Google AdSense Optimization
As you might have already noticed, I’ve added AdSense banners to my blog. I’m not John Chow and I know I won’t make a living from blogging and cheap CPC banners - nor would I want that. But, since the blog is already here, some extra gas money won’t hurt. So I’ve added the banners. AdSense works in the following manner: you insert a small script into your page, Google’s crawler analyzes the content of that page and displays ads relevant to the page’s content. For instance, in a page about computers, the system will display ads from companies related to this field, such as computer manufacturers, software companies, and so on. This is, or at least it’s supposed to be a win-win-win situation. I get paid for sending users to the advertiser’s site, he gets some possible customers and Google takes its share of the deal. But that doesn’t always happen.
The problems with CPC banners is that users develop the so called “banner blindness”. We’re so bombarded with banners and advertisements, that when we look at a web page, we tend to ignore the banners. So I’ve tried to draw the user’s attention to the banners. Making them blink, moving around, making sounds or anything else that could be considered annoying and intrusive was out of the question. I’ve tried to find a way to emphasise the banners without ruining the overall browsing experience.
First, I’ve analyzed my browsing habits:
- I click on the browser’s address-bar and type the URL
- I wait for the page to load and then I start reading it
- I never use the page up / page down keys to scroll
- I scroll using the mouse’s wheel, while keeping the pointer above the text I’m reading
So the solution I’ve came up with is to place the banners in the pointer’s way and use a script.aculo.us effect to highlight the banner everytime the mouse passes over it. This should arouse the user’s interest in the banner. You can see the results below. Hope it works.
First of all I don’t think you will get a lot of ads from your Romanian posts. Then I would think that banner blindness is already out of fashion: avoidance is more like it. Just like with beggars on the street, you don’t just ignore them, you move away from their stink. Highlighting the banners will make them easier to avoid; I like that
Come on, ads like “Adobe Romania is hiring” can prove to be quite interesting for some of my readers.
Only problem is that if you enter the page and just start scrolling (without actually moving the pointer), when the pointer passes over the ad, the “mouseover” event isn’t always triggered (at least in Ff 2.0.0.7).
This might be because the event isn’t passed down from children of the div (i.e. the actual Ad).
I know you’re using Prototype, but as a MooTools user, I’d recommend using the
“mouseenter” custom event
Oops.. had one more thing to say, sorry for the double post
You should also check with the AdSense policies, they’re very picky about the way you display ads and draw attention to them and might not appreciate the “flash”
Yeap! That’s true!
I’ve disabled the mouseover effect for now…