I often come across website - primarily from the US, but that's by and by - that seem to have a policy of more is best when it comes to laying out advertising on a webpage. So you will have advertising on the top, side, bottom and in the middle of the article. Often, the design of these adverts is totally out of character with the general design of the page. Personally, it makes me want click away from the site - not read more of the content. What's people's opinion on this? Is more better? Or is the right location the key?
The more the worse, at least for me. The right location is definitely the key, along with the design and how well you integrate it. Those CLICK HERE TO WIN PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE banners may have worked in the past, but they no longer do. They now are the sign of an unprofessional website and definitely a site that I would not visit again if I have another choice.
The 'best' imo are ones that blend in, that appear like they are part of the site ie so you click thinking it'll take you somewhere on the site.
More visual is better when it comes to adsense, if you dont care about returning visitors put two big blocks above he fold and the content below the fold. Expact at least 30% ctr.
I HOPE this is against the TOS of the major PPC networks, because speaking as an advertiser, I do not want anyone clicking on the ad I'm paying for by accident.
I would always go for quality advertising over quantity (of course, if you have a lot of quality advertising, that's even better). In my opinion, the best ads are those that are related to the site content, and don't stand out as advertisements. For example, partner text links to related websites.
Look at it this way. Have you seen alot of them MFA sites where they don't have much content, but have ads all over the page. They do that so they can get more clicks on their ads. It will make them some money. You could spend a year on the site and earn some nice cash, but if you stopped promoting the site then your traffic and earnings will probably stop after a while. Now if you had a nice layed out site with the ads not overdone then over a year you would probably earn more than what a site would earn that is overdone with ads. This is because advertising it would be much easier, people are more likely to want to link to it, people are more likely to do word of mouth, people are more likely to return to the site time and time again. Now look at Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc. They have ads, but they don't overdue it. If they did then they would not be as big as they are today. Most people want a site so that they can make money, but also keeping your visitors happy is a better approach than just killing the site with over doing the ads.