Should I put a border around my AdSense ads?

[Play_Bach]

I've been using the stock blue (Mother Earth) leaderboard ads from the beginning. I've experimented in the past with other color schemes and border colors, but have never gone for more than a day before putting back the stock code. Mostly this is because of the look of the site and also not seeing any improvement in clicks when trying the alternatives.

I'm now attempting to be a bit more scientific in my tests and have decided to try the no border (Open Air) layout again. To my eyes, no border makes the ads more distinct from each other because they aren't as easily seen as being part of a banner ad and so perhaps not as easily dismissed as a block. The flip side is that the "Ads by Goooooogle" and "Advertise on this site" links are more exposed and don't look as neat on the page as the border, whereas in the Mother Earth layout they are more muted because of the white font against the blue border combo and so more attention is focused on the ads that way. It'll be interesting to see what happens this time a round.

[Paris]

If your page's background is the same color as the ad background (as appears to be the case here) you should see a slight improvement by removing the border.

Yes, subtle changes do help. Another good move would be to pick ad colors that match those on your site too.

[Play_Bach]

So far, CTR and CPM up a tad from a few hours ago.

[edited by: jatar_k at 7:07 pm (utc) on July 3, 2006]

[TheDonster]

Every high revenue site featured that shared their earnings boosting tips usually quoted removing the border in the top 5 changes. (Your mileage may vary)!

[wmuser]

Without borders is working a bit better for me