A month ago, I introduced my newest test tube article on the Chitika Premium ad service. You can review the original post for the complete details but basically, I tested the Chitika Premium ads (they deliver extremely targeted ads and appear only to visitors arriving directly from a Search Engine (SE) query) to see what sort of results they would deliver. I placed the 468 X 60 ad at the top of my pages, just below the <H1> heading, as recommended by my Chitika account representative.

The results?

Almost identical results to the site’s overall statistical averages (which were pretty lackluster if you remember, and one of the main reasons I embarked on this experiment).  There was absolutely no increase in CTR (click through rate) or average CPC (cost per click) through 60,000 ad impressions – certainly enough data from which to draw conclusions.

While the results are a little disappointing, I can’t say I’m surprised. Here’s why…

1) While placing an extremely targeted ad at the very top of your page ensures your visitor is going to see it, it seems to me a qualified visitor (who is arriving directly from a SE search query, remember?) is going to want to read at least a portion of your article before she is going to be interested in purchasing anything.

People arrive at UltimateFatBurner.com largely because they are researching products-something they do before they buy. So to me, having an ad at the top of the page is counter-intuitive – at least for my UltimateFatBurner.com site, given the way people use it.

It would make more sense to place a targeted ad at the end of the article. When people have finished their research, they are in a better position to make a purchasing decision and may be more likely to respond positively to a targeted ad.

2) I used a small ad size (468 X 60), only able to deliver a single advertising option. My Chitika account representative advised using a larger ad size, but I decided to start off with a smaller one because I don’t want to bombard my visitors with intrusive advertising.

So what’s next?

Obviously, I haven’t given up on the Chitika Premium ads. To me the next steps are obvious…

1) Run the exact same test again, except increase the ad size – as recommended by my account representative (I’m going to use the 550 X 120 option). I will implement this test immediately following the completion of this article.

2) After that, run a new test where a larger sized ad is displayed towards the end of each page, where a visitor is more likely to respond positively to a targeted ad. If I were a betting man, this is the option I would guess would fare the best.

Let’s see what happens. I’ll check in with you in a month!

My newest “test tube” article is going to feature a little test on Chitika‘s premium ads (if you’re not up to speed on what I’m trying to accomplish with my “test tube” articles, please click here for a brief overview).

Chitika has been offering content publishers an Adsense-compatible ad solution (originally called “eminimalls”) since 2005. I’ve been using Chitika ads in the “eminimall” format on UltimateFatBurner.com pretty much since their inception.

And, while I never found the ads to perform exceptionally well (to be fair, they always played a secondary role on my site, with Adsense occupying the ideal advertising “real estate” positions on my pages), they didn’t interfere with Adsense revenue, and stuffed a few extra dollars into the pockets of my jeans each month.

Now, eminimalls are “old school”; Chitika’s main offering is its “Premium Ads” service. It’s a pretty cool concept; these are “collapsible” ads that deliver extremely targeted advertising to visitors who arrive to a page directly as a result of a Search Engine (SE) query.

If a visitor arrives to a page from an SE, a targeted ad is displayed. If she arrives from another page on your site, no ad is displayed and the ad collapses in on itself, so the visitor sees nothing (you can opt to have the ad display a non-targeted ad or an ad from an alternative service in this case).

Here, for example, is a page that has a 468 X 60 banner placed directly below the main title tag on the page. But you don’t see it, right? Now on the other hand, here’s a page that has the same ad in place, showing what will be displayed if a visitor arrives via a SE query for the word “mortgage.”

Pretty cool, huh?

Now, I’ve never really messed around with Chitika’s Premium Ad service much. Frankly, I didn’t need to. But now, with advertising revenue sinking like a stone, I figured it would be the perfect time to run a little experiment to see how it performs and whether a large-scale rollout is warranted.

So here’s what I’m going to do…

I’m taking 10 high-traffic pages from UltimateFatBurner.com, and placing a 468 X 60 collapsible banner directly below the title (as demonstrated here). I’m going track the results for a month, and report the results back to you. We’ll see how the Premium ads compare to the “regular” ones displayed on the site.

A couple of things to consider that may impact the sort of results I attain…

1) Visitors might be more open to an extremely targeted ad AFTER they have perused the page’s content. In this case, would the banner ad perform better placed at the end of the article, rather than the beginning? It may be worthwhile to run the experiment again to see for sure (incidentally, Chitika staff recommend placing the ads at the beginning of your content).

2) A larger ad size may generate significantly more response from your audience. Not only are they harder to skim by, because of their size they can present more offers – increasing the likelihood that one may appeal to your visitor. Chitika staff, for example, strongly recommend using a larger ad size than what I am using here.

However, I am extremely focused on balancing ad revenue without being intrusive and infringing on my vistor’s experience. I can certainly tolerate the small banner illustrated above, but in my opinion, the larger ad sizes are too intrusive to use at the top of the page.

To read the first follow-up to the “Great Chitika Premium Experiment” click here!

You may have seen a page peel (or peel away) ad already: a web page that has a corner edge waving gently, with a short message displayed (“Click Me”, “What’s Inside?” etc)  tempting you to move your mouse over to see what the heck is up.

This “mouse-over” action “peels back” or “peels away” the page to reveal a completely new message below, as if on a different sheet of paper (if you haven’t seen a page peel ad yet, you can do so here! You’ll need to use the Explorer browser though… this ad doesn’t appear to work in the FireFox browser).

As you can see, it’s a pretty funky effect!

Normally, page peel or peel away ads are displayed on splash pages and single page sales sites as an alternative to the more commonly used “popover” message. Based on Flash software, they can promote discounts, free special reports, free trials – anything and everything commonly used to obtain a visitor’s e-mail address so you can follow up with them after they have left your web site. The retailers of the page peel scripts, not surprisingly, claim they outperform typical “popover” ads.

I was interested in using page peel ads on UltimateFatBurner.com, to see if I couldn’t boost the number of subscribers to my newsletter. I was also curious to see how the page peel ads really measured up against the more common popovers.

I was already using Matt Callen’s Instant PopOVER software to create a slick “slide in” popover on the index page of UltimateFatBurner.com. However, I have a large number of pages that rank well with the Search Engines and serve as entry pages to the site. I figured I could use the page peel software on these pages. I’d offer my newly released free e-book, “Dirty Rotten Tricks; Supplement Company Lies That Cost You Money” as an incentive to subscribe to the newsletter.

I decided on PeelAwayAds Version 3.0 as the software I’d use to create these ads, made my purchase, and got to work.

The first thing I needed to do was have some custom page peel ads made (the software comes with a ton of them, but none of them were relevant to what I was doing). Once that was done, I implemented the page peel ads on 10 high-performing gateway pages (you can view one here with the Explorer browser), and tracked the results.

And how were they? How did the page peel ads compare to the regular pop over ads?

Well, see for yourself. For the three month period of Jan-Mar ’09 Google’s Analytics software reports traffic as the following…

1) Index page (where the slide in popover was displayed): 128, 501 page impressions

2) 10 top performing gateway pages (where the page peel ads were implemented): 290,796 page impressions

At the same, time, Aweber reports 359 new subscribers to the account associated with the index page and the popover, and only 331 subscribers from the peel away ads displayed on ALL 10 page peel pages.

This works out to about a .2% conversion for the popover, and a .1% conversion for the page peel ads (this includes a generous 20% handicap for possible FireFox browsers). So the page peel ads obtained half the results of the popover ad, despite being displayed almost twice as many times.

Not too impressive, huh?

True. But consider this…

The value of the tyical popover ad is that it cannot be ignored. It has to be addressed. The visitor absolutely, positively, unequivocally must act when that window slides in. She will see your marketing message, and she will make a conscious decision on whether to close that window off, or enter her e-mail address to receive whatever offer you are promoting.

That is not the case with the peel away ads. You are free to ignore them if you like. I thought they might receive a higher conversion rate because they still aren’t that common. I figured the curiosity factor alone would contribute to that.

Looks like I figured wrong.

Additionally, if a visitor doesn’t move her mouse to the flickering page in the corner, she doesn’t get exposed to your marketing message – which appears below the page that “peels back.”

Does that mean peel away ads are of little value?

No, I don’t think so. Obviously, any single page site with a mandate of making an immediate sale is probably going to stick with popovers messages (of the “unblockable” sort, like those generated by Matt Callen’s Instant PopOVER software, which I do recommend). I would be surprised if these don’t outperform the peel away ads in almost every situation.

But what if you have a large content site like I do?

Although I recognize the value of popovers, I find them annoying and intrusive, especially if the webmaster opts to have them display on all pages, over and over (I set a cookie, so my visitors only see my popover once every 30 days). So I only display one popover, on the UltimateFatBurner.com index page. But many of my visitors arrive to top performing content pages, and a great many of them never see the index page. Page peel ads offer me a non-intrusive manner to entice them to become newsletter subscribers.

Is it incredibly effective? Hardly. But considering I don’t want to irritate the heck out of them, it’s a worthwhile one.

Bottom line?

I will continue to run page peel ads on top performing content pages, regardless of their miserable conversion rate.

Before I depart, I would be remiss to leave without making a few comments on the PeelAwayAds Version 3.0 software I used for this test. First the good…

Thumbs Up: Instructions and installation guide are well-written and easy to follow. I’m not incredible technically-minded, but it was a breeze to install and get working. In Explorer.

Thumbs down: I couldn’t get the peel away ads to display in the FireFox browser, so I sent in a support ticket about a week before Christmas ’08 (I know they work in FireFox, because I can view them with it on  the PeelAwayAds sales page.) I didn’t receive a response of any sort until about 6 weeks later, when a staff member sent me a note and asked if the issue had been resolved. I explained it had not, and would like it so. I’ve never heard from anyone again. On top of that, I immediately began to receive fairly aggressive marketing messages for products of dubious credibility and ethics (i.e., “scraping” software). I unsubscribed from the customer mailing list immediately.

All in all, my experience wasn’t stellar – but who knows, one experience is not necessarily indicative of everyone’s. Nonetheless, I would not recommend this product if you think you’re going to require some technical support.

After a quick couple of searches on Google, I found this much cheaper option for page peel ads, but can’t comment on the software personally, as I have no experience with the product.