More Google Love for 300×250 Ad Sizes
Posted by Stephen on
January 27, 2007
Damn, do I feel special! My people at Google emailed me today regarding a new custom placement program, and guess what, they selected Futurelooks! Google is trying out what is known as “Placement Packs” which are selections of individually reviewed sites designed for their largest brand advertisers. How cool is that? But in order for them to approve my selection, they would need me to make more love with the Google 300×250 ad creative.
The square creatives have always done well for me. Both the 300×250 and the 336×280 have been excellent performers. I run them anyway, so it’s not a big deal. The only change I needed to make was since I run the 336×280 at the top of all the content articles, I just needed to swap the creative to the 300×250. The other thing that they asked me to do was to allow my Google Channels to be targeted by advertisers. Google channels help me determine how successful my ad placements are by allowing me to monitor each ads performance individually. So for example, if I placed an ad in a new spot on one of my sites, I could monitor that channel that I’ve created to see how well or poorly it has done. If you don’t use channels, there is your tip of the day. Use them to monitor your success and tweak accordingly.
The new targeted channels allow advertisers to bid on and target parts of my site specifically. So for example, since my above the fold 300×250 or 336×280 ads do extremely well, advertisers will need to pay a lot more to get featured there versus the other placements on my sites. The only downside is for the advertisers that used to enjoy those placements without having to pay a premium for them. Of course, the upside for me is higher potential revenue, and for my readers, better targeted ads from premium advertisers.
Although you might not be selected for Google’s Placement packs, you still have the potential to command more for your ads simply by targeting their placement by using Google’s ad placement feature to define your ad slots to advertisers. You can find out more about how to set those up here. This also gives advertisers an idea of where their ads will be going so that they can justify bidding for the best spots. So tweak those placements and get them targeted. The better your ad placements perform, the more money you can potentially make from advertisers fighting over them. Goodluck!
I’m sorry to bring down your enthusiasm, but take a look at this
Allen.H
Think about it another way. How many DIDN’T? I think that anything that allows you to charge MORE for your real estate is a good thing.
Now go feel special again
Is the same thing that John Chow has on his site with people bidding on this ads?
Hey Gary!
I’m not sure, but if you are referring to Google Adwords and how people are bidding to get their ads to show on John’s site, that’s one thing. That’s just to get them to show up. This is the next level where advertisers will now have to bid more to get them to show up in the best possible spots ATF (Above the Fold).
I got the same mail last week. I switched some pages to 300×250 but I haven’t seen much results yet.
300X250 takes up a big bunch of real estate, they should be paying a heck of a lot more.
It has actually gone up for me, and I’m serving a lot more CPM ads too, which pay me regardless of whether people click or not.
Which CPM ads are you finding work best?
I’m getting a lot of Windows VISTA ads lately. Vonage was going nuts too. Overall though, some days are easily higher than when I was running the 336×280 on top, while other days it is just average. I guess there is somewhat of an increase.