If you wait a day or an hour and make a change then wait another hour and change back you might be mistaking the effects of lunchtime traffic for the effects of your new design. If you do not feel comfortable programming you can still be systematic in your approach, you will not get as immediate results and will have to do more manual work.

Some simple code to illustrate how this might be achieved is below. It is a small piece of PHP that simulates a coin toss. The HTML output right now is just heads or tails but it could be anything from a banner to your adsense code.

heads

“;
}
else
{
echo “

tails

“;
};

?>

Many big sites do this sort of testing. Have you ever visited Google or Amazon and seen a difference in the design then gone back and it has changed back? This will be the companies split testing.

Significance and Confidence

Earlier I said it is easy to jump to conclusions. With split testing it is still easy to jump to conclusions but you are limiting the possibility somewhat. You need to wait for a significant amount of data. There is as much art as science with this kind of thing. If you are going to stick to truly scientific approach you will have to wait perhaps a few days or at least several thousand page views. Most people are not going to take that long and very often you will believe you see a difference before then.

There is a free online tool called Splittester that will give you an idea if the results you are seeing are significant or not. It’s there to sell an adwords ebook but you can ignore that aspect and still find it useful!

A lot of people in direct marketing go way further than simple A/B split tests and do multiple tests and use advanced formula to reduce down the amount of time it takes to get an answer. While you might want to try these sorts of things, and there are software packages that are designed to help you run Taguchi and equivalent tests, you must remember there can be an “annoyance” factor. Rapid and varied changes to your blog could be distracting to your visitors and just plain put them off your whole blog.

Summary

Seem like something you would do? Too much hassle? Is it something you already do?

I would be very interested to hear how you test your changes. Do you just post up the change and see what happens or do you have an approach?

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Until recently I had not noticed so much but now I realise there is a disease spreading through blogs and I see it getting worse. Most affected are product blogs, particularly in my beloved digital photography niche. What is this disease I am so fearful of?

I am sure this problem affects all types of content, I have no doubt newspapers and trade magazines are the worst offenders. In fact I used to work with people who relied on it.

The problem is using press releases as filler.

As bloggers one of the things we need on a daily (or more) basis is content. Content is the fuel of our endeavour. Press releases seem like ideal content, I can see the temptation.

• Timely
• Informative
• Well written (seemingly)
• Authoritative
• Factual

.. most of all it’s news.

So what is the problem? What’s wrong with that?

For a start, every other blogger has the same press releases so your reader will have seen the self same post for the Nth time today. You are not going to get the reputation as a “go-to blog” just repeating verbatim what everyone else has already regurgitated.

Secondly by just repeating what someone else has said you are just buying into their marketing spin. Is it really a revolution? Or is it more likely the CEO and board are hoping it will revolutionise their creaking bottom line?

Thirdly, if search engine traffic is something you care about, you are not going to show up for this content. PR syndication services are regularly indexed by search engines for their own news services, they will get there first.

Fourth and most important, it’s boring. A press release, no matter how well written, is not a good blog post.

I am not saying you should ignore the press releases, they are often the main source of news in your industry or niche.

Solution?

The answer? Add value!.

People visit your blog to hear from you. They can go to Canons own site or PRWeb to find press releases. Add commentary. Counter the spin. Say why this piece of news is important, or why it’s not important. Start bursting some PR bubbles or hype up the good stuff that you are really excited about.

If you are only going to copy and paste then your blog is spam. Do what you set out to do – write. You have your opinions, share them!

I find it interesting that as bloggers we try to create the best content, the most welcoming and usable designs and more reasons for visitors to return but the majority of us get the best adsense rewards by efficiently driving visitors away.

Nick has touched on the strange relationship bloggers have with adsense but it has started to really concern me.

In the past I created affiliate marketing sites and drove traffic to them with every SEO trick in the book (most of the “tricks” not worth the bits and bytes they were written with). While I made the sites initially to push affiliate products I soon started earning “easy” money from adsense. My whole goal changed to getting traffic in to the site and out through my adsense ads. I quickly learned that I was most successful when people saw my snippet in Google and thought my content would provide what they were looking for but really didn’t. Visitors arriving at the sites would make me most money if they quickly left. My efforts switched from good content to good advertising placement. From quality traffic to maximum traffic. At the point where I peaked in earnings was when I felt the worst about what I was doing.

Writing was what I had got into producing my own websites for. I enjoyed the creativity of it and the feedback I got from people enjoying what I wrote. It wasn’t all bad, I still wrote articles for magazines and online publications, but it still nagged at me that my websites were dangerously approaching spam.

We don’t want spammy blogs do we?

If you follow our advice on metrics you will have installed an adsense tracking script so you can see which pages get the most adsense clicks and where the traffic comes from that converts best. Look at your stats and you will probably see what I do. The majority of your adsense-clicking traffic will be from search engines. You are earning most from turning your site into a revolving door. I don’t know about you but I want to produce valuable blogs. I’m starting to think adsense might be bad for bloggers.

So what’s the answer?

I don’t want to be a profit of doom, it’s more in my nature to be positive so presumably I have an answer?

Actually I do but it’s not easy.

I think we as bloggers who care about quality need to wean ourselves off the GoogleCrack. OK, I don’t mean cold-turkey, and no need to remove it entirely. Just as we don’t agree with building your blog with search engines in mind I think building your blog with adsense in mind might be just as detrimental. Again though, I don’t advocate removing search engine traffic, I don’t advocate removing adsense completely.

The solution seems to me for you to find an income stream that goes against the turnstyle philosophy and fits more with the ideals of a content creator. What revenue can you produce from long term, loyal, motivated fans, rather than transient here today gone tomorrow search visitors?

Going back to my affiliate sites has the answer. The times I made most from affiliate schemes was when I posted good, useful content that customers used to make purchasing decisions. People would buy from newsletters and reviews. Often they would have to see these product mentions several times, they must have been repeat visitors.

I know I have mentioned it before but I think ebooks and other content products are a natural fit, and probably the best bet for writers. It’s a natural progression for a visitor to enjoy your content and then upsell to buying your premium content.

What do you think?

I might feel differently tomorrow, although I doubt it. You might have had similar thoughts already or you might disagree with me. I would be really interested in your thoughts on this, is adsense bad for blogs?

I was shocked and disappointed this morning when I saw the news reported by JenSense that Google are going to try “Rich Media” advertising formats through their network

Google AdSense is moving beyond the traditional text and graphical advertising to rich media, including interstitials, expanding ads and floating ads. AdSense began contacting publishers last week to be involved in the rich media limited beta test.

OK, apparently they are more likely to be site targeted rather than contextual (bloody good job!) but there is very little information out there apart from rumours because of the people taking part being under NDA.

Do Google not get it? The reason we liked Google Adwords in the first place is because they were text.  Let me spell it out Larry and Sergey,  they were not annoying. Now they are going to throw the most annoying and intrusive forms of online media into the mix. Including the evil evil evil intersitials.  You know the ones, the ad that stops you getting to the content you wanted and forces you to wait for a full page ad to load so you can click it off and get to the page you expected to see in the first place. Nice.

Advertising agencies will absolutely love this, I know I used to work for one. They will love it not because these ads work but because they can charge higher production fees for planning, building and deploying them. So they will be a success in terms of ad budget, just not in any way that matters (ie. customer opinion and ROI).

Would you allow these ads on your blog?