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People go through phases of trying to be “different” in order to stand out.  You’ve probably seen it before - people who write their resumes with a pink pen, people who get an extravagant hair cut, people who wear flamboyant clothes.

Yesterday, we wrote that you want to place your Google AdSense ads on your blog or website in such as position where people visiting the site or blog will see them.  What we didn’t say was don’t go over the top trying out wacky color schemes and styles to get attention.  THIS DOESN’T WORK!”  In fact, it will dramatically harm your earnings.

Why is this so? 

It’s because people become good at noticing patterns.  If your ads stand out too much from the rest of the content, your visitors will, quite unconsciously, ignore them.  This process isn’t even a conscious one.  Your extravagant color scheme gets associated in their heads with ads and their brain filters filters them out.  This is exactly the opposite to what people expect.

The best ad colors, styles and layouts are ones that blend in with your design.  Try to make the ads look like and blend in with the content of your site or blog (without being deceptive, or course).  What you are aiming for is for the reader to give the ad “eye time” like the rest of your content in the hope that they’ll go “hmmm, that’s interesting” and click.  Choose ad colors and styling that fit in with the rest of the site.  Match link colors and font colors to those that you use. 

Don’t try to be radical and use contrasting background colors and styles - test after test after test has shown that it simply doesn’t work.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at 5:33 am and is filed under Adsense Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.