Hi, I'm having a hard time with this issue. The more I read the worse it gets. I was just wondering if any of you have experience with this. Is it better to blend your ads so they have no border and look more like the content or should they stand out with a background or border? I have a few sites. The one that is getting the most clicks only has the ads on one page and they stand out from the content. But I can't tell if it is because the site just has more traffic or because the ads stand out. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
There is no universal answer for this question - it all depends on the site. Test each option on your site for 30 days - that will give you a better answer than anyone here ever could.
I have sites where making the ads stand out works better, and some where blending them to the point where it's hard to tell they are ads works better. A lot of it has to do with the demographics of the users who visit your sites too. Anyway, good luck with the test and make to let us know how it goes.
I think they should be blended with the site but still be clearly identifiable as ads. There is a trend to have the ads appearing to be the standard content or navigation of a site and that misleads users to click on them. I believe this is confusing for the user and unethical. [more]
That will work well on some sites but not all. Testing formats on your own site with your own users is the only way to know for sure what works best.
My experience is that stand out ads work better. I think it it all depends on your sites layout and design. Best way to find out is to test and test and test...
I personnaly prefer to blend them with the background and put the title the same colour as the site links!
I have a very plain looking site that's all black fonts on white background. I had light gray border on my ad for a while but then when I blended it to the white background my click number jumped somewhat. Now the numbers have flattened back to where they were before I blended them. Now I'm going to try AdSense's default blue border and see if that does anything.
Hi bluelarva, Let us know how it works out for you. I'll do the same once I've tried my ads out for a month or two.
Ignoring the numbers for a second. When designing your site consider what the user wants. One thing I believe is that they want to be confident that when they click on something they'll get a reliable result. So you click on a link that looks internal, you stay on the site You click on a link that looks like an ad, you go to another site It's simple really. Disappoint your visitors and they won't come back. If they don't come back they're not clicking on your ads - ever.
I'm not completely convinced that stripping the border and making them the same colour as the links is really cheating. I mean I have seen some sites that try and make it look like navigation by putting images right above a wide banner ad which I thought was wrong. But just stripping the border still makes them look like ads to me. You really can't get away from that Ads by Google so if a user clicks the ad and thinks it's a link, then that is their fault really. I'm trying both in any case as suggested and my main focus is coming up with great original content. But the revenue is also a focus let's be honest. Many of us are not in it just for the fun of spending money on hosting and time on content development.
Nicknick, like your blog by the way. cool design. In your case the ads are still clearly ads. You've used a different link colour and a different font so there is no confusion. There's enough whitespace that the user can clearly see what is your writing and what is an Ad. And that's good.
Hi Sarahk, Thank you for the compliment. It's nothing specail but I like that site too. Gives me a way to get a lot of stuff off my chest. I see what you mean. I have visited sites where the ads looked like navigation. I didn't actually like that at all because I felt like it was trying to fool me. I'm sure those make a lot of money. I do want to get my numbers up pretty badly but I'm not quite willing to go that far yet. I love the web and I want to help make it better not more spammy. But I may not feel this way in a few month if I can't pay the rent.