Adsense Borders?

Should they be used?

[whozyodaddy]

Hi,

With adsense ads (leaderboards, banners, etc.) should I use a border that matches the website's color scheme or rather no border at all so that it blends with the background, as if it was actually part of the page/article? What are your experiences and thoughts with this?

Here is a clear image on what I am talking about:
[img442.imageshack.us...]

Thanks

[david_uk]

Personally, I've not found it makes much of a difference. I've tried blending ads, with and without borders, and rotating the background colours. I know this works well for many here though.

I'd say give it a whirl and see if it helps you! I found the one change (stylewise) that made a big difference was placement of the ad. Moving from a right aligned skyscraper to a central rectangle gave me a big jump in earnings.

I would say that there are no rules as to what will always work. What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. The only way to find out what works best for you is experimentation.

[europeforvisitors]

Depends. Are you trying to trick the user into clicking on ads? If so, making your ads look like navigation links or content is the way to go.

[david_uk]

Nope. The ads are very clearly Google ads - as are the ones on your site. I can't see how anyone could possibly think they are anything other than ads in fact.

I want the visitors to know they are ads as opposed to navigation. I don't believe you have to have a garish clash to achieve that - having a tasteful, well designed page doesn't mean there is trickery involved.

[edited by: david_uk at 10:38 pm (utc) on Nov. 24, 2005]

[lammert]

Location of the ad is more important than borders. I have both ads with borders and without on my sites and they perform roughly the same.

[whozyodaddy]

Hmm... what about using an ad that uses both borders and no borders? I might do this.

[david_uk]

Not sure what you mean. You can rotate colours, but not borders as far as I can remember. You'd need to change the ad between bordered and non-bordered manually. Change is often good for reducing long term ad blindness.

[lammert]

You can rotate between bordered and non bordered ads if you use PHP or SSI. Make one include file which contains the code for the bordered ad and a second include file with the borderless code.

You can use a random function, time of the day, etc to include either the first, or the second include file. Be sure to use separate channels for each ad type so you can track the performance in the AdSense stats. Within a week or so you should be able to decide which of the two ads performs best.

[krod]

Actually, google includes a rotater, so you can just switch between them without having to do any programming.

Anyways, its unique for each site, set up a ad channel and experiment which does better.

[lammert]

Yes, you can use Google's rotator, but the problem is that you can only assign one channel to it. That makes it difficult to see how the different ad designs perform on one page. With an SSI or PHP rotator you see both designs as separate channels in your stats.