Adsense should I have more or less

[Pixel Art]

Do you have / should you have Less or More ads on a page?

[deathshadow]

Well, there's the common sense rule "If they aren't clicking on one advert, they're not going to click on ten of them" - but at the same time more advertisements means potentially more DIFFERENT ads increasing the chance of hitting something the user might be interested in.

Generally what I've been told is no more than three, and spread them out so as to minimize ad blindness - you put them next to each-other, a LOT of users will just ignore all three the moment they recognize it as an advert... But then you have people with total adblindness like myself (and most all opera users and the millions who've downloaded the adblock plugin for FF), since they don't even show up for us.

NOT that I'd be the one to ask since as a rule I don't consider it a legitimate revenue stream for a website- but that's mostly from a complete distrust of the advertisers stemming from the original dotcom bubble and the abuse of the technology by advertisers in the past.

I just laugh at people making the same mistakes over and over.

[Ryan]

I would say that less IS more to be honest, because the emphasis is on the one well placed ad instead of the three distracting cluttering adverts.

What do other members think?

[RegDCP]

(Jan-16-2010 12:49 PM)Ryan Wrote:  I would say that less IS more to be honest, because the emphasis is on the one well placed ad instead of the three distracting cluttering adverts.

What do other members think?

It is not the number but the position that counts the most.
Check your heat map (click tracking) studies to determine the best position for your site. (You DO run those, don't you?)

Incidentally, I think that putting your ads between the << Next Oldest | Next Newest >> bar and Quick Reply bar at the bottom of the page would draw the best. When you display the ad at the top or near the top of the page, the user is just starting on your page and it is likely that the ad block would be ignored.
However, once a response is posted or the reader is at the end of a thread, they would be more inclined to click.