So? Put the borders again and see if you get an increase in CTR. It's all about testing and experimenting
borders are a natural barrier for the eyes, I've noticed the same. Borders = lower CTR. Remove the borders if your goal is a higher CTR
Lorien.. he removed borders and his CTR decreased... Read one more time anyway when ive added borders my CTR increased from 0.7% to 1%...
c'mon lorie! Stop the booze please! Borders are automatic eye-catchers. CTR should normal increase with the use of borders because more people will be looking at them.
What is reasonable ctr with and without borders (for targetted traffic). Do people click on ads because of confusion or curiosity, or are these not counted?
Most of the time it's because of interest. This is why content rich pages have the highest CTR in the inustry. Curiosity is part of the game too, but as for confusion, i think this is not really the issue because they can clearly see and read the ads hence, decide what to do - to click or not. As for the reasonalble CTR, there's none. It varies from industry to industry, audeince to audience and site to site.
I think it depends a lot on your site layout. Some sites get better results having the ads stand out from the content and others work better with everything blended in. Like the others have said, always test and tweak your colors & layout to see what works for you.
If you have mostly regular visitors or a very busy layout, then removing borders doesn't usually help and can hurt. Each Website has it's own variables that work and don't work. I'm constantly experimenting and often surprised by some layouts that defy logic, have big CPMs.
you can't just give the result after 1-2 days. it also depends on eCPM, sometimes, depending on the week or month, advertisers are bidding less money for advertising spots.
keep changing ads color and location. After a while, visitors will become blind for ads without border too.
Actually I track this on all my ads and found in my case that no borders do better then ads with borders! Reason, bordered ads are obvious ads.
works for me, should allso work for your site, but like the other guy said, it`s all about experimenting, try it and se what FITS your site hte BEST! Some times i find it best to use different /Stand out colors then the design, others will do well if you hide them in the design.. etc.. !
My reasoning behind this statement is a fact that borders catch attention hence, in most cases and with due mathematical probability, should normally result in an increase in clickthroughs. I agree with you that some sites generate more clickthroughs without borders as they blend with the content or don't seem like ads. Which is a reason you've already stated but it is definitely not a fallacy that every site owner should adopt. The only way to know is to TesT