Mike Arrington's TechCrunch site runs a 160x600 long skyscraper Adsense Ad in the right sidebar somewhere below the main pagefold.IntelliContact.com, an email marketing software company, recently ran a creative site-targeted Adsense campaign on TechCrunch with the text "TechCrunch Should Review IntelliContact 4."
As you probably know, Site-targeted ads are CPM (cost per mile) ads meaning the advertiser pays each time an ad is served irrespective of the clicks.
What's surprising here is that the advertiser has disclosed the actual performance of his ad-campaign on TechCrunch. Here's a summary:
Number of Ad Impression served in one day: ~128k
Number of Clicks Generated: 64 clicks (Click-Through Rate - 0.04%)
Total Cost of Campaign: ~$665 (Effective CPM: $5.2)
As there were just 64 clicks from the 128K ad impressions, the cost of a single click worked out to be $10. And out of the "64 visitors" from TechCrunch, just one of them cared to sign up for a trial version of his service.
What may be the reasons behind this poor conversion ratio ? Skyscrapers, that too below the fold, generally don't perform so well. The other factor could be the Adsense Wallpaper Effect when most of your site traffic comprises of return visitors.
Related Reading: What it takes to Advertise on Popular Websites
Update: Tim Geisenheimer calls their campaign a success:
I think there's an important consideration that you're neglecting. Was IntelliContact engaging in an acquisitions campaign or were they using this particular placement to generate buzz? I think the words chosen indicate that they viewed this particular placement as a way to create buzz and hopefully attract Arrington's attention directly.Tim compludes that, considering these factors, "judging the success of the campaign based on your CPC calculations is misleading and fails to confer proper importance on less tangible variables."
If this was the case, then they should consider the campaign successful as Arrington posted about them on TechCrunch and other bloggers (such as yourself) have given them attention as well.
Reader Comments
Somebody's running a similar campaign on my site at the moment which is great,as it's pushed my daily earnings up a notch!
Written on 7/3/07 8:53 PM
The 1 out of 64 that signed up; could be because their landing page just wasn't that good.
1. The placement of their most important action is invisible on the page and blends into the whole page.
2. This same form is also in the wrong place for eyetracking purposes and should be placed higher. What is the value of the Public Newsletter Archive?
3. Animation is great but distracting and annoying for peripheral vision.
4.If you click through to any of the more detailed pages the call to action for the free trial is practically invisible.
5. The ad wasn't that good either and conveyed no real benefits to the visitor.
I share this with a bit of authority; you can check my credentials at our website.
Written on 8/3/07 1:22 AM
Bryan, Thanks for your insight and comment.
Written on 8/3/07 1:46 AM
This is amazing indeed.. I wish someone did that to my blog's Adsense! =)
Written on 8/3/07 2:43 AM
I have tried site targeted ads once. In my experience they are both more expensive and gives less value.
I guess the reason is that with pay-per-click Google tries to match ads to the users whereas pay-per-impression leaves it up to the advertiser to match the ads to the content.
It seems obvious to me that Google does a better job to place ads than I do.
Written on 8/3/07 5:31 AM