OpenLinkz

I have had the OpenLinkz ad slider running on my other blog, Trade Radar, for a few weeks now. I am stunned at how well it is performing. The click through rate is more than twice that of any other ad on the site. I am just running a simple Google AdSense 468 X 60 half-banner but it gets plenty of action.

There are issues involved that web site or blog owners need to address when using sliding ads.

First, decide if you are comfortable displaying a sliding ad. Would you consider it too obtrusive and bothersome to your readers? I worried about this so I opted to only display the ad one time, on the first page viewed by the reader. Subsequent page views will not trigger the appearance of the sliding ad. Also, don't pick an ad that is too big.

Second, you need to carefully pick the appropriate ad to display. It needs to load quickly so the movement of sliding ad panel isn't "herky jerky".

Third, another aspect of picking the best possible ad is related to the payment method. This ad will definitely get clicked so you need to select an ad that has a reasonable Pay-per-Click rate. Since the sliding ad may start stealing clicks from other ads on your page, you need to carefully evaluate the best approach to maximize your earnings.

There are a number of blog posts floating around that say you should minimize the number of AdSense ads on a page in order to get the best PPC rate available for the type of content on that particular page. This is also something you should take into consideration if you choose to run AdSense in your sliding ad.

Try our wizard at OpenLinkz.com to generate the code for your own sliding ad panel but carefully consider how you will use it.