Wahey!  Google have finally released a feature which allows Adsense publishers to change the default font size in their ad units.  This is probably the biggest improvement in the service – ever.  Why?  Because you’ll get vastly increased clickthru rates on your formats, translating into extra revenue.  It’s also a sign that Google is giving smaller publishers the same tools larger publishers have access to.

For quite some time you may have noticed larger publishers are allowed to access tools which allow them to style the placements and look of their ad formats, including font size.  No doubt they saw increased revenues and clickthru rates because of this.

Get ready to earn more – but don’t forget, keep creating great content too!

If you’re a blogger or digital publisher, you’ll generate your revenue from loads of places.  Once of the most consistent revenue earners is Google Adsense, which i’ve discussed several times already on this blog.  However if you’ve optimised your ad colours and placements, and have your eCPM’s and clickthru rates optimised to the hilt, what more can you do to increase your earnings?  There is at least one thing you can do – not just to your adsense placements, but to your whole website – play with the fonts!

I recently did a test over the course of about a week, and changed fonts on one of my sites – site wide – from an Arial standard, to Verdana.  I also made the font size a little smaller to account for the fact that Verdana is a little chunkier than Arial.  I made no other changes to my adsense placements or website, and at the end of the week discovered something very nice.

My changes had resulted in an increased clickthru rate of almost 1%!  Bearing in mind my CTR across all my sites is quite high in comparison to other users i’ve been in touch with, a gain of this size for very little effort was extremely welcome.

Have you experimented with fonts within your adsense formats?

Google Adsense has been around for several years now, and in that time Google have refined and expanded the range of tools available to publishers to monetise content.  The internet is full of articles – some bullshit, some not – about how to earn more from Google Adsense, but here’s a few tips for you from some of my recent optimization.

1. A high CTR (clickthrough rate) doesn’t mean higher earnings

Plenty of bloggers and internet publishers will tell you that the bigger formats – 338×250 and 300×250 work best when showing text-only ads, especially when embedded within content.  Whilst they are correct in some instances, i’ve actually found the 250×250 format to be better performing overall.

In most instances where i’ve tested the 338×250 vs the 250×250, the CTR for the former was higher, but the eCPM (effective CPM) for the 250×250 was double that of larger format.  Why is this?  Simply put, the smaller format usually shows between 2-3 text ads per instance, where the larger can show up to 4 text ads per instance.

When you show more text ads per instance, you’re letting the lower bidders show on your page – don’t forget, Google Adwords is one big bidding system where you pay more per click for the most popular keywords and keystrings.

Experiment – don’t focus on CTR, focus on eCPM.

2. Border when not near content, borderless when within content.

In blog style articles, where you may have several paragraphs of text taking up a large portion of the page, a borderless format implementation works best.  This allows the text ads to blend in with your content in a much neater way, and for the readers eye to be drawn to them in a natural way.

The opposite applies when the ad format is placed well away from content – for example above or to the right of a graph or table where ads cannot be integrated deeply within the content.  A border should be placed around the ads do draw the  eye to them, but don’t be too garish.  If your ad colours are two loud, users will become ‘blind’ to them, and ignore them.

3. Blend your ads to match the colour and layout of your site.

Back in the early days of Adsense, some ‘experts’ recommended using horrible red and yellow combinations to draw the user to the ads, even if your site was a simple black text on white background design.  As well as annoying your users enough to make them stay away forever, loud and annoying colour combinations simply turn users attention away from the ads (see above).

Integrate the text ads to match your site.  Make the ad title colour match the regular link colour across your site, the ad text should match the font of your site, and the url colour should match a secondary colour from your site design, or indeed a neutral grey shape can work well too.

Make sure to follow the guidelines in point (2) above if you’re using borders around your adsense implementations.  The border colour should also match a primary or secondary colour in your site design, or even a neutral shade of grey would work well.

4. Abide by the Adsense Terms of Service.

Don’t try to encourage clicks to your ads by using text like ‘Please click our ads to help us’, or ‘Links we like’.  You can use ‘Ads by Google’, or ‘Sponsored Links’.  That’s it.  If you try to take the piss out of Google they will stop serving ads to you, and may ban you entirely.

Also, don’t click on your own ads, or have your friends click them.  Aside from getting you banned from Google, you’re simply wasting valued advertisers’ money, and nobody wants to piss off the very people who pay their bills!

5. Experiment, track, and keep experimenting.  Set up channels.

Adsense has a great interface for running reports by format, by day, and by channel.  Every time you create some adsense code, add it to a channel so you can track the performance of the format every time you make changes to it.

I use an excel spreadsheet to record the site (I have several), ad size, colour combinations, CTR, eCPM, and earnings for each format on a daily basis.  This allows me to record the effect of every change I make to my adsense implementations, so I can roll back to previous versions if any of my changes have a negative effect.

6. Keep focussing on content!

Don’t let your optimisation of Adsense get in the way of what you should be doing most regularly – creating great websites and great content for Google to serve high-earning ads to.  There are plenty of useless ebooks out there telling you to research high earning keyword topics to write about.

Don’t bother with those ebooks, or the ‘advice’ in them.  Just write about what you love – you’ll be able to write better content more often, increasing repeat visits, adsense earnings, and your enthusiasm for writing!