WebProNews

E-business professionals everywhere stood up and took notice when Jason Calacanis' Weblogs, Inc., bringing in $3000 a day with Google AdSense, was swallowed up by America Online for a reported $25 million. Google noticed the success as well, releasing a case study on Weblogs, Inc.'s success. In the study, Google taps Calacanis' brain to discover the secret of his AdSense success.

Calacanis reveals that it took some diligent experimentation to arrive at a good mix of strategy. Using AdSense channels to track performance, Calacanis' team tweaked their pages by increasing the number of ads, tried on colors, sizes, and locations.

Weblogs, Inc. enjoyed a 50 percent hike in revenues after implementing the link unit ad format, whereby contextual text ads automatically complement the content. Calacanis says contextual ads are the key ingredient to a successful AdSense campaign.

"AdSense provides ads that are more like content than advertising," Calacanis comments. "They inform people." His team also witnessed a 10 to 20 percent jump in ad performance when they matched the ad colors to the site, recognizing the sophistication of the blog audience. "The ads are respectful of the user," the Google AdSense page reports.

"Set goals for yourselves around traffic, number of ads shown, ads per page, number of clicks and as you optimize AdSense, the revenue will follow," advises Calacanis.

Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.