Less is more

so only one ad block

[OddDog]

but should this be vertical or horizontal.

what gives you the best click through rate?

[arrowman]

I don't think one ad block is best on all pages.

When there's plenty of high quality content, two or three ad blocks is fine.

[martingale]

My current layout is this:

S Site logo
K Headline
Y ...   
S intro
C ...
R ADLINKS
A ...
P content
E ...
R ...
 ...
 ...
 LEADERBOARD

It's working well for me. My content is long, so by the time the user sees the leaderboard the skyscraper is probably no longer visible. The skyscraper gets a lot more clicks than the adlinks block (which used to be a 2nd ad block), but AdLinks for now is at least returning higher EPC for me than having a 2nd ad block there, I guess because the skyscraper ate all the good ads, whereas AdLinks still has the "top" categories containing "top" ads.

[HughMungus]

By using a script to track who's clicking on which ads, I've found that 80% of my clickers are clicking on the ads that are RIGHT below each page's content vs. the clickers that click on the ads that are at the bottom of each page and the vertical ads that I used to have on the right-hand column (which have been removed).

[cyberair]

Are the ads right below the content borderless and blended to the content's color, or is it standing out with the typical blue link letters?