I thought this might be interesting to see how people are doing with link units vs. ad units in Adsense. For the last 3-4 months my link units are doing better than my ad units by about 50% more in $ revenue. Does anyone else have similar results?

Where do you have them placed?

I've always done horrible with Link Units

Originally Posted by BamaStangGuy

I've always done horrible with Link Units

ditto, i don't even run them any more

I placed a horizontal link unit on my home page.

Sorry, I don't have 15 posts on this board to post my url so you will need to go to my public profile to see the website url or you can decipher this: 55Plus-Housing <dot> com. :smarty:

From most of what I have read, people tend to do the best with link units when they try to disguise them into their content. I don't do things like this on my sites, therefore I never did well with link units.

I am using some small pictures above my horizontal link ads which has increased the clicks considerably. This isn't against the TOS since users must click twice for a payout. I don't consider it really disguising either since the pictures are related to the topic and there are no pics on the second screen of ads.

I've never really used link units. I know that some people disguise them as if they are their main navigation menu which is a good way to loose your valuable traffic.

True. I would rather have visitors staying on my site and viewing several pages, then use an "obvious" ad on their way out. I am plenty happy to make the CPM revenue from them while they stick around.

Do you guys suggest have them removed ?

Originally Posted by Mike

I would rather have visitors staying on my site and viewing several pages, then use an "obvious" ad on their way out. I am plenty happy to make the CPM revenue from them while they stick around.

That works well for high volume sites but my site is highly targeted and usually gets only about 4,000 Uniques/month with a lot of returning visitors (about 10K visits total/month). So I am okay with Google ads (even if it does direct them away from my site). I have found many will come back for the content.

It is hard for me not to like the link ads since it is now generating about half of my adsense income.

ad units always performed far better for me so i quit using link units altogether

My link units have been working well for me. The best one is Large rectangular ad units and then links. I am thinking about links more like the extra options for my visitors to explore whatever they are looking for. We can place one link unit per page and it doesn't take much space so I thought "why not?" and I am quite happy with the result I'm getting.

I just tested a Link Unit, with my site and it didn't perform really well. I had it right under the header (banner of the site) so it would like sort of like navigation, but didn't convert.

Images next to ads are against the TOS. It's been a known fact for a couple of months now.

Originally Posted by Hobbit

Images next to ads are against the TOS. It's been a known fact for a couple of months now.

That is not what I gather. Images next to ads which mislead visitors are against the ToS.

The problem came when people lined up images next to square ads, and made it look like the ads were part of the images or vice versa.

I used to do very well with link unit ads, but over the past 2 years this has dropped off a great deal.

Adsense is one of the simplest ways, but there is a lot of competition. If you have a product or service, you can earn more

no, no one clicks my ad link. Any tips on how to do it ?

I get good clicks on my linkunits, not great but it is my 3rd highest payer out of all formats.