The Facts,
It is a well known fact by every webmaster out there that blending the adsense ads with the overall design of your website results in a much higher CTR.
Here are some points that will help you integrate your ads with the layout:
1- Make the background of the adsense ads the same color as the background of your website
2- Also, make the border of the ad box the same color as the background, so it will appear that you have no border
3- The colors of the fonts in the headings and description of the ads should be the same as the colors in your content.
4- Don’t isolate the adsense ads in some corner of the layout; place them where your people would expect to find navigation elements
5- Lately, webmasters have been experimenting something new. They placed images next to the ads, so they would make them more attractive. There has been a lot of debate about this but Google stated that this not against their TOS, as long as there are some visual elements that separate the images from the ads (such as bars, borderlines, etc.) Even Google has been testing something like this but so far this type of ads are still in beta testing.
Is it trickery or not?
As I have stated above, it has been proven the adsense ads that are well blended with the website’s layout generate a lot more revenue due to a much higher CTR, but WHY?
Basically, by following those steps, you will actually trick your visitors into clicking on the ads. Some are saying that this is not true, and by blending the ads you will have a nice harmonious design. Although I can agree to that to some extent, I really think that you can have a pretty good design even with accentuated ads, by using complementary colors that will probably give you more contrast to the composition of the layout, but still this will result in a lower CTR.
I believe that it all has to do with human nature. Many visitors don’t even bother to read ads, while others don’t click on them just because they feel like your taking advantage of them; as impossible as it may seem to some of you I have seen it with my own eyes.
Having this said, my personal opinion is that blending the adsense ads with the layout of the website is still a trickery, but it is for sure something you must do if you want to monetize your website with google adsense.
Technorati: Blending adsense ads, Adsense
