Most Big Bloggers place a square unit right beneath the Blog post title. I find it quite intrusive, and I don' know if they ever tried placing a 468X60 banner at the same place. I used to place a square earlier, despite the fact that it was ugly, and changed to a 486X60 just because it was more pleasing and merge well with the title and the body. Well, It quite surprised me that my CTR increased almost 4 times on an average after that. And even 6 times sometime. Please do try it and see if it works for you. Another point of note, HOW COME GOOGLE RECOMMENDS THE LEFT HAND SIDE AS A GOOD PLACEMENT OF ADSENSE WHILE GOOGLE THEMSELVES PLACE THE ADS ON THE RIGHT HAND SIDE ON THE GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS PAGE?
Nice points. The big square does become intrusive when all you can see on the page are the ads rather than the information you came looking for. As for Google placing the ads on the right, it probably is due to the fact that Google themselves are not overtly worried about the CTR like the website owners. Also if Google start placing the ads on the left, then users will become blind to the ads on the left (due to the reach of the Google engine).. thereby making the right side more effective. So it is probably better that Google leaves the ads on the search results pages where they are.
The ads being the sole revenue for the search engine, I am sure they are also worried about the CTR and such like. What did you mean by reach of the google engine?
Google recommends the left hand side because that's where content starts. They assume beginners will cut off their ads if put on the right due to poor design coding.
The right hand side of the web page usually falls into the blind spot of many web surfers because they are used to seeing ads on the right. If Google were to start puttings ads on the left, it would cause two things: 1. People will become more ad blind on the left side due to the high usage of Google 2. Google would themself seem to be giving more importance to paid listings (which they do not want to do)
I also use the 468x60 size under my titles for the same reason (reader friendliness). I do use the larger box size on my category and search pages and find they have a better CTR but in the long run I'd rather have more happy readers so keep the individual post pages less ad obtrusive.
Oh yes, for category pages, or even at the bottom of the post, a square is fine.. But below the title, it is quite repelling, no?
Repelling is probably a bit too strong. I wouldn't place a large ad block under the title but I know many successful bloggers that do and it doesn't seem to put off their readers.