What are the Best Performing Google AdSense Ads?

Earlier Google was having restrictions on placing up to three content ads, three link unit ads and two search boxes on a page. Google though lifted the limit on content ads, you should show ads proportionate to the content length. Whether you place maximum number of ads or a fewer ads, choosing appropriate ad format is one of the main factors to increase the revenue in Google AdSense program. Though choosing ad size depends on the type and the layout of your site, there are recommended ads from Google which can improve the click though rate compared to other formats.

Where to Find Ad Types?

When you create a new ad in your AdSense account, earlier Google used to provide the recommendations under “Ad size > Recommended”.

However, things are completely changed with the new interface as Google is pushing Auto Ads. The manual options are simplified in terms of types of ads instead of focusing on the sizes.

What are the Available AdSense Ad Formats?

Available ad formats change depending upon whether you choose auto ads or manually creating ads for your site.

When you choose fixed ad size, Google will warn you that restricting size will impact the ad inventory and hence the revenue. However, fixed ad formats can help to reduce cumulative layout shift problems and improve the page loading speed.

Best Performing AdSense Ads

Below is the list of best performing Google AdSense ads. Remember that Google moved away from the CPC (Cost Per Click) to CPM (Cost Per Mille) model, which means the entire AdSense revenue is now based on the number of ad impressions and not related to the number of clicks. So, the factors like your site’s layout, ad placement (position of the ad on your site) and ad view-ability play vital roles in this situation regardless of your niche.

On other hand, displaying too many ads on a page will not have any impact on the revenue as this will result in low CPM as well as less ad fill rate (you will see lot of blank ads).

1. Vignette Ads

Vignette or interstitial ad is the most popular and best performing ad format in AdSense. These ads are displayed when users navigate from one page to another page on your site. Due to this factor, it has the highest visibility and hence the click through rate. You can choose to display vignette ads on mobile or desktop or on both devices. However, you need to use auto ads and it is not possible to create these ads manually.

2. Anchor Ads

Many users think they can’t use sticky ads with AdSense. As per the FAQ available from AdSense support, you can use sticky floating ads on desktop devices complying to certain policy requirements. However, the easy way is to use anchor ads to enable sticky top or bottom ad. Similar to vignette ad, anchor ads are part of auto ads and it is possible to enable anchor ads only on mobile or desktop or on both devices (and choose the top or bottom placement). Since it sticks all the time on the visible area, anchor ad can make good revenue for you.

You can also enable collapsible option to show a larger size ad when the user lands on your page to potentially increase the revenue.

3. 728 x 90 Leaderboard

If you do not use auto ads, then vignette and anchor ads are not for you. However, there are different fixed ad formats that you can create as part of display ads. 728 x 90 is one of the best preforming fixed ad size on a desktop version of a site. You can place this ad above or below the content to fit with your site’s layout. The problem with this leaderboard ad is that they will not fit into mobile screen resulting in horizontal scroll bar appearing with reduced reading experience to users. You can avoid this by hiding the ad on mobile device and use responsive or other mobile formats.

4. Responsive Ads

Google introduced responsive ad format in order to overcome space problems and avoid using two different set of ads for desktop and mobile versions. In the above case of 728 x 90 leaderboard, it is highly recommended to place a responsive ad unit which will display 728 x 90 ad size on a desktop and 468 x 60 or 310 x 100 size banner ad on high-end mobile devices.

With large amount of sites using responsive layout to avoid building separate mobile site, responsive ads becoming more suitable and popular nowadays. As the name indicates, these ads can be used only with the responsive site’s layout and not with the fixed width layout.

5. 300 x 600 Large Skyscraper

This is an ideal ad size to place it on a sidebar of a blog post having lengthier content. Since the size is larger, it is allowed to place only one 300 x 600 fixed ad on a page as per AdSense policies (though auto ads may place multiple skyscraper ads based on your layout). Google also indicates that 300 x 600 size ad is one of the fastest growing formats based on the impressions. Since most of the high-end mobile devices have 300px width, this ad size by default will fit into the mobile site as well.

6. 300 x 250 Medium Rectangle

This is one of best-fit ads along with the combination of 728 x 90 leaderboard making a site more appealing to the users. It can be placed either side-by-side to the content or at the sidebar of the blog post having lesser content. 300 x 250 medium rectangle ads will also fit in to the mobile layout by default.

7. 336 x 280 Larger Rectangle

This is similar to medium rectangle ads suitable both within content as well as on sidebar. 336 x 280 larger rectangle ad size will not fit into mobile layouts and hence recommended mostly for the desktop version.

8. 320 x 100 – Large Mobile Banner

If you don’t have a responsive layout site, it is a difficult task to choose separate set of ads for desktop and mobile versions of your site. Beside 300 x 250 or 300 x 600 ads which by default fit into mobiles, 320 x 100 large mobile banner is the recommended ad size made exclusively for high-end mobile devices. It can be ideally placed above the fold to occupy less place compared to placing medium rectangle ads which would push the content down too much in a mobile.

Ads for Mobile Devices

Out of the above recommended formats, below are the ad sizes suitable for mobile devices.

• Responsive ads
• 300 x 250
• 320 x 100
• 300 x 600

If you are not using responsive ads, make sure to replace long desktop ads with correct sizes on mobile devices. If you are using WordPress site, you have lot of plugins like Ad Inserter to do this. Even, Google has an official Site Kit plugin for WordPress to connect your AdSense account and manage the setup within WordPress administrator panel.

Summary

Below table provides the summary of recommended ads to earn better revenue from AdSense:

Ad Size	Description	Desktop	Mobile
Vignette ads	Interstitial ads (Auto ads)	✓	✓
Anchor ads	Sticky ads (Auto ads)	✓	✓
Responsive ads	Ads suitable for responsive sites	✓	✓
728 x 90	Leaderboard banner	✓	✗
300 x 250	Medium rectangle	✓	✓
336 x 280	Large rectangle	✓	✗
300 x 600	Large skyscraper	✓	✓
320 x 100	Large mobile banner	✓	✓

Monitoring Ad Performance

Go to “Ad formats” report section and filter the type of ad to monitor the revenue generated by each format. This will give you an overall idea of how you strategy works and which ads are performing better for your site’s layout.

Google also made it easy and automatic for publishers to monitor whether their site has appropriate recommended ads or not. Check under the “Opportunities” section in your AdSense account to find the recommendations from Google and switch to the best performing ads. In addition, you can also create experiments to run A/B testing and find which ad format works well on your site’s layout. Besides using correct ad formats/sizes, it is also recommended to use appropriate ad styles. Again, you can use experimental feature to try with different styles and choose the best performing winner.