Over the last 6 months i have been playing with the colours of the links in google ads. I have found that although blue is the best standard colour (maybe due to many surfers knowing that blue is the standard colour for a link) changes in colour does affect the CTR. If for instance the link colour is changed to dark red (brown) or green the ctr will increase on average by 18-22% The problem is this is not sustainable and the ctr starts to fall between day 10-14. The only reason i can think of for this is repeat visitors getting ad blindness. Have any other members tried with different colours over a given time ect.
I think it depends a lot on whether or not you're blending the ads with the site or not. Lately I've had good success with horizontal link units where the background color is in contrast to the background of the main body, and I just make sure that the color of the link text is readable on the appropriate background more than anything. But yeah, banner blindness would affect things over time if you're getting mostly repeat visitors.
I've been experimenting with color, changing the border colors to try draw attention to the ads...isn't working for me, to top it all off I got another 1 cent click today...sickened.
I've not found that changing the border color does much by itself. It's useful if you're putting the ads near images, of course, to make sure that the ads are clearly distinguished from the images.
I implemented this an hour ago and hope it will raise my CTR , i'll keep everyone posted on the increase or maybe decrease.
Eric regarding "where the background color is in contrast to the background of the main body" i have had a lot to say on the subject in another thread,including my findings on experimenting with the ad links.
http://www.TeenageWriters.com <= Changed the link color to red because with 1200 impressions a day I got 0 clicks, also added a block of adsense below each post. All this I did an hour ago, let's hope it pays off.
I just read through it, sounds like your experiences are similar to mine. The vertical link units never added up to much for me, either. eiso: Your site would be a good candidate for the horizontal link units given your layout.
I tried them for a while, again CTR of 0. It's crazy: 1200 impressions, between 190 and 300 unique a day, and still a CTR of 0.
I notice that on http://www.TeenageWriters.com you have 115 members. and even with 1200 page views a day i would expect you to get a CTR of around 1% so you are around 10 clicks down. dont make your visitors hunt for the ads. let them see they are there. if the red does not work i would go brown/dark red. I agree with eric regarding the link bar,as your site is about writing you should pull some good words in the bar.
My forum: 1641 users 66759 posts +20 users online most of the time site:myforumsurl says 17.400 And I still ended up removed Adsense from it as the CTR was near 0.
one of my forums has simular numbers of: 1100 users 77129 posts 12 users online CTR is 0.8 % what is your forum subject ? have you put ads after every "" posts ?
Subject is art/drawings - I tried putting ads after first post and repeating after a few posts. I tried adlinks and I tried the large banner all with the same result. Also I tried showing ads only to guests and to new members with only a few posts (I don't want to show ads to regulars out of fear that they might click to help the site). I never managed to get a CTR over 0.50 and mostly it was in the low 0.0X - over 1 months time it only made $7.2 I realise the subject isn't the highest paying one, but that shouldn't really affect clicks and I do ok on the non-forum pages.
Sweet jesus! I said earlier in the thread that i was tinkering with link colors, i changed it to what it is now, gray border with alternating link colors.....CTR shot through the roof & now have the most clicks ever today. I had only 2 clicks up until that...i'm amazed really. *Edits* Every single click came from the main page btw which is a bit odd..
Just for fun I tried enabling adlinks in the forum again, alternating blue and red link text. Will report back