What you told us about how you display ads on your sites

 

Editor’s Note: Since September of last year, we’ve posted a series of polls within our secure publisher interface asking a variety of questions on themes such as traffic, optimization and relevancy. Today’s post is the second in a series by Senior Insight Manager Todd Lombardo in which he will share your opinions and provide some pointers from Yahoo! team members, with the aim of helping you become a better publisher.

 

Following up on our previous post about optimization, below are the results from the questions we asked our readers. Our goal is to help you understand what your fellow publishers are doing, and get you thinking about how you can improve your own publishing experience.

 

Q: Where do you see the most successful ad placement?

 

Answer	Response (%)
Leaderboard	27.32
Right rail	9.28
Left rail	7.88
Embedded in content	44.66
Below the fold	1.93
Rotating positions	4.73
Total	100%

 

Ads embedded in content is the clear leader, with almost half of you indicating that this is where you see the most successful ad placement, followed by leaderboard placement for about a quarter of responses.

 

These results were not surprising to the team here at Yahoo! Publisher Network, though we have found through our own data that the right rail also performs well. Check out this post from last May, where we discussed ad placement performance and eye-tracking studies. It does make sense that more visible ads—such as those at the top of a page or embedded within content—will perform better, though optimal ad placement will vary depending on individual sites and their user bases.

 

Here’s another question we asked you, this one about ad design:

 

Q: Do you find it more successful to select ad colors that blend in with your site or contrast?

 

Answer	Response (%)
Blend in	85.71
Contrast	10.46
Other	3.82
Total	100%

  

It’s overwhelmingly clear that you design ads to blend into your site, rather than to contrast. We expected that the response would be more evenly split between “Contrast” and “Blend in,” due to the fact that contrasting ads may work better to gain attention. 

 

Blend in or stand out?
To gain further insight, we again tapped into our experts here at Yahoo! Publisher Network to provide some helpful guidance.

 

Margaret Holland, Senior Account Manager, and Cody Simms from our Product Management team both recommend that, when deciding how to run ads on your sites, publishers should keep the bigger picture in mind. In other words, consider the needs of all parties—users, yourselves as publishers and advertisers—when deciding how and where to place ads.

 

For example, your site visitor will generally have a unique mindset compared to other media—they are active, rather than passive users. What’s the difference?

 

A passive medium creates a one-way dialogue, such as television, with a passive user absorbing content. Generally, users are not actively involved, and there is little expectation of choice. Ads in this space target very broadly, usually by demographics.

 

Conversely, an active user usually has the responsibility of choice. For example, if a user visits a computer repair website, there is a defined need driving this active engagement. So a clearly defined, corresponding ad related to this topic will likely perform well.

 

As publishers, you have told us that your needs are to reach an audience, drive traffic, satisfy users and harvest the value of your audience. Providing useful, trustworthy content and relevant, clearly delineated ads can help you work towards these objectives.

 

Advertisers’ needs are relatively straightforward. They are willing to pay for quality leads with high rates of conversion. In addition to behavioral and demographic targeting, quality leads can be delivered through contextually relevant ad placement. Understanding this helps guide ads to be relevant on each page of your site.

 

Taking Action

As publishers, understanding the above can help guide us towards improved performance, as follows:

 

1.) Recognize your unique, active user, and leverage this insight by focusing on useful content and targeted ads. Even when embedded in content, clearly distinguish between the two. Users will decide if they want to click.

 

2.) Test ad placements to work toward improved performance for you, and more qualified leads for advertisers. For example, try different single placements (e.g., leaderboards in week one, left rails in week two, etc.), and then compare results. Additionally, test combinations (e.g., right rail plus embedded ad) to see if multiple messages on a single page improve performance. Know your upper limit and recognize that each page may perform differently based on specific page content.

 

3.) Individual pages within the same site may vary. Therefore, test ad designs in a similar fashion to number 2, above, to help you work toward improvement for your site(s). For some, contrasting ads may work, while others may find ads that blend in perform better.

 

4.) Don’t clutter your pages with too much content or too many ads. This can lead to higher abandon rates or a lower rate of returning users. Think of yourself as helping your user along an information path: Ask yourself if your site provides a good user experience, and what else a user might need, be it photos, maps, or something else. Be clear with links; they are promises of what’s to come.

 

5.) Above all, continue to maintain relevancy with your ads. Choose categories that make sense for your content and your users’ interests. Whether they are embedded in content or not, performance should improve with greater relevancy.

 

Are there additional ways, through placement, ad design or other methods, that you have found impact your performance? What else should we ask you about?

 

—Todd Lombardo, Senior Insight Manager