Analyse data
Now that you have defined all the channels you need, make sure you choose the appropriate channels for each ad unit, link unit, refferal product... you are to place on your website.
Adsense allows you to define up to 5 custom channels for each ad, which is more than enough to cover ad format, formating, positionning and more relevant analysis aspects.
Using advanced reports
Channels are used to create and store data about your ads. Reports display it.
In addition to the overview you can see everytime you log into your adsense account, there are other reports you can access in the "Quick reports" section available on the same page. Of course, these are generic reports you need to customise to your specific needs. This is done using advanced reports.
For a detailed tutorial on how to create advanced reports, please reffer to this page How do I create advanced reports.
Once you have managed to come up with THE report you wanted, do not forget to save it as a custom report so you can easily access it from your account's overview. The adsense team has included a "Report manager" to help you manage your reports.
Drawing conclusions
Let's consider this sample report (of course you might need to do some additional treatment with Excel):
Channels |
Page impression |
clicks |
CTR |
eCPM |
Revenue |
CPC |
| orange | 13929 | 45 | 0,32% | 0,32 | 4,53 | 10,07 |
| 300*250 | 14167 | 296 | 2,09% | 4,55 | 64,42 | 21,76 |
| 728*90 | 7603 | 1570 | 20,65% | 8,61 | 65,49 | 4,17 |
| Left | 1941 | 26 | 1,34% | 2,26 | 4,38 | 16,85 |
| Green | 23869 | 2000 | 8,38% | 6,08 | 145,17 | 7,26 |
| www.domain.com/Dir1/ | 328 | 65 | 19,82% | 8,68 | 2,85 | 4,38 |
| www.domain.com/Dir2/ | 2530 | 126 | 4,98% | 9,33 | 23,6 | 18,73 |
| www.domain.com/Dir3/ | 2027 | 52 | 2,57% | 3,8 | 7,7 | 14,81 |
Conclusion 1 : The best colour to optimise CTR is "Green" since is has a CTR of more than 8% while orange has less than 1%.
Action 1 : All your ad units should be in "Green".
Conclusion 2 : The "728*90" is ten times more effective in terms of CTR than the "300*250" format
Action 2 : Use the "728*90" adformat as often as you can. If you cannot, keep the "300*250" format since its CTR isn't really bad or try another format.
Conclusion 3 : The first part of the website (Dir1) has an impressive 19.82% CTR but a low revenue per click (less than 5 cents).
Action 3 : Improve your CPC by rewriting some articles using more words and maybe synonymes to try and get more valuable words.
Conclusion 4 : The second part of your site has the best eCPM with a good CTR and a great revenue per click
Action 4 : First, try to develop traffic in this section of the site by writing some more articles and emproving SEO. Then, you can try to get a better CTR by using "728*90" adformats (see conclusion 2) and the "green" colour (see conclusion 1).
Conclusion 5 : The third part of this site has a very good CPC but its CTR can really be emproved.
Action 5 : Optimise adformat using "728*90" and "Green" and then develop traffic. Do not try to get a higher CPC since this is not worth the effort.
I hope this sample report has shown you how powerful data analysis can be when it comes to making rational decisions. Of course, this case is quite simple and you will probably come across more complexe charts.
Before moving to the next page, you may also want to read our article on how to optimize CTR using optimal ad formats, ad colours and ad placements.
