Adsense Seems to have become a way of "voting" for a site...

What I'm hearing on other boards, and more importantly from colleagues and friends, is that they are "ad numb" to ads in Google's format.

They do, however, take the time on sites that they like or organization's pages that they support to click an ad or two to essentially "thank" the provider of the information or the momentary enjoyment the visitor received from the site.

So how do we avoid having our visitors "ad numb"? I like the bold colors available in adsense, and I like the fact they're giving advertisers in adwords more freedom in their ads now (more interesting ads means more click throughs), but we need something else besides the isolated graphic ad to grab some attention...

 

I don't think folks are ad numb, I just took a chance and clicked on one here today.

A Led Zeppelin ad got me so interested that I clicked on it.

Bottom line is if you have good content, the right ads will show up that will interest your viewers.

 

I admit that when I find a site I REALLY appreciate, im much more likely to click an ad, whether relevant or not.

 

Bold colors are one strategy, but matching the color scheme of the content seems to work better for me. It makes AdSense ads appear to be content.

Along those same lines, I have had reasonable success by removing the borders around AdSense ads.

Bigger ads are, of course, better.

Ads more closely mixed with content are best.

More ideas are in How to Make More Money with Google AdSense.

 

That's what seems to be happening to some of my sites...

It seems that my sites that take a position that 50% of people will love and the other 50% hate, I get a much higher CTR due to the 50% that like the position....

 

I'm with Will. My ctr has been improving steadily since blending the ads in with the site instead of making them stand out. Last month saw a 35% jump in revenue and this month is starting out very nice indeed. I just keep adding content and getting better rankings and the ctr's keep going up.

 

proper ad positioning and blending works for me too. Ive been a publisher of adsense since 2003. I dont use adsense on my sites that I believe will not benifit from it

 

About the only sites that I don't ad adsense to are the ones where I don't want competing products sold directly next to mine.

 

Using the right color scheme and placement. Also, of course, use good content. Good content will(should) attract relevant ads and your audience will click the ads if interested. Play around with formats too. I have found leaderboard works well while others like the skyscraper. It all depends on your layout. You can use channels to analyze different ad schemes on differnet pages to find out what works best.

Good Luck!