iZachy

Like many of you, I test my Adsense ads to improve the performance of the ads. In my latest test, I tested blended ads against ads that were slightly highlighted. The blended ads matched the content — white background with blue links. The highlighted ads had a light blue background. First, unlike most publishers, highlighted ads performed better for me in the content area. The click-through rate for the highlighted ads was three times higher than the blended ads. However, the ecpm was slightly higher for the blended ads. Though my guess is that the higher ecpm has more to do with Google serving better paying ads than because of the color of the ads.

The above test was for ads in the content area only. I was about to highlight the ads on the side bar too, but then I thought I should test the ads on the side nav too. So test I did and boy was I surprised with the results. On the side nav bar, blended ads worked better than highlighted ads. The click-through rate and ecpm was twice as high for the blended ads than the highlighted ads.

I had assumed that because highlighted ads performed better in the content area, that they would also work better in the side nav bar. This was not the case. For my site, highlighted ads worked better in the content area because they needed to standout from the lengthy content. With long posts, people tend to speed read and a blended ad is easy to miss. Having the ad highlighted gets the readers' attention. On the other hand, blended ads worked better on the side nav because they looked like part of the site's navigation. So, my tip to you is don't assume if blended/highlighted ads work well in the content area, then they will also perform well on the side nav bar or other parts of the page. Do a test to find out which works better for your site.

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