1 Introduction - 2 Ad Rank - 3 Quality Score - 4 Advert Price
5 eCPM - 6 eCPM explained - 7 Statistics - 8 Position Weight
9 PW Simulator - 10 Smartpricing - 11 SP Simulator - 12 Adsense Simulator
This is the Position Weight Simulator, using the tower example discussed on previous pages. (You won't find "position weight" in any of Google's calculations, we have created this number to use in the Adsense Simulator, which is at the end of this course.)
Position Weight is the main variable you will use to predict and analyse your page's performance. It is a number between 0 and 2 that indicates the prominence of the ad. It is multiplied by the ad's historical CTR to give the predicted CTR on your page:
- "1" means that you are going to put the ad slot in an average position: any ad in that slot will probably achieve roughly the same CTR as it has historically achieved, on your and other sites.
- Numbers less than one indicate that the ad slot's position and colour is less prominent
- Numbers greater than one indicate the ad slot is more prominent
- "0" indicates an ad slot in the simulator that is not in use
(The above eCPM figure is Google's gross income, your share would be less, say 70%)
The position weight is mostly a guess/judgement based on what you regard as prominent on your page, taking account of blending and the context of your overall page/site design. You'll need to experiment to work out what numbers seem to match your site most closely.
Generally, though, ads above the fold tend to be more prominent and have a score above 1. However, they might not be prominent if you have lots of other eye-catching content that draws attention away from them, or if you have placed a banner right at the top of the page in an area normally associated with Ad Blindness - such ads would have a position weight of less than 1.
You can use Position Weight to indicate different placements and different designs of ad. For example, you could try, in the simulator above, putting in position weights to simulate one of the three combinations in the diagram, right:
- You might place the tower above and below the fold, inside the text, using dominant, inviting colours. The prominence this gives Kim's ad slot is very high, so we score it at 1.5. The other two ad slots above the fold also score high, but are not as prominent as the top ad, so score 1.25 for Sarah and 1.0 for Brian. Below the fold, the other two ads have a low prominence, say 0.5 and 0.4.
- You might place the tower half way down the page, outside the reading area on the right, in undistinct colours. As it has such a low prominence, all the ad slots have a very low score of 0.1
- Another option is to place a banner at the bottom of the text, but before the additional information. Although it is well below the fold, it is prominent for those surfers who read the whole article. Therefore, four ad slots are given a Position Weight of 0.3, and the last slot is given 0 (zero) because it is not in use. (Any slots not in use should always be at the bottom of the simulator).
On the next page we'll look at the impact of smartpricing.