How to increase AdSense CPC: Some AdSense Tips for you

CPC is a term that is familiar to everyone who use Ads to monetize their online content. It stands for Cost Per Click

Tips to improve the AdSense CPC

Many publishers have reported that their CPC has gone down suddenly after giving high rates consistently for several months. Possible reason is, some advertisers have been targeting your site and the campaign ended recently.

If your traffic and overall revenue increases but CPC is going down, then it is possible that you are getting more traffic in the low CPC content and it reduced your average CPC. But as long as your overall revenue increases, you don't need to worry about the changes in cost per click.

Read further to learn the factors that affect Google AdSense CPC and learn some tips to improve your CPC and overall revenue.

Placement targeted ads for best CPC

Placement targeted ads are always higher CPC ads compared to the regular ads. One of the best ways to increase your AdSense CPC is, encourage AdWords advertisers to consider your site for placement targeted ads. Losing a targeted advertiser for a site is one of the main reasons for the CPC to go down suddenly in many sites.


Location or country of the visitors

One of the most important factors that influence AdSense CPC is the country your visitors are from. Advertisers spend a lot in developed countries like USA, Canada, UK etc and pay too low in countries like India, China, Pakistan etc. The CPC of your Ads depends on how much the advertisers bid for the ads. Since the advertisers have budget in developed countries, a click from those countries could give significantly high CPC. For example, many clicks from countries like USA or UK could get you anywhere between $1 to $5 but majority of the clicks from India, China etc would get you less than 10 cents.

One of the best ways to improve your AdSense CPC is to get more traffic and visitors from countries like USA, Canada, UK etc. Try writing content on topics that target the countries which offer higher CPC. For example, if you write about 'Best smartphones in USA', you have higher chances of getting visitors from USA than writing on the topic 'Best smartphones in India'. Identify topics interesting to visitors from developed countries and write publish great articles on those topics and your CPC is sure to go high.

Here is a list of countries I found to be giving the best CPC in some of my websites:

New Zealand

Norway

Australia

Canada

United Kingdom

United States

Singapore

Ireland

Netherlands

Germany

Finland

France

Italy

Switzerland


I made up this list by looking at various stats and reports, however, it can vary by the niche, quality of the site and so many other parameters. In general, the countries listed above come in the top 20 paying countries for most niche and sites.

Niche of your blog

As you are aware, the cost for each click is determined by the advertiser. If there is more competition, then it goes into an auction system where advertisers offer more and more money per click to get their Ads appear in the relevant sites. Some type of content like healthcare products, automobiles, gadgets etc have very high competition among advertisers on the web. This naturally increases results in higher bid by everyone in the auction system, resulting in high CPC.

If your blog belong to a high competition niche, you will get higher CPC. If your focus is to improve the CPC, then it is a good idea to focus on keywords, topics and niche that has high competition and high demand on the web.

However, please be aware that just having high competition alone will not result in high CPC. Think about the money the advertisers are willing to pay. If there is more money involved, then there will higher CPC. Automobiles, health products, gadgets, insurance etc are typical examples of high paid ads. But topics like job search, people search etc may have high demand but have very low CPC since the readers of such topics are not really potential customers of any major products and so the money spent by advertisers in those niche are not too high.

Section Targeting

Section Targeting allows you to indicate to Google about which part of your page is to be considered for contextual targeting of Ads. For example, if you have sidebars and menu that has completely irrelevant content, you may want to exclude those parts by using section targeting so that your AdSense ads will be more relevant to the primary content of the page rather than matching the content with the text in sidebars. By using section targeting, you can get more relevant Ads for your content, which in turn will give higher CPC.

Image Ads could give higher CPC on certain topics

Are you using text only or image/rich media only ads? Even though rich media ads have relatively higher CPC, your average CTR could be much higher if you select for both. I have personally observed that Text & Image/rich media ads give better revenue than using either one type of ads in technology related niche since many advertisers prefer to showcase their products through rich media ads. However, in case of education related topics, I have observed text ad units bring higher revenue because of the higher click-through-rate, even though the CPC is lower. It is hard to generalize which ad types would be beneficial for you in your niche. The best approach is, try text only, image only and text/image combination for few days and see which one brings you higher overall revenue.

NOTE: Do not go by just higher CPC. Instead, look at the overall revenue. Even if certain experiments show higher CPC, if the CTR is low in those cases, your overall revenue will be lower.

Placement/location of AdSense ads

Placement can significantly affect the CTR. There are cases where the placement affects the CPC as well. If your ads are placed above the fold and in important places, chances of getting placement targeted ads relatively high, which will in turn increase your CPC.

Placement of Ads can impact the CPC in other ways too. The ads shown in your site may change according to the text near which the ad units are placed. If you placed your ads near high paid keywords, your CPC could go up since the ads appearing there will be higher paid ads because of their proximity to high paying keywords.

Write on hot topics and newly launched products

When a new product is launched, there are online shops and other advertisers target more on those products. For example, when Samsung Galaxy S4 is launched and is available in the market, many online shops may want to promote that product and so they will be targetting related keywords. If you have a lot of content related to such topics, during that time, you may fetch a high CPC from the Ads in those pages.

Impact of ad size on CPC

Try different ad sizes. If you are using rectangle ad units, you can sizes like 336x280, 300x250 etc, which will fit in to the same layout. Typically, the ad sizes will not affect the CPC. However, there are certain sizes which are the favorites of many advertisers and such units will have higher CPC because of the higher competition.

In my case, the following sizes give higher CPC, in the given order:
300x250 (text and image ads)

336x280 (text ads)

728x90 (text and image ads)


Try different ad sizes in your site. Try both 336x280 and 300x250 for few days and see which one gives higher CPC and higher CTR.

Impact of number of ad units used

The number of ad units used per page has no direct impact but there are various ways it could indirectly influence the CPC. If you have too many ad blocks in your site, advertisers may want to avoid your site and so you will lose the chances of getting placement targeted ads. Placement targeted ads always give higher rates and losing them would result in lower rates from your ads.

Try different options

I shared several tips that work for most AdSense publishers, but not every blog is the same. Some tips that worked for my blog may not work for you. You must keep experimenting different options, placements, ad sizes etc and figure out which one works best for you.