Well, see my social bookmarking site: http://www.hizlibalik.com If I want, I can put an adsense with the same color and style to the 6th step. I did it for a while, and my CTR was not that bad. But, later I thought something: My site includes good content. # of returning users is very high. (More than %50 a day) This is what I want honestly. On long run, the most important thing. I don't want to wait for the traffic coming from Google search. I don't want to loose this returning user power. I don't want my users to think "Oh no, he f*cked me! I didn't meant to click an ad!" I want the sympathy of my users. I replaced perfect blending ad with a photo ad (I mean the 468x60 ad) I want them to click only because they want to. And press back when they finish their job there.
perfect blending to decieve visitors into clicking ads is mostly for sites that don't count on return visitors much. sites having return visitors and with established credibility usually lets users know which ones are sponsored links and which ones are not. so your idea of thinking long-term is very good business idea. good thinking
Here is what Adsense means when it pertains to perfect blending: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2008/03/another-look-at-optimizations.html Peace,
your thinking is not wrong. Sometime it's godo to think in visitor point of view. if you dont want to upset your visitor with blending ads just make it more outstanding. maybe it will give you the reverse effect.
Very true, if your site gets mostly return visitors, then blending ads will only put them off, so chances are, they'll go elsewhere...