Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Get site-targeted with quality, placement and size

As someone on the inside track for site targeting, the AdSense team asked me to share a word with you regarding what advertisers are most keen on when selecting sites for their site-targeted campaigns.

For advertisers -- and especially traditional brand marketers -- the name of the game is brand engagement and association. When purchasing ad space, advertisers focus on three elements of a website: quality of content, physical placement of the ad unit, and ad unit size.

1. Quality - Let's face it, advertisers are all about attracting user interest. When selecting places to advertise online, they look for sites that incorporate high quality and unique content in combination with good navigation, layout and features. It goes to reason that if users like the site, then advertising on these sites will build positive brand association or "positive brand karma".

2. Placement - In site targeting, "above the fold" ad placements are important to advertisers because they're paying for these ads on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) basis. Eye-tracking analysis has shown that users are more likely to engage with ad placements that appear in the upper left-hand corner of a page.



It's important to advertisers that when a page loads, people see and interact with the ad. The greater the level of user engagement, the higher advertisers are willing to bid to display on a site.

Opting into both text and image ads also helps, because it gives advertisers more options for what types of ads they can display on your site.

3. Size - In advertising, size does matter; bigger ads are more likely to be seen. The AdSense program offers many ad formats for you to use on your site. Among them, the 336 x 280 Large Rectangle, 300 x 250 Medium Rectangle, and 250 x 250 Square are the larger ad units and consequently, the ones advertisers most value. Average CPMs for these sizes are usually 300% higher than a typical 468 x 60 Banner ad.

Of course, incorporating these elements doesn't guarantee that your site will be site-targeted, but it can certainly increase the chances by making it more advertiser-friendly.

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