160x600 Skyscraper: Left or Right Side?

I hear many people believe a 160x600 skyscraper should be placed on the left side of the page, as this is an area where menus usually go, and people are used to clicking there. On the other hand, others (including that Joel Comm guy, I believe) think they should be placed on the right side, with the thinking that most people use their right hand to move the mouse, and it doesn't take as much effort to reach your ads if they are on the right side of the page! Any thoughts on this issue?

 

I personally prefer the right hand side - when I read a page I read from left to right - I don't want an ad unit to be the first thing I see.

 

For me a Skyscraper belongs on the right side.

 

Definately the right.Adsense ctr much higher so I assume other ctr will be same.

 

I think it should be on left.

 

Both sides work equally well for me (on different pages). CTR is pretty much the same with and without a border.

 

google says left side of the site is better than the rigth side https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17954 but in my exprience rigth side of the site is getting more clicks

 

It depends on the layout of your site and what you're trying to get out of it. I like putting them on the right side because it's less obtrusive. I want my visitors to know immediately when they go to my site that I spent a lot of time putting this together, I am proud, and I'm not trying to spam their screen full of advertisements. So, I'm hoping they'll appreciate this and be a returning visitor. Their one accidentally click doesn't mean as much to me as their returning traffic and word of mouth.

 

Left Side is The Good One

 

for me, both have no diferent.

 

For me I can't put one on my forum right now because I haven't taken the time to position it.

On my blog it works better for the right side right now because that's where my links are at this moment.

 

People scan a page left to right because we read and write from left to right (this is obviously not true for all traffic but holds for Anerica and Europe.) So, usability gurus suggest that since most people only spend a few seconds on a page they are most likely to only see what is on the top-left corner that is the first place they scan. So, if your site gets lots of less than 10 sec visitors put the ads on the left because they may never see much more of your site; and make the ad format eye catching. If you think people will be around long enough to scan to the right and bottom of the page then that is where your ads should be because they will click on them to move on. In other words, the best ad placement depends on your visitor's behavior so your analytics software is your best friend for high CTR.

 

I find that the 160x600 ads don't work that well, but I place it on the left.

 

Left side. Upon entering your site the users eyes tend to drift to the left.

 

Left side blend the color with your navigation menu and you can get high CTR. In my site I am using at left only.

 

i have not tried the right side, but my left side skyscaper ads is working pretty well. (around 20 clicks daily out of 2000 visitors)

 

Hi everybody,

Right side is better than left side.

sandy seo

 

That's interesting. I would have thought the left would be better, simply because we read left to right so naturally our eyes are more likely to be looking at the left side of the screen at a given moment.

 

left side is much more better

 

It depends, but usually I go with putting the skyscraper along the left.