Within AdWords, Google offers a great Auto-Optimization feature which rotates several ad creatives to determine which receives the highest CTR. Once it determines this, it’ll predominantly show the highest performing written creative (which is great for both Google and the advertiser). Google gets more clicks, and customer gets more leads. Truly, an ingenious addition which doesn’t get much recognition.
In contrast, for AdSense publishers (or any contextual publishers), there really aren’t any auto-optimizing features available. Publishers can manually optimize the color of their ad units, which is highly recommended cause better color combos = better CTR = more $. Poor color combos obviously = awful CTR = and no $.
The tough aspect of color combo testing, is the “testing” part. It takes a significant amount of time to determine which layout is truly the best performer. Testing an analysis *is* everything, but hey, there are only so many hours in the day. Personally, once I “seem” to find the best performer, I implement it and tend to stick with it.
And you want to know what? THAT’S WRONG, and I’m losing money cause of it.
So here’s a plea:
Will someone (anyone/Google), please create a contextual ad unit color combination shifting application, which uses CTR to determine the colored ad of choice to run.
For all I know, from a testing standpoint, red hyperlinks perform best on Mondays, blue on Tuesdays, and green on Wednesdays. Or, who knows, maybe a pink colored combo unit would perform well over Valentines Day, and an Irish Green unit would kill it over St. Patty’s day. Also, what colors work best on theme related sites? Does purple or orange work better for a bowling site? Who knows. It’d be great if we knew, but for me in my situation (and most others I assume) it’s physically impossible to test the thousands - if not tens of thousands - of combinations out there.
In reality, there should be an automated system performing these tasks. Running color CTR analysis based on theme of site, color of site, color of site hyperlinks, time of day, day of week, month, holiday, shoot - analyzing individual user behavior to generate colors they tend to click. AdWords auto-optimizes written creative, so why couldn’t they apply that same logic application to AdSense and color combos.. Or maybe this is an opportunity for YPN, or any 3rd tier contextual network. Create it, shoot, patent it, and be a first mover. Even a 3rd party could create it, and sell a subscription to use the service.
I’d use it.
Would you?
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 19th, 2007 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
