Can Hubpages Turn Off Individual Ads?

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   eugbugposted 2 years ago

   I presume either TAG won't let them or it's not technically possible. If they can what's stopping them trialling removing them to see if there's an improvement in traffic?

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   EricDockettposted 2 years ago

   They can't even turn off the top video that is so obviously damaging reader experience. I don't imagine they'd be able to turn off individual ads.
   
   I agree they should try different things to improve traffic. That's what used to happen in the olden days of HP.

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3. 67

   Glenn Stokposted 2 years ago

   You can't control individual ads, but you can turn off all ads on individual articles.
   
   To do that, edit the hub and open "Display Options" on the right side. Then switch the ads option to "off." Unfortunately, the video at the top can't be disabled.
   
   I previously experimented with turning off ads on articles with Amazon capsules. I thought that if the Amazon ads were the only ads, they would stand out more. (Turning off ads does not affect Amazon ads).
   
   Interestingly, after a month, my revenue from the HubPages earnings program dropped more than the Amazon earnings increased, so I enabled all ads again. My experiment failed. LOL.

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      eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      I thought that doesn't work any more Glenn? I'm sure I tried it a few months ago. Maybe I'm wrong.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Glenn - Yeah, at one point we were officially advised to turn off the ads if the hub was Amazon-orientated to help it in the SERPs.
      
      A few years after I did that, I was emailed and told to turn ads back on again, as I was losing revenue!
      
      I believe that turning off the ads still works. But I'm leaving them all switched on regardless.

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   Glenn Stokposted 2 years ago

   Eugene - It was a few months ago when I did that test, and it worked at that time. The option is still there to turn ads off, but I don't know if it works anymore.
   
   Paul  - Same as you, I lost revenue during my test also, which is why I turned ads back on.

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      eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      I just checked and it seems to work. Did you notice from GA much change in traffic with ads turned off? It would be interesting to know whether it resulted in a rise due to people staying longer on the pages because of the "better page experience". Also I wonder would the ranking of an individual article improve because of it having no ads, or is the ranking predominately influenced by the site's ranking?

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         Glenn Stokposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         Those are all great questions, Eugene. I didn’t notice any change in traffic in my GA. But I only did it for a month, and Google usually takes longer than that for their algorithms to react to viewer engagement.
         
         Interestingly, Retention time reported in GA didn’t change either. So that might indicate that people don’t mind all those ads. I guess people who surf the web are getting used to it since so many other sites are doing the same thing now with an overabundance of ads.
         
         I don’t know the answer to your question about ranking. That would require an SEO specialist. Maybe if I had let my experiment go much longer, I might have noticed an increase in views. But like I said, my revenue decreased already within that month. So I quickly ended the experiment.

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