Your AdSense Ad With The Highest Click Through Rate Should Appear First In Your HTML

Some Google AdSense tips are not very obvious at first. This is definitely more of an advanced tip, one that I didn't figure out until after a year and a half of using AdSense, but it will help to maximize your AdSense earnings if you can wrap your head around it and properly implement it. The tip is that you will make more money with AdSense if you make your AdSense ad with the highest click through rate (CTR) appear before all other AdSense ads in your site's HTML. 

Stated as simply as possible, the first AdSense ad unit on your page will contain the highest-paying ads. One more time to make sure you fully understand this:  The Google AdSense ad unit that appears first in your site's HTML will contain the ads that will pay you the most for every click. Now that you understand this point let me explain why.

Google AdSense ads are auction-based. This means that every advertiser using Google AdWords can set their own max price for how much they are willing to pay Google for every click, which directly affects how much Google pays you for every click. The ad space on your pages is auctioned off to the highest bidder so you are always making the most money possible per click. Google obviously wants to pay you more money because this means Google is making more money, so Google will show the highest CPC ads first to maximize click profits.

You can think of the ads on your site as items up for auction on eBay, and AdWords advertisers are bidding on your ad spaces. The highest AdWords bidders with keywords relevant to your site's content will get priority over your site's ad space. But these bidders aren't necessarily bidding on specific ad spaces on your page (unless they specifically bid on your Custom Channels, more on that in a future article), by default they are bidding on the first AdSense ad that appears in your site's HTML.

This means that the first AdSense ads displayed in your site's HTML will always contain the highest paying ads.

Now that we understand why the first ad in your HTML will pay you the most per click, it's time to take advantage of the information. For most websites, the ads with the highest click through rates (CTR) will be the ads directly in your content. It differs on every site, and you won't really know for sure until you have played around with your ad placements to see which ads are performing the best. Once you have figured out which ad unit has the highest CTR on your site, you will need to find a way to make this AdSense ad appear first in your HTML.

Here on JoomlaDigger.com I had to play around with the ad placements quite a bit. I had a banner ad at the top of the site, a vertical ad on the left sidebar, and an ad within the article content. My ad with the highest CTR was the ad embedded directly in my content, but it also had the lowest cost per click (CPC) because the banner ad and sidebar ad appeared first in my HTML.

Article by P.J. Swesey Open source software news and directory of open source software.

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Keep in mind that your formula for AdSense earnings is very simple:  CTR * CPC * Page Impressions = Money Paid To You By AdSense. Get your highest paying ads aligned with your highest click through rate ad and you will be maximizing your profits from Google AdSense.