ad colors

does anybody notice an increase in clickthrus

[cyberprosper]

I was wondering if anybody had any stats or ideas about which color scheme might generate the most click-thrus. It is a lot of work to change the color scheme across all my pages, and I would rather do it only once. So, what is most profitable? RED, PINK, Aqua-marine?

Thanks!

[luchtzak]

Hi,

I have change my googleads to another theme. In fact my ads are placed under <snip> on my website and my girlfriend likes it, so do other people I believe!

ciao,

Bart

[edited by: Marcia at 2:57 am (utc) on Aug. 9, 2003]
[edit reason] No urls, please. [/edit]

[PolishGuy]

on my website and my girlfriend likes it, so do other people I believe!

"people" may like it but Googliness will kill you! Man, you have "Please visit our sponsor " over the Googly-banner! It is forbidden : your head will be decapitulated and mercy will not be applied. Remove it man or face googlihilation...

[nealw]

your head will be decapitulated and mercy will not be applied. Remove it man or face googlihilation...

How funny! LOL!

luchtzak: I would listen to PolishGuy.

[cornwall]

Looks as if he has done already ;)

[jrstark]

I use a pattern background on most pages, changed my AdSense background to a complementary color that I've used before for solid blocks of color.

I don't know if it is only for that reason because I've only been using AdSense for less than 2 weeks and most of my pages have bottom horizontal ads. But my clickthroughs are way up.

[jonknee]

I am planning on changing colors weekly, and then comparing CTR's. After 2 days of my new color set CTR is up slightly. I had a pretty good rate before hand, so I don't know how much higher it can reasonably rise.

If I find a magic color combo, I'll post it.

[devlin]

I changed colours to match my site's theme.

After a couple of days, I've seen CTR go down by about 20%

I'll let it run for another couple of days, and if the CTR stays consistently low, the scheme reverts to "Mother Earth"!

I thought that visitors might appreciate ads not looking blatently like ads. Seems, from this small sample, that ads will get clicked more if they look like ads.

D

[Denis at eVR]

Devlin:

Exactly the same has happened on my site. Two days with a better 'camouflage' to match my site colors, and two days of my clickthrough ratio around 20% down. I'll give it one more day, then try switching back to the original color scheme.

I suppose it makes sense, but I didn't really expect it to work like that, though.

[killroy]

Calling the default "Mother Earth", perhaps we all ought to listen more to PolishGuy.

***imagines PolishGuy walking around the WW Forums with a sign accross his torso reading: "The Google is Neigh!"***

SN

[chiyo]

No magic combo

Basically the more the color scheme contrasts with the rest of the page and the uglier the mix between the two the higher the CTR, jusy because people notice it more.

If you are wanting to make adsense look "more like your site" and to match other elements, the more you will see CTR go down.

[Jolly_Roger]

Late Thursday night I changed my ad colors to a custom combination that looks exactly like a major element of my site design. My CTR average climbed slightly for Thursday (up 3%). Friday was the first full day with the new colors and CTR was up 13% over my best previous Friday.

[chiyo]

hmm.. looks like my theory needs revising!

[RobbieD]

I am seeing my CTR going up after we made the changes. We have many channels at our site so we used over 30 different color combos for the different areas.

[Denis at eVR]

OK, looks like we have all the data we need now. Matching the colors of the Adsense ads to the website colors clearly has one of the following effects:

1. It reduces the clickthrough rate

2. It increases the clickthrough rate

3. It doesn't affect the clickthrough rate.

So now we all now how to deal with this issue, right?

:-) :-) :-)

[Visit Thailand]

This is very difficult to determine, we add some 30 odd pages a day and we recently added AdSense to some very prominent pages of one of our sites. Yes we have seen an increase but it is impossible to say why.

I would say though that those that are making the ads more prominent are perhaps being more honest to viewers by saying 'hey this is an ad' and those tat are trying to integrate colours etc into their own site may confuse viewers into thinking it is an internal link and not an ad.

[devlin]

OK, looks like we have all the data we need now. Matching the colors of the Adsense ads to the website colors clearly has one of the following effects:
1. It reduces the clickthrough rate

2. It increases the clickthrough rate

3. It doesn't affect the clickthrough rate.

So now we all now how to deal with this issue, right?

:-) :-) :-)

Exactly, Denis. You've hit it in one (or is that three?)

Like many factors affecting websites, we have to learn and experiment ourselves. Our audiences are always going to vary. Whilst we might learn something from each other, it's what happens on our own sites that is important.

.. and I might have been hasty in saying that I'd pull the colour scheme from my site very soon. We all know that daily stats can vary so much.

I'm in this for the long term, so I might wait and see how my 7-day moving averages pan out.

OK, income may (or may not) drop in the short term, but I'd rather risk a little income now than base my decision on incorrect stats and risk losing money in the long term.

D

[Denis at eVR]

As a research scientist in a previous life, and therefore a statistician, I invariably jump to conclusions before there is enough evidence to spoil my opinions! In this case, I did decide on the strength of a sudden drop in clickthroughs on only two days, that 'camouflaging' Google Adsense ads was a bad thing on my site.

I switched back at the start of today to more conspicuous colors, and already my clickthroughs are back to their original levels. Could be coincidence, but I've never let coincidences stand in the way of a good theory either!

[Visi]

Has anyone tried the rotating colors? FAQ says possible but no explanation on how. Anyone know where this code is?

[Visit Thailand]

What do you mean Visi? On one site we run 4 different colour types. Just choose four of the colours you want by ctrl'ing and then take the code and add it to you pages.

[Visi]

The way I read the FAQ was that you can cycle the colors on the same ad page. Rather than just one color scheme it will change? Maybe misread it?

[Visit Thailand]

Visi - Yes you can choose up to four colour co-ordinations.

Log into your account and go to where you can choose the colours etc. Make your own or select four pre-made by clicking on each and CTRL on the other three.

This means that you will have four different coloured ads showing on yoru site.

[bether2]

Visi,

I think Visit_Thailand means this:

On the Ad Layout page, select one color in the "Select Palettes" listbox. Then select up to three more colors by using CTRL-leftclick.

I've been wondering the same thing, so thanks to Thailand for helping us out on this.

Beth

[madmatt69]

I'm rotating four colors, and it does'nt seem to have affected my ctr much, if anything it has gone up slightly. I figure the different colored ads keep people's attention rather than getting used to the same thing all the time which they might disregard.

[Visi]

Thanks ....going to try that now:)

Okay see it under ad layout, I was looking under colors...doh...:):)

[PolishGuy]

Denis something VR said:

As a research scientist
...
I switched back at the start of today to more conspicuous colors, and already my clickthroughs are back to their original levels.

hi Denis, say man what colors do you used? I mean: could you say what colors were your whole site and now what colors does your banner has to stand out out of the rest of the site?

I have the same problem: give the banner the same colors as the rest of the site, or give it some other color!? But if some other color then what color should the banner have to stand out and to increase CTR? I have a theory (although I am not a research scientist, but just a Pole) that the best colors for banners are those that appear in the www.google.com in Ad Banner to the right side! Do you agree?

[Chndru]

besides the fact of increasing click-thru's , changing colors once a while, gives your regular users a fresh-look and knows that your site is active and more personal than a stale-look every time :)

is there a way in which you can revolve the colors, for every visit?

[PolishGuy]

the best colors for banners are those that appear in the www.google.com in Ad Banner to the right side!

Silly me! The background color of right-side banners in www.google.com is rotating, so I conclude that the best solution is to rotate/revolve/change colors of your AdSense banners from time to time! Wow! What a revelation! Google cannot be wrong - it rotates, so we have to rotate too to achieve maximum CTR.

[PolishGuy]

is there a way in which you can revolve the colors, for every visit?

yes! I have some code for rotating usual static banners, so you could use PHP/ASP/perl/whatever programming and simply show various AdSense banner code on the rotational basis!

of course we could demand such feature from Google, but Google is God almighty and "demanding rotation of colors" will not help much if at all.

but the good news is that you can do it yourself! by simple script programming (or using some existing script).

Wow, another revelation today, it must be that beer that help me to conceive them..

[Denis at eVR]

PolishGuy:

My site is green (VERY green - white text on green, for example). I modified AdSense to the same range of greens that I used. It didn't look very different to me, but my site visitors obviously were less keen to click on the ads when it was like that. Now I have gone back to the original Google defailt blue colors. At first I had a dark green border around the box, but I've made this dark blue now, too.

I'm sure you're not 'just' a Pole - don't be so modest!