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Ad size and placement

You've got the site, and the visitors and you've been accepted into AdSense. Now, where should you place your ads to give you the best results? What sizes and shapes should you use? This tutorial will help you get better performance from your Google AdSense ads right away!



Ad sizes

Google offers a variety of ad sizes that are sure to fit into the layout and structure of any site. According to Google, the most successful size is the large rectangle (336 x 280). You'll also have good luck with the medum rectangle and square. Google also says the 160 x 600 wide skyscraper is successful, but I've had trouble fitting that size into the layouts of my sites.

Experiment to see what works best for you. Remember, you're allowed three ads per page, so you'll probably use a combination of sizes to get them to fit into the layout of your site. Here are a few more tips on size:
  • Keep track of which sizes are performing better on your site thru the use of channels.
  • Try using a 120 x 600 skyscraper on the left side of the page (under your navigation buttons).
  • Intersperse ads with long blocks of content. Not only will this improve appearance by breaking up large areas of text, you may get clicks on the ads in between.

 

Ad placement

Google's heat map (shown on the right) will give you a pretty good idea of the location of your best performing ads:

  • The darker areas are most effective
  • The lighter the box, the less successful ads placed there will be.
  • As you can see, the most effective place (dark orange) to put an ad is smack dab in the middle of your content!

 

 
   

Additional tips

  • Since you're only allowed three ads per page, try to place them "above the fold" (on the 1st screen) if possible. That way your visitors will see the ads- even if they don't scroll down the page.
  • If you have long articles consider splitting them into several pages. This helps you in two ways:
    • Your pages sizes won't be too large.
    • You can run additional AdSense ads on subsequent pages of the article.
   
 
      
 

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