This morning I went to a page with ads in the side bar. The actual content of the site was condensed and looked rather nice, in fact,it looked just like a large adsense ad block. At first I mistook the site for MFA and headed to leave, that is when I noticed the other ads which prompted me to look at the other block. I found what I wanted. I think your best bet is to test and tweak then repeat till you get the desired result. From my understanding, to blend or not to blend can and should be a factor based on each site individually. Personally, I like to accent my content with ads where possible. It sets them out from everything else, but does not look like content, and does not create an eyesore that many contrasting ads do.
You mean, other than a bunch of ad revenue? Anyways, this whole exercise was born out of frustration over performance of one of my sites where the ads were historically blended in. I am running a contrasting ad for the last couple days (Post-it Notes yellow on white background) but the results seem inconclusive. I will leave it at contrasting color for about a week more and let you guys know if there is any difference.
As a webmaster who earns money from adsense and wants to make more money, here is what I feels. 1. If you have very high quality and established website and you cares about your visitors, you should blend the ads. 2. If you don't care about your visitors and feels all the traffic is coming from serps and people won't come back again anyway, don't blend the ad but show it in front of the eyes of visitor. Use primary colors to make them stand out.
Cause then people actually see it and may be interested to click it. Blended in...people read right over them and skip them.
i use both combinations , the site design is very important when choose a combination , maybe in time i will find the right answer
Just to follow up for those who's interested: I ran grossly contrasted ads (yellow on white page bg) and CTR was a disaster. I received about 1/3rd of the miserable amount of clicks I have been receiving before. I'm running another type of experiment now where I blended the ads with the navigational panel rather than the content, just to see if it makes any difference. Will post results here after a week or two.
There is the 3rd option of accenting your content, or even contrasting by using opposing color rather then simply clashing. white background with black text + black ads with white text = contrast It certainly looks better then post it notes slammed into the middle of your content. A site that is an eyesore makes me click the back button without even checking for content. Ungodly ads can tend to make a page look like an eyesore, especially on an otherwise beautiful page. Another way to accent your content with ads would be to use colors that match rather then clash. A light grey over a white back ground would make the ads stand out a little more then normal, but still wont make your eyes bleed. Just something else to test out if you'd care too...