Weblogs, Inc. is a publishing consortium of 100 independent bloggers who produce more than 1,000 blog posts a week across over 75 industry-leading blogs, including the popular consumer technology blog Engadget , luxury goods blog Luxist , and car-focused Autoblog . Written by experts and enthusiasts, each one has a distinctive following in its subject area. Readers are able to sort and search stories by topic, can engage in discussion via comments, and rank stories of interest to them. Collectively, Weblogs Inc. blogs get over 60 million pageviews a month. Bloggers are paid a stipend and also receive a portion of advertising earnings related to their blog(s).
Veteran publisher Jason Calacanis thought long and hard about how to support bloggers – and how to make this online business model work. "I was interested in making great content sustainable," recalls Calacanis. "Unfiltered content like blogs can be scary to some advertisers. But people who like unfiltered content are a special audience of early adopters, connectors, information junkies – they are keenly interested in everything they're reading – including the ads."
In September 2004, the fledgling site signed up for AdSense for content sites. The program appealed to him because the ads were contextual, boosting the value of the page content to his enthusiast audience of readers.
Challenge
"Set goals for yourselves around traffic, number of ads shown, ads per page, number of clicks and as you optimize AdSense, the revenue will follow."
After implementing AdSense, Weblogs blogs were earning only a couple hundred dollars a day from the program. "At first we didn't really understand how to use it," Calacanis says, noting that "we thought of it as helping to pay some bills." But when over about six months' time AdSense revenues reached more than $1,000 a day, he says he realized that there was a significant opportunity in AdSense – if his team would invest the time in making it work even better.
Results
Calacanis and team began using AdSense channels to track performance. They increased the number of ads across pages, tried different ad unit sizes, creatives, colors, and placement locations. They tracked each of the changes by channel to determine if these adjustments resulted in increased revenues. "It is key to keep experimenting, and to study the results," he says. He learned that increasing the number of pages with ads, and the number of ads per page, both served to increase revenues. Placement of ads near content - for instance, between blog posts - also worked well.
Weblogs, Inc. has had particular success with implementing the link unit ad format. On blogs like Engadget, the team placed ad link units right under the leaderboard. Not only were these placements "real estate friendly," says Calacanis, but they perform well, providing as much as a 50 percent lift in revenues. He also saw that these units work well for his niche-focused enthusiast readers.
"AdSense provides ads that are more like content than advertising," Calacanis comments. "They inform people." His team also witnessed a 10 to 20 percent jump in ad performance when they matched the ad colors to the site, recognizing the sophistication of the blog audience. "The ads are respectful of the user," he says.
"In the beginning, probably 1 percent of our revenue came from AdSense revenue," Calacanis recalls. But over time, and after testing and optimizing AdSense features, this revenue grew more - from $1,000 to $3,000 a day – a 200 percent increase. While he used to view AdSense as a way to use unsold ad space, today he considers it to be a primary source of revenue for his business.
He advises other publishers to be methodical about testing, experiment, and try one or two new things at a time: "Set goals for yourselves around traffic, number of ads shown, ads per page, number of clicks and as you optimize AdSense, the revenue will follow."
About Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a program enabling online businesses to earn revenue from serving ads precisely targeted to specific web content and search pages. With service levels ranging from online sign-up to dedicated support management, a broad range of sites profit from AdSense. Thousands of Google advertisers also benefit from AdSense by gaining exposure on sites across the Google Network, which includes many of the Top 100 Media Metrix sites such as AOL, About.com, Amazon, Ask.com, and Lycos. For more information, visit https://www.google.com/adsense/?hl=en_US&sourceid=aso&subid=us-et-case.
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