Wednesday 18 September 2013

Changing the Look of Your Ads

Tweaking your ads so that they blend into the page and look like content begins with altering their appearance. While you can’t hack into the code itself, Google does provide AdSense publishers with a range of options to change the way an ad unit appears.

In addition to the format, you can change the colors used in the ad; the fonts chosen for the text; and the corner styles of the AdSense unit. The general principle is always to match the characteristics of the ad unit
with the characteristics of the Web page on which the ad unit will appear.



Using Colors To Increase Your Clicks

Log in to your AdSense account, click the AdSense Setup tab, select Get Ads from the menu, and you’ll be offered a page load of options. You can choose to see each of these options one at a time using the “Wizard” or you can go through them all on a single page. I find that a single page lets me see everything at once but it makes little practical difference. If you’re using the new interface, which is Google is currently rolling out, you just have to click the My Ads tab, followed by New Unit.

To create an AdSense for Content unit, you’ll first have to choose between an ad unit and a link unit, and — if you choose an ad unit — whether you want both text and image ads, just text ads or just image/rich media ads. Once you’ve made your choice (just text ads is a good place to begin) you’ll have to pick a format. This is a whole issue in itself which I’ll discuss in Chapter 5, but it will depends on where you’re planning to put the ad. In general though, big is good.

You’ll then choose your color palette. An AdSense unit has five elements whose colors can be changed: the border; the title; the background; the text; and the URL.

When it comes to the border, the basic principle is simple:

Make the border disappear!

I’ve found that this one simple tweak can more than double clickthroughs! Even before the Internet, ads in newspapers and magazines were marked off with a thick, heavy border. No wonder borders and boxes have come to symbolize advertising messages.

Ads with prominent borders make your pages look cluttered. They distract the eye from the ad text, while marking off the ad blocks from the rest of the content.

Match the color of your ad unit’s border with the background color of your web page.

When the border matches the background, it disappears. The page instantly looks neater and the ads appear more inviting.

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