For Adsense, in recent years, there has been a migration from using the cost per click (CPC) and click through rate (CTR) to revenue per mille (RPM) and active view viewable. Now, in the olds days, it was quite easy to find ways to increase either the CPC or CTR and, although nothing has changed what makes web users click on adverts, the active view viewable is a statistic that should raise quite a lot of alarm bells. This is because the active view viewable is a percentage of web users that saw your advert. By ‘saw’, they must have seen at least 50% of the advert for at least one second for it to be count as ‘seen’. 

The below image is a screenshot straight from my Adsense performance reports which shows my active view viewable percentage for one of my project websites:

As you can see, my active view viewable is not very high to say the least with an average of 56.22%. However, what is more worrying is the fact that there is a steady and slow decline for the statistic. If less people are seeing the advert, less people are exposed and are interacting with the advert which means less people will be clicking on the advert which we really do not want. Therefore, there seems to be a need to find way to improve the active view viewable statistic. Below are some ideas that have worked for me on other project websites that I want to share with you.

#1 Place Adverts Above the Fold

At the end of the day, if you have an advert at the bottom of your content, it is always going to get a lower active view viewable percentage than an advert above the fold of your page. This is because advert’s above the fold will get actively viewed on, near enough, every single time as opposed to adverts below content (which require the web user to scroll all the way to the bottom of the article, which may not happen every single time).

#2 Try Vertical Adverts if Currently Using Horizontal

Horizontal adverts really do have low active view viewable percentages for the simple reason that they are scrolled to easily down a page – the time a horizontal advert is displayed on a webpage is always going to be a lot less than a vertical advert in the same position. This is because vertical adverts are viewed for longer even if the web user is choosing to scroll down the page. Therefore, by using vertical adverts you should see an improvement to your active view viewable percentage.

#3 Ad Block Blocker?

I disapprove of ad blockers but can understand exactly why people use it. The sad fact is that it is probably hurting more decent websites than people think it is hurting bad websites with pop up adverts etc.

Regardless of this, ad blockers will contribute to a low active view viewable percentage. Therefore, if you can take the brave, you could always use an ad block blocker which will prevent web users from viewing your website until they pause their ad blockers – a risk I would never take to a website but it would improve your active view viewable.