Optimizing ad placeholders is a crucial step in maximizing your website's revenue while maintaining a positive user experience. This article delves into the primary goals of ad testing, the complexities involved, and the best practices for setting up Ezoic placeholders. By understanding the intricate factors that influence ad performance and implementing effective strategies, you can significantly enhance your earnings and provide a better experience for your visitors. Whether you're new to Ezoic or looking to refine your current setup, this guide will provide detailed insights to help you achieve optimal results.

What Does Ezoic Test, and Why?

The goal of ad testing with Ezoic is to optimize ad placements and formats to increase website revenue while ensuring a positive user experience. To achieve this, Ezoic conducts extensive testing on various ad attributes including:

1. Ad Position: The placement of ads on each page is crucial as it can significantly affect both engagement and revenue.
2. Ad Size: The dimensions of each ad are tested to determine which sizes perform best in terms of visibility and user interaction.
3. Ad Colors: Background, text color, and other design elements of ads are examined to see which combinations are most appealing to users.
4. Number of Ads: Determining the optimal number of ads to display on a page to balance revenue generation without overwhelming users.
5. Ad Timing: The point in the user's session when ads are shown is tested. Some may be shown on the first page, while others might appear on subsequent pages.

Why is Testing Ads Difficult on Your Own?

Testing ads on your own can be complex due to various factors. Revenue can vary greatly depending on factors like the time of year, day of the week, time of day, traffic source, and geographic location of visitors. It is essential to use split testing and account for outside variables.

Additionally, each ad placement affects the performance of other ads on the same page. Therefore, testing combinations of ad placements rather than individual placements is necessary.

Effective optimization is done per user session, aiming to maximize lifetime revenue from visitors rather than focusing on single-page earnings. Testing and measuring user experience is vital; for example, high-earning ad placements in non-optimal locations can sometimes drive users away, reducing overall revenue.

Ezoic accounts for all of these factors, testing thousands of ad combinations depending on the size of the website. Advanced statistical methods are used to predict winners and cluster various tests together to accelerate the optimization process.

What are Best Practices for Setting Up Placeholders?

For setting up placeholders, here are some best practices:

1. Adding Placeholders: Ensure an optimal number of placeholders are implemented on the site. This enables more ad types and locations to be included in segmented testing, potentially increasing earnings.
2. Mobile Optimization: Ensure mobile placeholders are optimized. Often, placeholders are added from a desktop perspective, leading to a lack of adequate placeholders for mobile versions. This can be checked using the inspect tool in a browser to view placeholders from a mobile perspective.

1. Adding placeholders:
   • When a publisher first starts using Ezoic Ad Tester, they often set up placeholders themselves; however, it is common that an optimal number of placeholders are not implemented on the site. This means that important ad types and locations are not included in segmented testing, causing the publisher to earn less than they could if more placeholders were selected.
   • Adding placeholders using the Ezoic Chrome extension is simple. Remember, adding placeholders does not mean that your site will show more ads. It just means Ezoic can test more types and locations on different visitor segments. 
2. Ensuring mobile placeholders are optimized:
   • It is very common that when placeholders are implemented, they are done only from the perspective of a desktop device. This means often, publishers will not have enough placeholders in enough locations for the mobile versions of their site, which will often have more traffic than desktop versions. A good way to check this is to see if your mobile EPMV and desktop EPMV are dramatically different.
   • Many sites do not have any placeholders "mid content". Most of their placeholders are at the top of the page or in the sidebar on desktop, and they use these same placeholders on mobile devices. The problem is that the desktop sidebar appears at the bottom of the page on mobile devices for many websites; meaning that on mobile the majority of the site's ads are at the bottom of the page, and rarely viewable to mobile visitors, causing lower ad rates.
   • One of the best ways to view placeholders on mobile is to right-click your site pages and select "inspect". Then, select a mobile device from the viewport selector, refresh the page, and see how placeholders appear on the site from a mobile perspective when the Ezoic Chrome Extension is enabled. A sign things are doing well is that you see placeholders on the page in the viewport as you scroll.