AdSense back to showing 4 ads in large rectangle
January 27, 2006
AdSense must have switched up their ad serving optimization yesterday, because the large 336×280 ad units have been showing 4 ads in an ad unit on most page views, instead of the two ads per ad unit that began showing up under their expanded ad unit optimization.
I did some detailed ad hunting this morning and while I remember seeing all two ads in the large rectangle ad unit yesterday, today I am seeing many more of the four ads in an ad unit, with an occassional ad unit showing two or three ads instead of four.
Many publishers were complaining about the reduced number of ads appearing in the large rectangle, especially because there was no way to force display 4 ads instead of 2. The concern was that there were fewer ads - and thus less choice - for visitors to click on. Others also complained because those using the images beside or above ad units were faced with those images not being lined up correctly to the ads in the ad units.
I am pleased to see the ads are back to four within the large rectangle ad unit. Hopefully this change is permanent, and if not, hopefully they will allow publishers to chose whether they display two, three or four ads within an ad unit.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Posted in Google AdSense
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January 27th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Most of my large rectangles went back to 4 ads. Yay!
January 27th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Yep the 336 blocks are goof but the 250 blocks still show a random amount of ads.
January 27th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
I have a fairly academic topic and felt the rectangles with two ads looked spammy. I had just converted all my article pages to skyscrapers on the left and now they change the rectangles back to normal.
January 28th, 2006 at 5:16 am
graywolf- I feel for you. I have done this in the past when a major change has happened. Now I just sit tight, but it isn’t exactly relaxing waiting to see how things pan out in the end.
January 29th, 2006 at 5:30 am
I had much better results with the 2 Ad blocks. The percentage improvement was enough to supply a double digit income increase.
January 30th, 2006 at 3:20 am
I think this change might explain why my CTR and CPM rates have dropped by 50% from Friday onwards
January 31st, 2006 at 10:09 am
I’ve seen a HUGE boost in revenue since the rectangles returned to 3 or 4 ads. I think Google’s claim that the 2 ad rectangles were because of optimization is complete BS. I’m ok with them experimenting, as obviously it should help a publisher more often than not, but that was just foolish. There was no optimization intelligence at work.
January 31st, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Absolutely. My income also increased because of the roll back of the two in four’s ad block change. It was a disaster for me. I had to change the layouts and use other formats to improve clickthroughs. I specially hated the leader board showing two ads - had such huge gaps it would look really awkward.
January 31st, 2006 at 9:12 pm
It would be ideal if people could select which kind of ad they want, 2 or 4 ad rectangles. It appears they worked well for some and not so well for others.