Different strategies to use AdSense Channels

Hello everyone,

today I want to expand on the topic of Adsense Channels and talk about different
strategies on using channels to track your results and optimize your Ad placements.

There are many different strategies for using adsense channels.

In this thread I want to discuss two different approaches on using adsense channels.

• Approach 1: Track each single Ad Unit
• Approach 2: track different ad formats and placements

Let’s start.

Approach 1

You can track each single Ad Unit on each of your sites separately.

If you only run one website this shouldn’t be to hard to do. If you have multiple websites
this approach requires a complex naming system for your adsense channels to make an
effective use out of your statistics.

If you want to know how I utilize adsense channels with Approach 1 and get an example
for a complex naming system read: The Secret to using Channels

Let’s say you run a Blog Website as your only website and you have 4 main categories for topics on which you write about. And let’s say you have 3 Ad Units on each page.

• one large rectangle (336x280px) at the top below the Blog entry title
• one medium rectangle (300x250px) below each Blog entry
• one Square (250x250px) in your Blog navigation

You can now create 3 Channels for each single Ad format.

However to give you much better statistics on your earnings and how users interact with your Blog I would suggest that you create 4 different channels for each of your ad units representing each of your four categories on your Blog.

Name them something like this: Category – Ad Unit – Placement

Example:

• Category 1 – Large rectangle – below title, and
• Category 1 – Medium rectangle – below Blog entry

Of course you need some sort of programming that makes sure you only show Ads with
the “Category 1” channel on Blog entries in Category 1. Alternatively you can enter the
Ad code manually for each Blog entry but that would be much work and I would not
recommend this.

This way you can see which topics on which categories earn you the most and focus on writing more content for those categories. Another advantage of categorizing your Adsense Ads is that you can make better use of adsense placement targeting.

Here you find more information on
How to utilize placement targeting and harness the full potential.

I am using this approach to track all my Adsense Ads and I am quite satisfied with the statistics I get from this.

Approach 2

You can track different metrics like ad size, ad location, category and placement by
assigning different channels for each metric to your ad units.

Currently you are allowed to assign up to 5 channels to each single ad unit.

Approach 1 uses one channel for each ad unit and tracks different metrics by coding
them into the channel names. This approach makes use of the option to add more
channels to a single ad unit by creating separate channels for each single metric.

Let’s take the example for your Blog website we used in Approach 1:

We now create separate channels for the different ad formats we used in our example Blog:

• “336×280” – the large rectangle format
• “300×250” – the medium rectangle format
• “250×250” – the square

Then we create two channels for the placement:

• “ATF” – Above the fold for all ad units in the main visible area
• “BTF” – Below the fold for all ad units where the user has to scroll down to see them

We can also create three channels for the ad location:

• “Left Side” – for all ads on the left
• “Middle” – for all ads located in the middle of the page
• “Right Side” – for all ads located at the right side

Then we can create 5 channels to represent the different categories

• “Homepage” – All ads that appear on the homepage/index page (these ads are specifically interesting to some advertisers for placement targeting)
• “Category 1” – All ads that appear on entries in category 1
• “Category 2” – All ads that appear on entries in category 2
• “Category 3” – All ads that appear on entries in category 3
• “Category 4” – All ads that appear on entries in category 4

Now we create different Ad units and assign them different channels.

For example we now create the ad unit “Large Rectangle” that we want to place below
each Blog entry title for all Blog entries in Category 1.

We now assign them these for channels:

• 336×280
• ATF
• Middle
• Category 1

And then we create a second Ad unit for a “Medium Rectangle” that we want to place
below each Blog entry for all Blog entries in Category 2.

We assign them these for channels:

• 300×250
• BTF
• Middle
• Category 2

You need to create new Ad units for each single ad location you want to place ads in and assign the corresponding 4 channels to each of those ad units.

With these different channels we are now able to track all the interesting metrics and compare them to optimize our adsense results.

For example you can compare the performance of the large rectangle (336x280px) with the medium rectangle (300x250px) and the square ad unit (250x250px) by comparing the three channels with each other.

Or you can compare the performance of your ads in the different categories by selecting the 4 category channels.

Or you can compare how well ad units perform based on their location by comparing ad units above the fold with below the fold.

With these metrics you can now optimize your Ad inventory.

Let’s say you see that your large rectangle ads (336x280px) perform way better then
your medium rectangle (300x250px) and the medium rectangle way better then
your square ad unit (250x250px).

If you know that you can replace your square ad unit with either a large rectangle
or with the medium rectangle depending on which formats fits your website and the
ad location best. This way you can increase your revenue easily.

These are 2 different approaches to using adsense channels to track your results and
utilize them to optimize your ad inventory. I am sure that there are countless more
approaches for generating useful statistics to help you optimize your inventory.

What is your approach on channels?

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