Using Six Sigma & Statistics To Increase Adsense Revenue

Posted on May 3, 2009 by Rand Wilson

Actually since most publishers, myself included, use more than just Adsense, a better title for this post would probably be “Using Six Sigma & Statistics To Increase PPC Revenue” – but putting Adsense in the title is more catchy’er so I’m going with it.

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to be doing more analysis and testing of my different PPC networks to try and find ways to optimize earnings. The method(s) I’m using to look at my data are DMAIC and Six Sigma strategies. These processes are new to me and I’m hardly even a green-belt myself – but I have a “Black Belt” mentoring me as I go through this process to guide me (and basically tell me what to do). The simple version of all these processes basically boil down to really looking at everything (stats) that impacts your desired result (earnings), then analyzing the data, making changes/experimenting, looking at the data again to validate your changes worked (or didnt), and applying the changes.

The first thing we had to “Define” was my “Big-Y” – this is the variable that I want to improve. In my case the “Y” is earnings. We drilled down through our “X‘s”, the variables that affect my Y, and we focused on PPC, and ultimately Clicks/CTR. There is an entire process involved in drilling-down through the X values to determine what to focus on – but even though I already knew that CTR would be my critical-X, my Black-Belt mentor made me jump through the hoops anyway – this kind discomfort is apparently one of the keys to Six Sigma.

I won’t go much more into the DMAIC and Six Sigma processes (they are incredibly complicated and boring) but I do want to share a few things that we discovered while beginning to do some statistical analysis.
The first thing we discovered is that with Adsense, more clicks = more money. This is something that we think we all know, but we proved this “statistically” and have demonstrated it with the following graph (note that actual values are not displayed to remain TOS compliant):

The next thing we discovered is that with Kontera, more clicks does NOT = more money! This was quite a surprise, and seems a bit ass-backwards, but the numbers prove it:

Obviously this does not mean that I should stop using Kontera – heck, Kontera earns more than Adsense on many days. But what it does tell me is that if I want to focus and spend time and energy on experimenting/improving CTR, that time would be better spent on improving Adsense CTR, because based on the data (see the Adsense chart), more clicks virtually always means higher earnings with Adsense. But, with Kontera, more clicks does not guarantee more earnings. So this reinforces that I should be focusing on how I can improve Adsense CTR to achieve maximum earnings.

We also partially busted the myth that Kontera clicks will reduce your Adsense CTR. As you can see in the chart below (actual values omitted to remain TOS compliant) there is NO correlation between Kontera clicks and Adsense clicks:

One of the tests that we will be doing over the next few months will be to compare CTR of Adsense & Kontera individually to either prove or bust the “Kontera reduces Adsense CTR” myth.

I will be continuing this process of collecting data, crunching numbers, making stupid graphs and figuring out what it all means over the next few months. As usual, as I learn or make interesting discoveries I will share them here.

Kontera Holds It’s Own Against The Big-3

Posted on April 29, 2009 by Rand Wilson

Most publishers, myself included have been feeling the impact of the economy on their earnings recently. Based on what I’ve been reading in the webmaster forums and my own experience PPC earnings are generally down all over with no immediate sign of a rebound – a rebound will happen, but in the meantime it can be painful – especially if you have large server/bandwidth bills that need to be paid each month.

To try and improve or optimize earnings I’ve started to take a close look at my stats to see if I can find ways to maximize and squeeze out as much as possible. I’ll be making more posts about that in the next few weeks but I wanted to quickly share something that jumped-out at me and actually surprised me a bit.

For the last 90 days or so I’ve been doing some testing to gauge the performance of Adsense, Microsoft pubCenter and Yahoo Publisher network to see how they compare to each-another. During all of these tests, I’ve always left good old Kontera running – Since I’ve really been focusing on how the Big 3 (Google, Yahoo and Microsoft) compare against each other, I never really took a close look at comparing Kontera to them – I guess I’ve always taken Kontera for granted as just “a good supplemental” income source.

Since I’ve been gathering data for more in-depth analysis later, I threw together a quick graph of how Kontera has been doing against the big-3 PPC networks so I could visually gauge it’s performance (below). The blue line is EITHER Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network or Microsoft’s pubCenter (they were rotated randomly day-by-day) and the red line is Kontera. I have intentionally omitted the dates, which advertiser was used on any given day, and the scale (amount) of earnings so as not to violate any NDA’s or TOS’s

Kontera vs Other PPC Networks

When I looked at the numbers this way (visually), a couple of patterns surprised me a bit. One, Kontera actually performs very well on ‘bad’ days, and two, on many days that text PPC earnings are down, Kontera earnings are often higher – and basically, Kontera is performing pretty darn good lately!

Like I stated above, I will be doing a lot more analysis over the next few weeks and I’ll be posting most of my findings to pass-along anything I learn.

Using Kontera and Adsense Together

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Rand Wilson

This post is originally from 2007, but I am re-posting it for new-readers that may have missed it, and because I have been too busy to come up with something fresh.

A few months back I was approached by Kontera and asked if I would like to try their In-Text advertising at GrownUpGeek.com. The account manager was confident that based on my traffic I should be able to earn $1,000/mo easily. Well, I’m happy to say that she was wrong. The first month I earned $1,400, and over $1,500 the next two months in a row (If you’d like to see what a $1,500 payment looks like, check out my picture over at the ShoeMoney.com Gallery.) . Kontera is now our 2nd biggest earner, right behind Adsense and I could not be more happy (or surprised).

What is Kontera?
Kontera uses ContextLinks that are contextually matched to the text on your webpages, similar to the way that Adsense works. These ContextLinks appear as links on your page with small ‘pop-up’ bubbles that appear when you hover your mouse over them. Visitors click on the pop-up and you earn on a CPC basis. Kontera describes it this way on their website:

A contextually relevant keyword that is discovered in real-time on a web page from within Kontera´s vast network of publishers, and is automatically turned into a link to the most relevant ad from among Kontera´s thousands of advertisers. With ContentLink™ publishers generate incremental revenue while advertisers reach their most targeted audience on a Cost-Per-Click basis.

Kontera is fast and very easy to get started. Apply online and then add the code to your pages and you’re done. They do have a few restrictions though, so it is not for everybody. You must generate at least 250,000 page-impressions per month (although they are easing up on this recently), your site must be in English, and your site must be “content rich” (aka not MFA).

Even though Kontera is a contextual advertising system you can use it on the same pages as Adsense. The Adsense TOS has recently been updated/clarified and states that you can use competing contextually-based advertising systems as long as they do not have the same “look and feel” as Adsense.

Since we started using Kontera we have not seen any detectable drop in Adsense CTR, and it has steadily and consistently been earning roughly 50%-75% of what Adsense makes.. If you are currently making $100/day (or per month) you can expect to add an additional $50-$75 by implementing Kontera.

If you want to read more about Kontera’s InText system, or to sign up, go to www.kontera.com.

This post contains affiliate links.

My Advertising Network Roundup

Posted on December 24, 2008 by Rand Wilson

About two or three times per year I rotate through all of my advertising networks to see how they are performing. I think it’s a good idea to test all your ad-networks every once in a while to make sure you aren’t missing out on any potential earnings – a network that performed poorly six-months ago might do much better today (not usually, but you never know).

These are my results, listed worst to best, for the year – with the last test finishing up just a day or so ago. Note that due to the various TOS’s, I do not include any actual CTR, ePC, eCPM or earnings data:

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BidVertiser: very low CTR and even lower earnings. A waste of my valuable page real-estate.

Adbrite: I put the most time and effort into testing Adbrite because I have read of many other publishers that were getting good results. But for me, it just did not work out. I tested both text-only and banner units and after ~100,000 impressions, earned only a few dollars. It seems that most publishers generating good earnings with Adbrite are using their “full page” ads which to me seem to be the #1 way to piss-off/drive away potential visitors. Adbrite also has “in text” ad-units, but I did not test them.

Chitika: Chitika’s new “Premium Units” performed fairly well. These ad-units only display to search-engine traffic and target ads based on the keywords used when searching. This type of keyword targeting results in very relevant ad-units and very good CTR. You can configure the Chitika Premium Units to display another ad-network such as Adsense or YPn for display to non-search engine traffic – otherwise direct/non SE traffic will not be shown any ad-units. Chitika also has an “in text” unit which when tested earlier this year performed well. Some publishers do not like the “in text” type ads, but I don’t have an issue with them – although I only display them to anonymous vistors, not registered members. With Chitika you also get a dedicated account manager for support which is a big plus.

Yahoo Publisher Network: YPn was a real surprise this time around (this is why I test a few times a year!). I have done nothing but badmouth YPn over the last several months, but now I’ll eat my words and take it all back. This time YPn gave well-targeted ads, fair CTR, and decent ePC. YPn also has support! When I had a question regarding the Yahoo Publisher Network TOS, my email was replied-to in less than 24 hours, and when I had a follow-up question a YPN representative called me by telephone to avoid more email confusion. YPn also has a toll-free phone number for questions/support.. Yahoo Publisher Network gets my “comeback of the year” award!

Kontera: If I was comparing only the last 2-months of the year, Kontera would be the clear winner. But since i’m comparing the overall performance of the entire year, Kontera comes up a strong #2. Kontera’s in-text ad-unit performance started out slow this year generating about 50% of what Adsense generated on a daily basis. But beginning around September/October Kontera was earning 80%-90% of what Adsense was doing, and by December, Kontera was generating approximately 200% of what Adsense was (that is more than double Adsense on most days!). Kontera’s other strong-point is support. With a dedicated account manager that you can contact any time by phone or email (and actually get a response) this puts them far ahead most of the other ad-networks. Some publishers do not like the “in text” type ads, but I don’t have an issue with them – although I only display them to anonymous visitors, not registered members. Many publishers have also complained that Kontera slows-down their page load times. If you experience this, be sure that you have your code loading at the very bottom/last of your page right before the /BODY tag. I have never experienced this issue, and I check/test almost daily.

Adsense: Still king over the entire year, but if I was comparing only the last few months, it would fall to Kontera as #2. Excellent ad-inventory and near-perfect targeting no matter what your niche/content makes Adsense hard to beat. Combine that with (usually) good/high ePC and Adense is still #1. The Adsense support team does well in answering support-requests (usually in 48 hours or less), but you don’t get a dedicated account manager unless you are in the “UPS club” (a really, really big, Premium publisher).

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Remember: Just because an advertising network performed good/bad for me does not mean you will get the same results. Whenever anyone asks me, I recommend trying everything and sticking with what works (seems almost obvious, eh?).. I also recommend trying different networks every several months as I do to make sure that you are using the best-performing network – you never know when you might be pleasantly surprised.

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