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It seems 'logic' that if you put more ads on a page, it 'should' generate more revenues. However, someone could argue that too many ads repel users, and therefore, pages with less ads are would be visited more often.

Has anyone got practical experience to share about this? Does putting more ads on a page necessarily generate more revenues in practice?

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  • Ah, so if taking a multivitamin a day improves my health, then taking 1000 multivitamins a day must improve my health even more! Brilliant, I'm gonna live forever! Feb 13, 2012 at 11:31
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    Yes, that's my question about Google ads. Do you have experience to share? Feb 13, 2012 at 11:37

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Be careful. Google will penalize too many ads above the fold.

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As an Information Architect I'd tell you users are there for the content and stay for the content, not the ads. They accept that ads pay for the sites they use, but dislike being forcibly interrupted or distracted during their use of a site.

The ad industry has resorted to larger and more shouty adverts, like those that @Chrys refers to in his answer, alongside more stealthy adverts that masquerade as content in order to fool the user and keep revenues up.

The end result is users are more suspicious and resentful of adverts, when this is combined with increased awareness of security issues users are simply less willing to click and increasingly frustrated with the page 'noise'.

So to answer your question, no, more ads may actually equal less revenue and less users (this is what @Lèsemajesté was using sarcasm to say).

The keys are:-

  1. Keeping the ads to a minimum.

  2. Ensuring their placement on the is well thought out - in the users eyeline but not too aggressive or distracting.

  3. Quality of the content AND advert is good, and appropriate for your audience.

Basically users won't click ads that are annoying and there is no point advertising financial services on a cookery site unless it's a package to help chef's start a business for example.

I'd suggest taking a look at heatmap and eyetracking studies (Jakob Nielsen's 'F-Shape' is a good place to start) and give more consideration to the products your site advertises.

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  • Exactly. It's very poor logic to say that more ads automatically equals more revenue. Your revenue is based on ad impressions or clicks. Increasing those will increase revenue; but there's no basis for thinking that increasing ads will automatically do that. If more ads drives down traffic or increases your bounce rate, then this would obviously reduce ad revenue. If increasing ad revenue were so easy then most webmasters would just double up on ads instead of trying to increase their readership via better content. Feb 13, 2012 at 12:03
  • @Lèsemajesté agreed it is a case of 'post hoc ergo procter hoc' but the 'why' is more interesting than the 'are'. I probably need to expand on this answer a little more tonight when I have more time. Feb 13, 2012 at 12:17

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