(written by arkueckelhan)
I recently have been reading a lot of material on adsense optimization, including many articles on this site. The knowledge is great and makes a lot of sense (specifically in getting past ad blindness). But I wanted to emphasize that looking at your own statistics is key…
I run a good sized video game forum and my adsense revenue has been pathetic these last few months. Prior I had been pulling in $4-7 CPM on it (rather good for a forum and especially on such a broad subject). So I began my education on adsense optimization and with a ton of these techniques, my aggregate CTR went absolutely nowhere, and my CPM actually dropped. I am now earning about $0.09 CPM (horrendous compared to prior results).
So, I went back into all my data to run some analysis. I found that FOR MY forum and topic, my CTR shot up tremendously on image ads (and especially rich media formats… up to a $24 CPM!!!). So I will now be testing these formats more heavily with an A/B split test between image&text ads and image only ads to see if the added competition yields better CPC.
Although I am perhaps an exception to this blending rule, I would not have gone into my stats nearly as deeply without the push from great books like Adsense5 and websites like adsenseexperts!
I will try and remember to drop my results once I have a significant sample.
So you need to keep up your pace and if you see revenue falling then change your implementation or optimize it.
Good luck and let us know how it works out for you and what you did :)
I believe the reasoning is just that in my niche, video games, the members are very into graphics. They are seen less as ads than suggestions for games to play (adsense ads show new games usually).
I highly doubt that my results will come on a news blog, but wanted people to remember that it's always about looking at the stats.