Hi Jon,
thanks for reaching out.
First of all, congrats! That sounds like a well-going project.
Based on your question I’ll assume that this particular advertiser is a significant source of revenue.
First, I would try to fill this space with another advertiser. Maybe, one of your existing clients would like to upgrade and take over this space, at least for some time.
I would also try to get as much information from the leaving client as possible. Maybe, you can’t win him back, but there is always a chance to improve in the future.
On non-product-related sites, AdSense can often not keep up with the revenue of directly sold ads. Not sure how much income you need to generate, but 500k views per year could never cover a full-time employee in any Western country.
If you still want to try AdSense, then you would need to add those banners into the content because, in most cases, you would only generate revenue when users click on the ads, which seldom happens at the header or sidebar position.
I hope that my comments give you something to work with.
Thomas
Many thanks, the site is a labour of love for us.
The departing company is concentrating on B2B sales so we don’t really fit that audience.
We’d rather win a new headline advertiser rather than canabalise an exsiting one if we can!
