AdSense Ad Balance tool is making publishers to reduce ad fill rate claiming less ad same revenue. Here’s why you should give it a try too.
A new feature by AdSense, Ad Balance created a lot of buzz as Google introduced it. In January 2018, we finally got AdSense Ad Balance, which came along with an experiment option, details of which will be discussed later as you read.
The default settings of AdSense allow 100% ads to be displayed on your webpage. Using Ad Balance, you can reduce this percentage, as per your requirements. Now the question arises, “Why would we want to reduce ad display percentage?”
To answer that question, let’s start with the most basic one.
What is Ad Balance?
Ad Balance is a feature introduced by the Google AdSense using which you can reduce the number of ads being shown on your website. This helps you focus on best performing ads and retain your ad revenue while improving user experience.
A publisher has a fixed number of ad slots available to display ads and this number is determined by the publisher themselves. Using the Ad Balance settings, a number of ads being shown can be reduced even when bandwidth allows to display all of them.
On Ad Balance page, you will see a slider (ad fill rate slider). If you move this slider, you will see the impact in the form of estimated earning and ad display percentage. A publisher can set the ad fill rate slider to a point where ads can be minimized without hurting the earning.
What is the Need to Balance Ad?
This may sound confusing but lowering the ad fill rate can actually result in an increase in revenue by focussing on better-performing ads. Still confused? Well, you can always run an experiment to check the performance.
All the ads being displayed on your webpage don’t always yield results. Not to forget the fact that, visitors get annoyed by seeing too many ads on a webpage. Keeping all this in mind, reducing the number of ads being displayed is a good idea.
Another reason to use AdSense Ad Balance feature is Google’s new policy. All the sites violating ad density norms will be given “Failing” status. Following which Chrome will block ads on these websites unless publishers submit their sites for abusive experience review.
Huffington Post stated that 30% visitors actively use methods to avoid banner ads. They added, “With so many people tuning out marketing messages on their favourite websites, publishers risk seriously undermining their relationship with audiences. What good is a 100% fill rate if nobody wants to actually see the ads being served?”
Yes, there are other means to recover ad revenue lost due to ad blockers. But when Google AdSense is offering a method to reduce number of ads being served on your website without hurting your earnings—you should definitely give it a try.
How to Setup Ad Balance using AdSense Settings?
- Sign in to your Google AdSense Account.
- Click on Ads > Ad Balance.
- A slider will appear on your screen, move this slider to set ad fill rate. Make sure to check the estimated impact on revenue.
- Lastly, click on Apply button to save settings.
Dropping a small number of ads on your site is not going to affect the earnings much. However, it will surely improve the user’s experience of your website. If you put the ad fill rate slider between 70% to 100%, the estimated earning will sustain 100% rate.
If you’re still not sure whether Ad Balance will work, you can try an Ad Balance Experiment.
How to Create and Run Ad Balance Experiment with Google AdSense?
AdSense allows user to create experimental ads to compare one ad layout to another. Using this data, you can implement the setting that seems most beneficial to you.
Here’s how you can do it:
- On Google AdSense dashboard, click on Optimization > Experiments.
- Ad experiments options will appear viz. Blocking controls experiments, Ad Balance experiments, Custom search style experiments, and Automatic experiments.
- Choose Ad Balance experiment and give this experiment a name. Once you have created an experiment, it’s time to monitor it.
- With sufficient data, you can choose the winner and implement the desired settings.
While setting up the Ad Balance Experiment, you will come across the option to allow Google to implement the winning variant automatically. If you haven’t chosen this option, Google will wait 90 days for your response to select a winner and after that your experiment will be terminated.
Does Ad Balance work Perfectly?
Running Google Ad Balance experiment is not as easy as it may sound. Publisher needs to consider various criteria that affect display ads (ad type, ad location, and ad density). Also, applying the experiment on each landing page can be time-consuming. Monitoring and discovering the best-performing variants and can take months.
There is no doubt that Google wants publishers and advertisers to monetize more by selling and buying digital inventory.
Sadly, Ad Balance is not a perfect tool yet. The success of display ads depends on various factors and measuring it with one experiment will not give accurate results.
What did we Understand?
As a publisher, you should be concerned with your visitor’s experience. Using banner ads to generate revenue is fair. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to bombard their screens with ads.
Implementing Ad Balance is a good idea for most publishers. It may have little or no effect on ad revenue but it will improve user experience. Ad Balance is a new feature by AdSense and it requires some updates and improvements, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Key Take Away
- AdSense allows 100% of ads to be displayed on your webpage. Using Ad Balance, you can reduce this percentage.
- On the Ad Balance page, you can adjust the ad fill rate slider to minimize ads without hurting the earning.
- Dropping a small number of ads will not affect your earnings much, but it will improve the user’s experience of your website.
FAQs
To maximize your AdSense earnings, here are some tips to get your site in the best shape possible:-
I. Content should be unique and valuable.
II. Create a sticky website.
III. Provide your visitors with multiple ways to return to your site.
IV. Make your user experience better.
Three steps to AdSense:-
I. You make your ad spaces available.
II. Your site displays the highest paying ads.
III. You are paid. Your ad space is available by pasting ad code on your site, and you choose where the ads will appear. In a real-time auction, advertisers bid on your ad spaces.
When you use AdSense, you will only get paid if you earn at least $100. Besides Google, other ad networks cannot be used in conjunction with it. Moreover, your account can be terminated for a variety of reasons, ranging from policy violations to click fraud.
Shubham is a digital marketer with rich experience working in the advertisement technology industry. He has vast experience in the programmatic industry, driving business strategy and scaling functions including but not limited to growth and marketing, Operations, process optimization, and Sales.
4 Comments
1.> How many ads should placed in one article ? (including link ads and Text/display ads)
2. > More number of ads = low CPC . Is it True?
3.> Which size of adsense ads pay high cpc?
4.> Please suggest me number of ads and size for my blog.
5.> How many days should I wait to chose ad balance rate?
I am new to google adsense and blogging please help me.
Thank You !
Hi Biplab,
The answer depends on a lot of factors that one sentence reply is not possible.
However, I recommend you to A/B test the ad units, ad sizes, and ad types on your webpages. Say, you add 4 ad units on 50% of your webpages and 6 ad units on the rest of 50%. Monitor the page-RPM of these pages to determine the profitable number of ad units. You can do the same for ad size and layout. AdSense offers the experiment feature. Take your time to study it >> https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6321879?hl=en
Add ad testing to your practice to see better results. Take the help of ad operations if revenue optimization is required.
Thanks
Rashmita Behera
i have set my own to 50% ad fill rate and the result was amazing as i saw 15% increase on my overall earnings, i only allow just 4 days and the result is very amazing.
Thanks a lot for this.
Hello sir, i have recently changed my ad balance settings how much takes time to results ?