Adsense optimization tip: Go for wider ad units

Last week I received an email from the Google Adsense Optimization Team giving me tips on how to supposedly increase my Adsense earnings. I even had to double-check that the email was really from them and not a phishing email.

Anyway, here goes their ad optimization tip.

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“Go Wide” and earn more with your AdSense ads

Hello,

We wanted to let you know about a simple but effective tip that can help you to increase your AdSense earnings.

You’re currently using some 120×600 Skyscraper or Square (250 x 250) Google ad units on your web pages. We’ve found that many of our publishers have been able to increase both their click-through rates and revenue by upgrading these ad units to the wider versions: the 160×600 Wide Skyscraper instead of the Skyscraper, and the Medium (300 x 250) or Large Rectangle (336×280) instead of the Square.

Wider formats are more successful for several reasons:

• 1. Advertisers looking to target your site prefer wider formats, because there are more rich media (flash, video and gadget) as well as image ads available in these sizes. Put simply, advertisers are often interested in branding and visibility, and therefore they opt for larger, more visible ad formats.

• 2. Changing to a wider ad format generally increases the number of ads competing to appear in the unit, which usually results in higher CPMs.

• 3. The wider formats allow for more horizontal text, which is easier for users to read and therefore more likely to be noticed and clicked on.

We encourage you to test these wider ad units on a few of your pages for a few weeks. If you’re happy with their performance, we recommend rolling out this change across your site to maximize your revenue potential.

We wish you continued success with AdSense!

Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Optimization Team

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I’ll try their suggestion and replace one 250×250 Square ad unit I’m using with a 336×280 Large Rectangle unit.

We’ll see whether the Adsense Optimization Team’s tip is correct or not.