Jen noticed that Adsense have made another change and now will serve less ads per unit if they feel that it has a better chance of making you (and them) money. Googe’s description of this change is:
‘To increase monetization on your site and improve the relevance of ads, AdSense now varies the number of text ads that appear in a given ad unit. In cases where we determine that increasing the size of the most relevant ads will improve performance, we’ll drop the lowest-performing ad or ads and expand the remaining ones to fill the entire unit. Showing fewer ads works to your advantage, allowing the better-performing ads to draw more user attention and click-throughs. Google AdSense technology will automatically determine the optimal number of ads to display on any page and will only show fewer ads when doing so will make you more money!’
In other Adsense related news – Google are also making changes to Adwords (the Advertisers side of Adsense) and will test longer descriptions on ads (up to 200 characters). Read more about this at Search Engine Journal.
I’ve noticed this already, though google seems to do it on a block by block basis.
My prime spot delivered one ad instead of two, but the skyscraper (which you need to scroll to see all of it) was still full.
As an advertiser, I’m glad Google is extending the length of its allowable ads. It’s one advantage Yahoo has had. Business.com too.
[…] Perhaps connected to the Adsense move to vary the number of text ads in an ad unit is this new centered design of Adsense ad that I spotted today on my digital camera review blog. It’s in a 468 x 60 ad block and is actually quite striking on the page. […]
I wish I could know which ad format is getting the most clicks, the reduced ad units or maximum ad units format. I notice that on my site the ad units shift between 2-3 ads between most pages (I’m using the 250×250 ad block).
The 2 ad unit format uses a larger font, but I think it looks more obviously like an ad.
Whereas the 3 ad unit format uses a smaller font but it looks less like an ad and more like a list of links with a short description to them.