heathrow wrote:

In response to Travis, you're right about the control group. But I didn't say that relation was causation. What I'm saying is that the ad placement -- in general -- has not hurt lens performance. So people's comments about people leaving, not respecting lenses, etc., are inaccurate.

But, how can you tell that for sure?
You can only measure what's being looked at, how many visitors, clicks out, ect. Those probably ARE increasing.
What's missing in your analysis is this set of statistics:
How many people don't cruise the lenses, don't come back, don't come back as often , or fail to tell their friends, bookmark, or BLOG about Squidoo as would if the ads were less intrusive?
Granted, it's growing, and it's going to continue to grow for a while, but how stunted or short-lived is the growth under current conditions?

Actually, JaNell, that's _not_ missing in our analysis. So far, new visitors are increasing. Repeat visitors _aren't_ decreasing. Time spent on lenses is increasing. Content clickouts are increasing. We'll offer a full report after Aug. 1.

Until then, I'm going to let the stats I've already shared stand to support the experiment and follow threads like this for feedback -- but not to continue to defend what we're doing, which feels less and less necessary given the stats.

You may not personally like the ad placement, but it hasn't hurt the performance of lenses or the platform across the board.

Heath I have to give it to you "GoogleGate" is almost as complex and polarizing as the "war" and yet you guys have set an "exit date" for the experiment (at least) -- are you sure its safe to let the "insurgents" know your exit strategy?? haha -- read SGs blog post today -- he does tend to have calming effect...and more importantly he cares -- I feel much better...test on!

Last edited by michaelgibbons (06/28/2006 12:58 pm)

Good article - he made some interesting points. I was one of the first people to voice my dislike with the ads at the top. Then I decided to sit back and wait it out to see what the experiment would show.

Actually, I've gotten used to them and don't really care that much anymore. If I had just signed on and hadn't been around when they weren't at the top, it would not have stopped me from making lenses. It was hard to see it go from the side to the top but so what - there really are much more important things to be concerned about in the world!

Sounds like the experiment has gone well...
Barrie

I think it's time to move on to a different topic of conversation.

Personally, I don't mind the Google ads either way. When I visit a website, I am used to seeing them, and I just ignore them. My guess is that 99.99% of lense visitors are exactly the same way. I certainly have not noticed a drop in traffic or click-throughs.

Squidoo is a business. Personally, I believe it capitalism which leads me to believe that Squidoo's management team will try to do what is best for their business, which just happens to also be what is best for the Squidoo site and for the lensemasters.

Having said that, more choices are always preferable. I think lensemasters should be permitted to choose the location (and indeed existance or lack thereof) and quantity of Google ads. Either way, this is really a minor point.

Move on.

heathrow wrote:

Right now, Squidoo's layout and presentation is pretty stable. We've tested a couple of different ad placements, and based on performance and response, have decided to stick with the current layout for the time being.

Is this the "full report" you said was coming?

I think Travis means about how the ad placement change affected lens performance. (Correct me if I'm wrong: I'm operating at partial attention in a lot of directions these days!) We're not going to share hard numbers, but after moving the ads (previously mentioned control group aside):

* Squidoo traffic went up
* Clickthroughs on links in lenses went up
* Clickthroughs on ads in lenses went up
* Royalties earned by lensmasters went up
* Royalties donated to charity went up
* Time spent on lenses went up

All by impressive factors. There were no indications that moving the ads hurt lens performance. The royalties earned by clickthrough on the ads alone (which is clearly attributable to location) -- paid to lensmasters and charity -- warrant keeping the placement as is. So we should move on from there, I think.

What we're going to do in the next week-plus is give lensmasters a chance to say "Don't move stuff around on me again," or, "Go for it. I want to have the best-performing lens layout possible. Include me in your experiments."

We'll never touch the content of your lenses, but we're going to be experimenting with the format in the days and weeks to come. Max/Min will allow lensmasters to be part of that... or not. It'll be your call.

I have no problem with chosing "Max", but I still would like to know when a change has been made so that I don't miss it!  Will there still be some sort of notification?

Innovate on  :-)

Okay, just checking.

Max! Ugly ad placement and all.

Angela