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Key point #2: A/B testing

What’s A/B testing?

I like to phrase it as “pitting two (or more) contenders in equal conditions”. Truth is, much of your success with online publishing will depend on A/B testing, so you better get started now. And the perfect vehicle to do so is, appropriately, advertisements.

What you need to perform A/B testing

In A/B testing, no matter how simple or complex your test is, there are two indispensable tools you need:

1. Several alternatives.
2. A way to rotate (equally and randomly) among alternatives.
3. A way to measure the performance of each alternative.

In online advertising, 1) translates to variations of an ad you want to test, 2) to a software mechanism that rotates ad code, while 3) translates to an ad tracking device. To make things simple, our thought experiment will use AdSense channels, so for 1) and 3) you’lld use the AdSense tools to create several variations of the ads, and for each variation, you will create and assign one channel.

Using the Intelligent ad content insertion plugin to perform A/B testing

Now that it’s time to perform testing, let’s assume you have three (you better have at least ten!) different ad variations, each with its own color palette, borders, orientation, decorations and positioning (easily accomplished by surrounding the ad with <div style=”"> tags).

This code can get you started:

<?php
switch (rand(1,3)) {
    case 1:
        ?>[replace this with ad code for variation 1 here]<?php
        break;
    case 2:
        ?>[replace this with ad code for variation 2 here]<?php
        break;
    case 3:
        ?>[replace this with ad code for variation 3 here]<?php
        break;
}
?>

What this code basically does is select a number randomly from 1 to 3 and, based on the choice, print out a different ad variation.

After you’ve done that, you need to take two more steps:

1. Enable PHP evaluation on the plugin options below the ad code boxes.
2. Let the test run for a few days. Preferably a week.

Voilà! After a week, you will be able to generate an AdSense report comparing the performance of each one of the alternatives. Ditch all except for the highest-performing one, rinse and repeat with new variations. If you’re like me, you will probably identify one or two “winning characteristics” that you’ll want to keep for the next testing round.

Conclusion

Positioning and A/B testing are key if you want to make serious money with your blog. The Intelligent content ad insertion plugin for WordPress helps you do both painlessly. Get it today — it’s free.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 13:33 and is filed under Advertising, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.