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.

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Update: Darren over at ProBlogger thought I might get in trouble for running the fake scrolling ad that I mentioned in the post below. After I got a heart attack and was brought back to life by a baby yanking on my hair, I emailed Adsense and YPN. Adsense guy didn't see a problem. However, YPN dude told me I need to pull the fake ad because it was blocking part of their ads. Strange I thought. I tested the fake ad on three different browsers and it didn't block any Adsense/YPN ads. So I sent a reply to YPN dude telling him that the fake ad did not block any YPN ads. I also sent the URL again in case I forgot to previously. YPN dude again sent me another email telling me to remove the fake ad because it was blocking their ads. I was pissed at this point because I concluded YPN dude didn't look at the URL I sent him. Then I had an idea, what if YPN dude didn't have his browser in full screen mode? Sure enough, when I resized my browser, the fake ad did indeed block both Adsense/YPN ads. As you can see, I no longer have the floating ad to show on this post. Thanks for the advice, Darren.

I bet you are having a little trouble reading this post because of the annoying ad in your face. The floating ad is an example of the post-it ads Jensense blogged about today. You scroll down, the ad moves down. You scroll up, the ad moves up.

The new ads by AdImpact look like post-it notes. Unlike real post-it notes, the ads are very annoying. Regardless of how much you scroll, the ads keep their same position. AdImpact offers the post-it ads for $20 a month. However, as Jennifer suspected, there are free scripts available. In case you have not noticed (ha-ha), I implemented a floating ad on this post so you can see it in action. I could have used a graphics instead of text to make them look more like real ads, but I figure you will be annoyed either way.

These floating ads are a good way to drive away your visitors. You might make a little extra money running them in the short term, but you'll pay for it in the long term. These are the types of ads I expect to see on the sites that game the search engines. You go there looking for something, but they don't have any real content — just keywords stuffed all over the page. All you can do is hit the back button or click on an ad. These sites do not expect repeat visitors. If you run floating ads, don't expect your visitors to return either.