One Of The Worst Examples Of Google AdSense Placement That I’ve Seen In A Long Time

I recently came across one of the worst examples of Google AdSense placement I have seen on a website in a very long time.

It was actually on a merchant’s website that I had visited with my affiliate hat on, looking for new products to promote. I won’t mention them by name because I’ve no wish to embarrass them, but I thought their website’s homepage is as good an example of how NOT to deploy Google AdSense on your website as you’ll come across.

Take a look at the screenshot below (I’ve removed the merchant’s name):

To be honest, when I first visited the site, I thought I had been somehow redirected to BoysStuff.co.uk. That’s because right at the very top of the homepage is the BoysStuff logo, not the merchant’s. Then I realised it was actually a Google AdSense banner.

If a picture – or a banner in this instance – speaks a thousand words, here’s what that merchant is saying to visitors:

“Thanks for visiting our website. We think so little of what we have to offer you that we are allowing you the opportunity to visit another totally unrelated website immediately.”

It also says to me as an affiliate that this merchant probably isn’t worth promoting because they are more interested in earning revenue from AdSense than in selling products and paying me a commission.

So what’s gone wrong? First, the merchant has placed Google AdSense code at the very top of their homepage. Secondly, the merchant has ticked the box to allow image as well as text ads. The result? A header-like banner that is bigger, better and brighter than their own heading which is subsequently lost underneath.

Down the right hand side of the website’s homepage, proudly above the fold, is more Google Adsense advertising, this time for Bravissimo. Again the ad is not particularly relevant to what this merchant offers (beyong the fact that most female visitors wear bras), but is in fact an example of behavioural advertising. Basically, because I had just spent a few hours trawling bra websites (purely for research purposes I might add!), Google AdSense thinks that I will want to see bra advertisements for the rest of the day, even when I’m visiting totally unrelated forums and websites. In short, I don’t.

I’m not a big fan of behavioural advertising (or behavioural targeting as it is often called). A few months ago I was even asked to look at someone’s computer because they thought it had been infected by a virus or spyware because certain ads were constantly appearing on virtually every website that the person visited.

But whatever your thoughts on behavioural advertising, I think we can all agree that this particular merchant isn’t making best use of its homepage. Not if it wants to shift product anyway.

Should a merchant even be displaying Google AdSense? On the homepage and above the fold, almost certainly not. A merchant should be focused on selling its own products and services, not hoping to earn pennies a click from AdSense.

That said, there are definitely opportunities for any website owner to run Google AdSense (or similar advertising) without impacting on the reason they are in business. Amazon, for example, have this completely sussed. Scroll down any product page on Amazon and chances are you will come across what it calls Sponsored Links.

Amazon have obviously worked out that if you are that far down a page and haven’t committed to buy, the chances of you leaving that page (and possibly the site) are high. And if that’s the case, they might as well give themselves the opportunity to earn something as you do so. With the traffic that sites like Amazon generate, that will add up to a lot of somethings.

Amazon explain this to customers like this:

“Sponsored links are advertisements that Amazon.co.uk provides for you. We receive sponsored links from third-parties. When you click on a sponsored link, we get revenue. All sponsored links are matched to your recent searches or the content of the page. For example, if you search for “Bruce Springsteen” or view pages about Bruce Springsteen, the sponsored links may point to sites that sell tickets to his concerts or provide information about him. Generating additional revenue from sponsored links allows us to offer lower prices to you – something we are dedicated to doing in every way we can.”

Most people reading this won’t be merchants. They will be people like me, looking for ways to best integrate AdSense into their own websites to monetise them. My advice is to pay very close attention to how Amazon does business because what they don’t know about online marketing probably isn’t worth knowing.

I would also suggest that you keep an eye out for Google AdSense as you surf the Net. See where it fits in effortlessly on pages and look out for clumsy examples that jar with you as a visitor. Think about where it adds value to your surfing experience and where it obviously adds nothing. Then test the best examples that you find on your own website and see how it works for you.

PS If you would like to see some case studies of how other website owners are using Google AdSense effectively to monetise their sites, here’s some from Google itself:
Google AdSense Case Studies

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