The biggest problem of any adsense publishers is the so called ad blindness. People are used to all the large and shining banners and they just ignore them. Even if it's something they might be really interested in, most chances are they'll never click it, because they know it's an ad. To make the most of your adsense placement, you need to put your ads in places that will be noticed and your ads should blend in the content, they need to look like the content and not like ads. Multiple tests show that the best ctr you can get ( average 10-20%, but can of course vary depending on other parameters) is by doing the following: Put one Large or Medium Rectangle right after your title and before the rest of the content - usually article Use another Rectangle or banner after the article Use a link unit above your side menu How to choose adsense colors? Usually the best is to make border and background white or same as your page's background color, title - blue and text either black, or same color as all text on your site, url should be grey, or green. ~MG
aha.. i always forgotten about the link unit. implementing now. BTW- your Find In Forums really works. I found my name from years back. Long lost forum i once active in. Good stuff..
Definately, good summary of what's located in these forums. There are numerous ways of placement that can lead to more clicks and higher earnings.
Also another good thing is to wrap your text around your adsense. I put my adsense in a table format and wrap the text around it so it really blends in. rob
I have to question the emphasis on the user knowing the ad is an ad. If they click an ad because they think it's another site section, or a navigation link, it means they're probably not that interested in the product. My guess is that this degree of blending will lower conversions for the advertiser and could get you smart-priced. It seems there is a better middle ground: You want to blend enough that users look at the ad, but not so much that they click it because they think it's something else. Of course, there are lots of variables involved in all these considerations... but it's food for thought.
Troutnut, there's "Ads by google" on every ad unit, so you don't have to worry much about that, just make sure you don't anything against the tos. tweety, here's an example for you
The best optimization is a huge traffic in your site But place your ads in your pages as common as you can. Blend them as much you can with your content.
try a placement like this and see that it works: one google search all in one line BR one leaderboard 728x90 BR two 336x280 blocks BR one adlink 728x15 BR Then your content ad-free all centered