This Adsense trick might even be bordering on Adwords trick territory, but here goes anyway. When you create an Adwords advert, you can specify what URLs you want your ad to appear on in the content network. In other words, if you know of a very popular site in your niche, you could try and direct some of its traffic to your site by specifying that your ad will appear on that site only. Your advert will appear as typical Adsense that visitors can click on and for which the owner of that site will get paid. Yes, you will be paying your competitor for clicks on your ads, but it may be worth it for the gain in traffic you experience.
You may have seen the infamous “Are you sick of Digitalpoint forums” advert that was targeted to appear on none other than Digitalpoint pages. Whilst there is heated debate over the ethics of such marketing strategies (some call it too aggressive), there is no doubt that it created huge publicity for Wickedfire.
I’ve seen less controversial example of this kind of URL targeting in the appearance of John Chow’s adverts on webmaster-talk, also.
Additionally, it will help you assess how well each of your ad units is performing. If you aren’t monitoring performance, you won’t be able to improve it effectively.
What some publishers do is present a sequence of thumbnail images on their page that are so small that the viewer has to click on them to view the larger version of the image. After the “click to enlarge” habit is firmly installed, the viewer is a little click happy by the time they reach the publisher’s strategically placed image Adsense.
You may have seen the infamous “Are you sick of Digitalpoint forums” advert that was targeted to appear on none other than Digitalpoint pages. Whilst there is heated debate over the ethics of such marketing strategies (some call it too aggressive), there is no doubt that it created huge publicity for Wickedfire.
I’ve seen less controversial example of this kind of URL targeting in the appearance of John Chow’s adverts on webmaster-talk, also.
Adsense Trick 2
The above Adsense trick is but one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is the ability to prevent adverts for certain URLs from appearing on your pages. Simply collect a list of offending URLs and enter them in the Adsense Competitive Ad Filter. If no display/destination URL is apparent on the advert, you may need to download and install the Google Adsense preview tool. Once the URL is in the Competitive Ad Filter, adverts for it will no longer appear.
Adsense Trick 3
This Adsense trick is all about the blending of your adverts. As a general rule, Adsense that sticks out like a sore thumb is a Bad Thing. Vistors will usually not click on these ads. Whilst blending the display of the adverts will go some way to giving your whole page a more coherent look and feel, some Adsense publishers go further and disguise their Adsense as navigational links. They do this by doing the following:- adopting the same styles for the Adsense that are used for other links on the page. This means using the same font, colour, weight, underline etc.
- making the background of the Adsense the same colour as the background of the page.
- making the border the same colour as the page.
Adsense Trick 4
This technique is at the other end of the spectrum to blending adsense: draw the viewer’s attention to the adverts by decorating them. I’ve seen different variations of this method. There is the plain old “look at this” graphic, similar to that seen on the Adsense here. Then there are the more elaborate designs that make it look like the Adsense is actually a part of the image. If you look closely, there is an example of decorated Adsense on this page.Adsense Trick 5
Use “images only” as the format of your Adsense. Often, when you select Text and image ads for your ad unit, you will get text ads displayed, making the image variety a novelty. Adding image ads to your pages can brighten them up and take the place of graphics you would otherwise add. The only problem with selecting image ads only is that you are then narrowing down the list of advertisers who will display their ad on your site. It could be that there are only one or two advertisers that use this formart – or sometimes none. The best thing to do is try it out and check that you get a good variety of adverts displayed.Adsense Trick 6
Use link units. This is the forgotten format for Adsense. Link units can blend seemlessly into your page content. Always, the trick is to test, test and test some more. Many use link units because they can be confused with menu navigation, and others even manipulate their navigational links to look like Adsense link units.Adsense Trick 7
If you create a new colour scheme for your Adsense, save it. This means that you can use it again later, without having to go through the whole rigmarole of determining what colours to use. Even if you think you’ll never use the colour scheme again – save it anyway, just to be on the safe side.Adsense Trick 8
Always, always, always use different channels for your different websites. If you are trying to sell a websites whose revenue comes from Adsense, interested bidders will insist on you breaking down Adsense figures by channel so that they can know for sure just how much is attributable to the site being sold.Additionally, it will help you assess how well each of your ad units is performing. If you aren’t monitoring performance, you won’t be able to improve it effectively.
Adsense Trick 9
All those hypnotherapists or salespeople out there will be familiar with the “yes set”. Establish a pattern where the customer gets into the habit of saying “yes”, and then pop the all important question (whatever that may be). The theory is that because the customer has already established the habit of saying “yes”, they are more likely to continue. This Adsense trick establishes a pattern in a similar way, and I’ve seen it used only rarely.What some publishers do is present a sequence of thumbnail images on their page that are so small that the viewer has to click on them to view the larger version of the image. After the “click to enlarge” habit is firmly installed, the viewer is a little click happy by the time they reach the publisher’s strategically placed image Adsense.
