Why Your Opinion Loses You Ad Revenue

This post was most recently updated on January 10th, 2023

Everybody wants a pretty and functional website. However, your take on what a pretty and functional website is just one opinion. Many website owners are biased about their own website, to begin with. Everybody thinks differently. The goal is to get a website that is functional and aesthetically pleasing to every that visits your page, and that’s really not easy to do. Even though your market may all fall into the same kinds of categories, everyone is unique.

The same goes for the ad revenue and advertising side. As a website owner, you might think, “My ads are in the most visible placements, with the best creatives to be integrated into my website. It looks good to me, therefore, it looks good to everyone else.” Wrong! It’s kind of like that piece of clothing you own and love – but everyone around you makes fun of constantly! You can’t assume that everyone loves what your ads look like. In fact, you can never be sure you are utilizing the optimal ad placements and creatives till you test, test and then test again.

How do you do this? Google Website Optimizer is your key to finding out what works best for your user base. With Google Website Optimizer you have two choices:

1. A/B Testing
2. Multivariate Testing

A/B testing is the simpler of the two. It allows you to create several versions of your website with different ad structures. I recommend starting with A/B testing to find the optimal ad sizes and ad placements.

Once you’ve found the winners you can move onto multivariate testing. Multivariate testing allows you to test every combination of several factors. For example, say your A/B testing concluded that the 728×90, 300×250 and the 160×600 were the best performing ad sizes. You can then use multivariate testing to place these ad sizes in each of the optimal placements. You can test each combination of ad sizes and see what is the optimal number of ads, what sizes fit best in what place and how each ad size and placement reacts to each other. Multivariate testing is also great for optimizing Google AdSense or Chitika creatives.

You can test every combination of creative styling (eg. Border color, font, font color, etc.) to find the optimal blend. Most of us don’t give a second thought to fonts and colors, but ignoring these things isn’t a good idea at all.

Testing is the best way to find the optimal ad structure to your website because it takes out all the guesswork. Plus, testing is the only way to determine whether or not that yellow and pink ad scheme you picked out is really a good idea (it’s probably not!).

Numbers don’t lie, opinions do (even if your mom says it’s pretty!).

If you’d like to learn how to utilize Google Website Optimizer to further monetize your website, Contact Us Here. We’ll help you build the best ads out there – ones that everyone visiting your site will like!

Kean Graham

Kean Graham is the CEO and founder of MonetizeMore & a pioneer in the Adtech Industry. He is the resident expert in Ad Optimization, covering areas like Adsense Optimization,GAM Management, and third-party ad network partnerships. Kean believes in the supremacy of direct publisher deals and holistic optimization as keys to effective and consistent ad revenue increases.