Ironic ads

[RescueJoe]

As any of you who have checked out my site know I display funny photos of fires. Last week I got two photos from a training seminar where a Dell laptop caught on fire and heat caused the battery to blow up. A visitor to the site pointed out to me that the ads on the page are all for Dell coupon codes and discount laptop batteries.

Just goes to show that contextual ads mix with the page content can have some ironic results...Rescue Humor Dell Fire (http://rescuehumor.com/imagepages/dell_fire.html)

[Reprobate]

With the textual mentions of Dell it's understandable why it would.

I'm curious as to the Click Thru Rate for a humour site. It's okay, I'm not asking you to tell me ;) (and thus break Google ToS).

If someone saw an image of a Dell notebook burning would they be inclined to click on a link that says "Buy a Dell today!"?

Perhaps think about what your typical visitors WOULD click on. And then write up some copy to encourage the contextual magic of Adsense to do its part.

[RescueJoe]

I can tell you that using affiliate programs the click rate was very low and the conversion rate was basically non existent for a humor site. Many of my visitors are people at work enjoying a break or goofing off during the time it take for the printer to print off a long report. So an ad may intrigue them but the follow-through will not take place till they get home later, so I do not get credit as the cookie is on a different computer.

When I joined AdSense I saw that the contextual ads were being clicked on more often but still very low rate (we are talking less than a percent). A few months ago I got a copy of Joel’s “AdSense Code” book and with out breaking TOS I can say that the click rate now is in double digits. With ideas off this board that rate is kept up. My only problem is that if every page has ads for Police, fire and EMS equipment/training there comes a point of saturation. If you see the same ads after 3 pages and did not click them are you going to click on the 4th or 5th page? So I am trying to put in copy that will bring up more diverse ads.

My theory is basically that people goofing off at work (like many of my visitors) could care less that they are goofing off doing. An ad for a web site offering something they may be thinking about as part of their personal home life may draw their attention. Coupon codes, home improvement ideas, or insurance rates may encourage a click as they have found something more interesting to waste away their time. With the AdSense model the follow through from the same computer is a non issue I get credit. With the little bit of testing I have done my theory seems to be sound.

Now All I need to do is get my traffic levels up.