Perform A/B Testing on Adsense Ads for High CTR

A/B Testing, the best method to test which Adsense Ad format is getting the highest CTR and CPC. Placing the right ad format will help you to earn more. There are many best adsense placements suggested by popular bloggers, but in reality it differs from site to site. The only way to find out which ad suits your site is by performing A/B testing on your Adsense ads.

How to Perform A/B Testing on Google Adsense Ads?

Let's take for example, I displayed an ad at the top menu (728 x 90) which is a text+image ad. But, I wanted to test the 468 x 15 link unit in its place just to determine which ad format is performing good for me.

Note: You'll need to create the two ad formats that you wanted to test out. In my case, I created 728 x 90 and 468 x 15 ads using the Adsense Dashboard. Give the channels an appropriate name as it helps while comparing.

As per Adsense ToS, you're not supposed to edit or modify the existing ad code, but Google has given a consideration just for the A/B testing and that too without editing the code.

All you need to do is to place your two ads code in the below JS script

<script type="text/javascript">
var random_number = Math.random();
if (random_number < .5){
//replace it with first ad unit code
} else {
//replace it with second ad unit code goes here
}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>

Just replace the above two lines in red with your adcode (first ad unit and second ad unit respectively) and place the entire javascript code where you originally placed your ads.

The concept behind this ad code is, it displays random ad unit for every few page impressions and so the two ad units will get some clicks which help you determine which adsense ad unit out of these two is getting the high CTR.

After a due course of time, just go to your Adsense Reports, click on "Ad Units" and check which ad unit is performing good. And replace the existing javascript code with the high earning ad unit code.

Note: You can perform variety of testings other than just Ad unit test. For example, you can test the same ad units with different Color formats to determine which color ads are performing well.

Also See: Best Adsense Alternatives