AdSense Ad Balance Improves Visitor Experience

The Google AdSense ad balance is a tool that controls the number of ads that appear on a website. It also improves visitor experience.

Site publishers can find the tool in their accounts by clicking on Ads and Ad Balance. They will see an interactive graphic that displays the percentage of potential ads and the estimated percentage of earnings. Underneath is a slider that controls the percentage of potential ads.

For example, a shift in the slider all the way toward the right tells AdSense to display ads in all ad positions 100 percent of the time. Although that percentage sounds good, in reality it doesn’t mean that Google will have any paying ads on those ad positions. Some of the ads might even look awful and pay little money at the same time.

Note the short vertical line just beneath the slider and the text on the left that says, “Better user experience range”. It is Google’s way of saying that not all ads are worth displaying on a site.

At the time of this writing, the world is in the middle of a major economic crisis because of the coronavirus pandemic. Paid advertising has collapsed in all major business categories with some categories worse than others.

Google simply doesn’t have enough ads to place in every position and every impression on every website. Instead, it may display:

• Unpaid filler ads promoting Google products.
• Ads that are undesirable on many sites, such as gambling or sex-related ads.
• Ads that pay cost per clicks so low that they aren’t worth displaying.

Ad Balance for Best User Experience

For these reasons, Google offers publishers a chance to reduce the number of ads while maximizing revenue at the same time.

For example, again at the time of this writing, the ad slider shows that this company can get:

• 100 percent of its potential earnings with ads appearing 100 percent of the time.
• 99 percent of the same potential earnings with ads appearing only 65 percent of the time.

If the slider tells AdSense to display ads only 65 percent of the time, what appears in the other 35 percent? Nothing at all. It won’t display any ads.

An ad position without an ad will not display any images or require any scripts for a site visitor to download. As a result, the page will load faster. As Google research shows, even a few hundred milliseconds can make a difference in user experience. So a bloated ad that doesn’t pay anything is actually quite worthless and even detrimental to a site.

Site publishers should check and adjust the tool on a regular basis, such as weekly or monthly. They also should keep the percentage of potential ads slightly above the recommended level in case available ad volume grows unexpectedly.

It benefits all publishers to use the AdSense ad balance tool to maximize earnings while improving site speed and overall user experience.