Jen over at Jensense ran a pretty important post recently. It covered a topic that's been bothering me for a while now. For about the last month, or even more, my blog at JoelComm.com has been showing one single ad across the top of the page.

It hasn't been doing me any harm and I'm not complaining. The revenue figures for that page haven't taken a hit so I don't feel that I've got any reason to worry too much. I just wished I knew more about why it was happening and whether I can expect it to change back to multiple ads in the near future.

Jen managed to chat with AdSenseAdvisor, an official Google AdSense Support Team member (it's the January 10th post at Jensense.com), and although they were discussing why multiple ad units have recently been showing two ads instead of four to so many people, they answered my little question too. As AdSenseAdvisor put it: "If you only see two ads in an ad unit appearing, it is because our technology has determined the publisher will receive a higher eCPM. This is an automatic optimization feature.”

As for my big ad across the top of my page, that's also an expanded text ad; in other words, it's still a CPC ad not a site-targeted ad.

Well, that's fine. Now I know. But there's not a lot I can do about it, and this is where I start to have a problem. Google could be right and putting two ads (or one ad) in a unit built for four might be the method that brings in the most revenue. But I'd still like to have the choice.

I'm sure there are a lot of publishers that just want to sign up to AdSense, let Google do all the work for them and forget about it until the check comes. But for those of us who really put a lot of effort into optimizing the ads and making good income from them, the more control we have over the ads on our pages, the easier we feel. At least I do.

In the meantime though, I'm left thinking about a bunch of other questions: Why do ad units that show few ads do better than units that show many ads? Is an expanded text ad a sign that I've maxed out the revenues I can receive on the standard ads? If expanded text ads are still CPC ads how can I still encourage people to click when they look more like an ad?

I'll keep thinking about those questions and get back to you with answers...