I’ve been running this certain CPC networks ads on a few of my sites and I was always fumbled by how it seemed to perform so well a few days in the beginning and totally died the rest. The traffic was not a problem as it was consistent, it was something just so insanely simple I didn’t figure it out till I clicked on the ads myself.

Which by the way is not always advisable, but in this case I simply had no choice.

The ads allowed me to customize the widget quite extensively. I did some testing on it to make sure that they flawlessly blended in with the content but yet looked obtrusive enough to click. I learned the hard way that sometimes too many customization options can end up hurting you.

Customizing the basic things like colors, borders, text size, text color, hover color etc…was all fine. But when it comes to the part where the “target=” attribute gets involved that’s when things can get tricky if you do not know how the ad server handles it.

The ads allowed you to specify how the browser could react to a click on the ad. The usual suspects were _top, _blank, _self and _parent. I set it on _self so that the ads would open in the same window and the user would not be upset about having to deal with another new tab or window opening up.

That’s when earnings tanked.

You see the _self action for the target attribute let the ad open up in the same window, as it should. The only thing was that it showed the ad within the constraints of the ad banner.

So if I had a 728 x 90 ad with four different ads showing. When an ad was clicked the resulting site would open within the 728 x 90 space itself, not the whole web page. So basically it was like showing a site within the 728 space except without any scroll bars or any other way for the user to click back. The reasons why the earning tanked was because sometimes there were two clicks necessary to get paid. Which sucked.

Ever since I saw that small, but fatal, error on my part I promptly adjusted my ads. They are now set to open up in _top which lets the ad show up in the same browser window, as was originally my intention.

To answer my question: To _self Or Not To _self.

NOT!

About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.