Interesting email from Google Adsense...

[Sonnie]

I received an email from Adsense Support today....

Dear Publisher,

After a recent review of your site, we would like to include hometheatershack.com in our custom placement packs program. Custom placement packs are selections of individually-reviewed sites designed for our largest brand advertisers.

We would like to feature your site more frequently in these advertiser packages, but to do so, we need you to place more image and text-enabled medium rectangle ad units (300x250) on your site. Visit https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats to see a sample of the medium rectangle unit.

The medium rectangle is the most demanded size among our brand advertisers that utilize these packages for both text and image ads. These advertisers want to ensure they reach visitors on high quality sites like yours, and are willing to bid more for ads prominently displayed on these sites. They require that the units be placed "above the fold" on a page so that the ads are immediately visible to your site's visitors without scrolling down.

If you decide to add medium rectangle units to your site, please notify us by replying to this email so that we can begin featuring your site in more of our advertiser packages.

We also recommend you use the newly launched ad placements feature to define your ad slots to advertisers so they can bid on specific placements on your site. For instructions on how to create ad placements, please visit https://www.google.com/adsense/support .

Sincerely,
Geoff Vitt
AdSense Support

I know what they are asking and we could do it on our home page, but would it really help me? What are custom placement packs?


Another note possibly worth mentioning... we went from a PR3 to PR4 earlier today. Not that it's related, but I thought it ironic.

[SteveG]

I received the same e-mail and I'm not exactly sure what custom placement packs are.

I placed 300x250 ads on the particular site they suggested, but I received way too many complaints in the few hours they were up there from my visitors - everyone said the ads were too obtrusive and annoying. Thus, I took them down. I currently have wide 728x90 ads on the site that do okay.

[Sonnie]

I placed one on our home page, which is not where most members hang out, so maybe we won't get any complaints. However, I'm complaining because they are running non-related ads. Maybe if I move it to the right of the text in that section it will pick up the right ads.