CamcorderInfo.com tripled contextual advertising revenues by optimizing with Google AdSense

November 4, 2005

Case study : CamcorderInfo.com : www.camcorderinfo.com

Established in the summer of 1997, CamcorderInfo.com is a central web destination for everything related to camcorders—reviews, articles, ratings, product comparisons, footage, advice, and tips. Among the largest online publications for camcorder reviews and articles on video production and camcorder use, the site attracts more than 20,000 visitors a day and caters to a community of 25,000 message board subscribers as well as a group of dedicated bloggers.

Founder Robin Liss credits her company’s fast-growing success to the group of individuals behind the scenes who deliver hands-on independent camcorder reviews and up-to-the-minute news, as well as to the tremendous loyalty of CamcorderInfo.com customers and prosumers. Liss was looking for ways to increase revenues while spending more time creating the best editorial possible when she learned about the Google AdSense for content program. Additionally, with many other sites in her network, including DigitalCameraInfo.com, EasyCamcorders.com and EasyDigitalCameras.com, Liss needed a system which would allow her to administer multiple sites with ease.

Challenge

AdSense for content would deliver contextual ads precisely targeted to her site’s content, enhancing the appeal of the site’s information to her devoted audience. “When you’ve invested in content and have developed a reputation for ethical, independent content as much as we have, you want your advertising to be highly targeted,” says Liss. “We knew immediately that AdSense for content would be an extremely powerful combination: the thick Google ‘black book’ of advertisers, plus great contextual targeting to make ads useful for our readers.”

Liss wasn’t disappointed with the initial results: the program quickly brought in revenue for the rapidly expanding company. But Liss and her team knew that there was still untapped potential, and that they had more to learn about making AdSense a better revenue-generator for the company.

Results

Using AdSense channels, Liss and her team began tracking performance of the ads. They tried placing ad links in different areas on the site, altering colors and ad unit sizes, and placing ads on the CamcorderInfo.com blog and message boards. They tracked each of these changes by channel to determine if adjustments resulted in increased revenues. It didn’t take long to learn that ads on the blog and message boards worked exceedingly well, and that placing ad link units right under the leaderboard increased ad visibility while maximizing editorial space. “Ad link units are a very smart way to find space and increase ad exposure,” says Liss. “In some cases, these units have provided as much as a 300 percent increase in revenue.”

Liss is proud of the editorial content and sophisticated design of CamcorderInfo.com and DigitalCameraInfo.com, so she appreciates the ability to control the ads’ visual impact on readers by choosing colors and ad sizes that match the site. “AdSense lets us integrate page ads creatively with the rest of our site,” she says. “We can deliver ads in a way that respects our readers and doesn’t force anything on them that they don’t want to read.” Equally important, she notes that “the ads are well labeled, which follows our strict philosophy of church and state separation between advertising and editorial.”

Since experimenting with different options and methodically tracking results, revenues for CamcorderInfo.com and DigitalCameraInfo.com generated from AdSense have tripled. “AdSense has become a major source of income for the business,” says Liss.

For Liss and her staff, experimenting with AdSense has more than paid off in both time and money. “Signing up and maintaining relationships with advertisers is typically a full-time job,” says Liss. “AdSense allows me and my staff to concentrate on creating the best editorial possible. We’re able to spend less resources on ad sales, and more on growing and expanding our content. With minor experimentation and adjustment, AdSense handles the rest.”