In essence, this can be considered the million dollar question because it can either make a website extremely successful or completely fail. Depending on what programs you use will depend on how many adverts you are allowed to show: Google Adsense will allow a maximum of 3 adverts per webpage whereas if you use a certified Google Adsense partner (such as Ezoic), the number of adverts per webpage has the potential to increase. For this reason, what is the ‘sweet spot’ for the number of adverts to display on a website? Here are my thoughts on how to approach answering this question.

Size Matters

The first and most important point that needs to be mentioned is that it is better to set a maximum area of adverts shown on your website rather than a maximum number of adverts. This is because:

• You could display the maximum three adverts all at 125×125 size (which would hardly make an impact, if at all).
• You could display a huge 728×90 advert and that is it – although less adverts are being shown, the area the advert is taking up is much larger.

From numerous amounts of testing, I have eventually stuck with the rule that the maximum area that should be taken up with adverts on a web page is 200,000 pixels squared. Above this number and the adverts start to take over the website. Below this number, the adverts are not large enough to make a necessary impact.

However, it Depends on Your Website

The 300,000 pixels squared rule is only a rough estimate because it depends solely on the type of website you have along with it’s theme and design. If your website has lots of content, it will be harder for the adverts to stand out so larger sized adverts will suit them types of websites. Whereas, if your website is simple and minimalistic in design, smaller size adverts will work better since large adverts will portray your website as spammy. As another general rule of thumb, 2 adverts is a good number to have on a website as it compliments the website and does not take over it.

Ultimately, if you are still unsure the maximum number of adverts you should display on your website, experiment! Every website is different so there is no right or wrong answer to the article’s question (that is why I use general rules of thumb). You might find one advert that is very small works better than three large adverts, who knows! All I would say is that as you increase the number of adverts on your website, there seems to be direct correlation to the statistics of your website (such as average time on page, pages per visit and bounce rate) that they seem to decrease so bear that in mind.