It seems most website development blogs have at least one article about optimising AdSense advertisements to increase the CTR and eCPM. Well, it's about time that Making the Web created their own. In this article, I'll be looking at some unique tips which really are successful.

Placement

For me, this is the most important factor for optimising your ads.

1. Place Ads Beneath/Near Navigation
Adverts provide visitors with links to small number of relevant websites and pages. So does the navigation section. When a visitor wants to find out more information, they generally and naturally look for the navigation section or an alternative form of navigation. It therefore makes sense for ads to be placed in this area.

468×15 and 728×15 link units generally look good and perform well when placed in this area.

Also, try placing ads where users expect to see a navigation bar. I found a great example at Ad Links:

Above, I have converted the screenshot to greyscale and blurred it. This allows us to look at the site without reading any text, as a visitor will do when they first come to your site. The greyscale image allows us to see how elements contrast. If I was asked to identify the navigation bar in the second image, I'd say it was beneath the banner image - but, this is, in fact, the adverts. This is the section most visitors will subconsciously identify.

2. Place Ads at the Beginning of Text or an Article
You have probably heard this tip a thousand times, and here we go again. For blogs, using a medium rectangle (maybe a large - I think they look too big, though) at the start of an article is an old trick and visitors will immediately see it when reading. Today, it is quite rare to see a blog using AdSense and not the rectangle.

Oh, and get the text to wrap around the advert (with some padding). I hate it when blogs give an AdSense rectangle a whole paragraph of its own. Find out more about CSS's float property. You don't want the ads to be too distinct from the content.

3. Place Ads to the Left or Right of Content
When we read content, our eyes are moving from left-to-right. It therefore makes sense to place ads to the left or right of text, usually in a sidebar. I find placing advertisements to the right is more successful as most text is left-aligned and visitors know where the text begins; they don't, however, know exactly where it ends until they get to it - so they'll be slightly more open to elements around the text.

Style

Adverts need to be noticed, and AdSense is flexible enough to allow you to change colours, borders and backgrounds to make the ads noticeable, while not distracting.

1. Contrasting and Blending
For adverts to be successful, they should attract attention. This doesn't necessarily mean they should stand out though! Blending can be just as successful as contrasting.

Google has a useful table for determining whether you should use contrasting or blending techniques.

If you decide that having your ads contrast is best, try squinting your eyes and see if your adverts contrast enough to compete with the text and other elements. Too much contrast, though, may just become a distraction so balance is the key. Converting a image to greyscale in your favourite image editing application can also show how much elements contrast.

It may also be useful to blend adverts with the background when used within the content. Content is the primary reason visitors visit a website, so it is what they look for. If your advert looks like content (in part, usually), visitors will have a look.

Complement is just like contrast, but it uses background and border colours from schemes already existing on the site. I prefer this to contrast because the ads seem more integrated.

For Making the Web, we could use these colours for contrasting, complementing and blending ads:

2. Borders
Removing the border from an advert is extremely effective as it allows the advert to blend in with the site. I believe it is very important and profitable to make adverts look integrated in a website, rather than looking misplaced.

It is beneficial to remove borders from advertisements that are in the content. When using the medium rectangle in blog posts, you should have no border. If you do want a border, define your own using CSS and use a light colour and maybe a dashed border rather than a solid one.

3. Colour Scheme Rotation
Use custom channels to run different colour schemes. Determine which ones work best, and then rotate them for an advert. Rotation is useful because regular visitors become accustomed to your adverts and will avoid them. Using different colours keeps them fresh and attracts more attention.

Other Tips

There are also some other things you can do to increase revenue:

1. Use Link Units
I've visited many sites which use the ad units only. Link units are great because they are small and can occupy spare space on a website. In accordance with the programme policies, you can insert three link units in addition to any content ads, search boxes and video ads.

I generally find that link units have a significantly less CTR than other ads, but they still capture revenue you would otherwise not have. Link units are great at the bottom or top of blog articles as they provide links relevant to the article.

2. Don't use image ads
You maybe tempted to change your ads to image only ads. Although we may believe that image ads are more likely to get a click, in reality they aren't. On most websites, text ads will perform better than image ones.

In any case, I recommend you leave the setting to "Text and image ads" and Google will decide what is more effective.

3. Tell Google Where Your Content is
I only recently found out about this myself. Google AdSense allows you to place two HTML comment tags on your page - <!– google_ad_section_start –> and <!– google_ad_section_end –>. These tells AdSense's spider the content you want your ads targeted to.

In blog posts, you should place these comment tags before and after your article, respectively. Otherwise, Google may crawl article's comments and other information, resulting in less relevant ads.

To explicitly exclude a section, use <!– google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) –> rather than the normal start tag.

Read more about this.

Don't follow my tips!

Now, this is the most important tip of all. I don't really want you to follow my tips. Instead, I want you to consider some of them, change some of them and ignore some of them.

Every website is different, and (unfortunately) there is not one solution to "fit all". You have got to experiment and work out what is best for your website. Think, Try, Repeat.

Please share the tips that have worked for you…