Forum Moderators: martinibuster
The reason probably is that the ads now look more like content, less like ads. I make some extra dollars this way, but: if the user thinks he's klicking on my content he might leave by accident - although he orginally wanted to buy from me.
I understand Adsense as a way to get something out of passers-by that are not 100% targetted to my site.
What is your experience? Would you make ads stand out clearly so people know they are ads?
Mack.
I'm not wording ANY ads, I'm putting other people's ads onto my pages through adsense.
What I think he probably means is that he made the AdSense background colors and link colors the same as the rest of his site. As a result visitors are probably less likely to recognize them as ads and are probably more likely to click them.
Thus far I haven't tried to blend AdSense ads into my sites to that extent. I make sure they don't clash, but at this point I feel that it's best not to take advantage of users' ignorance and confusion. This may work for select publishers and will probably work short-term, but what if a large percentage of publishers go that route? In my opinion, I think a significant percentage of users will begin to distrust the publishers and the AdSense program and will wise up and avoid the ads.
the_nerd, if you've read some of my recent posts you'll know that I consider trust and perception to be critical to the success of AdSense. Proceed with caution and just be aware that even though you might think that your actions don't make much of a difference given the number of AdSense publishers, more could follow suit and eventually we'll be thinking "well everyone else is doing it".
Personally, I'd like to see Google disallow this type of blending either programatically (like they did to fix a related loophole a few weeks ago) or by review in conjunction with warning/suspension (after making it clear in the TOS).
Don't get me wrong - I don't think what it sounds like you are doing is against the TOS and maybe I'm off-base, but that's my take. YMMV.
but that's exactly what has been done on the site that is being featured by google itself. Can't be that wrong then?
And since I don't have garbage on my pages and mostly visitors that are willing to buy something I wonder if I'm hurting myself by sending away to many of them.
[webmasterworld.com...]
The only thing I couldn't decide was if I should leave the background color white, or make it a pastel shade being used on the site's menu bar. I left it white.
My clickthrough rate is VERY high. I worry that it's so high that it might make Google suspicious.
Just because someone does something (in this case Google profiling a site that used this strategy), it doesn't mean it's right and it doesn't mean it's in the best interests of the advertisers, publishers and users. I don't have emperical evidence, but I guarantee it hurts the advertisers' conversion rate since it has to increase the number of users who click, but don't realize it's an ad and that they'll be visiting a new site. Don't ignore user behavior - attention span on the web is very short and it's proven that most users scan for keywords and don't read entire paragraphs of text. If an ad block blends with your site and has link text that's interesting it's likely that a significant percentage that see it and click it will do so without ever realizing it's an ad. That might not explain all of your increased CTR, but I'm curious what you think caused your CTR to increase?
Advertisers want qualified leads, not people who click because they are tricked, confused or left with no other exit options. So it really comes down to whether you and advertisers believe that clicks that aren't qualified convert at a high enough rate to be profitable. Ask some Adwords advertisers what they've experienced and what they think. ;-) And ask them what they've done (or will do) if a significant percentage of publisher sites that show their ads resort to ad block blending.
And I suspect that if it happens on a wide enough scale users will begin to distrust "Ads by Google" (which is how they know them) and advertisers will increasingly opt-out when they discover publishers showing their ads using this strategy (and other strategies which are more detrimental).
Google's been wrong before and they'll be wrong again. What they might be ok with now might not be what they're ok with down the road. Related searches on AdSense [webmasterworld.com] come to mind.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that this technique is high on the evil scale compared to other techniques, but it's not really in the best interest of anyone involved, except publishers with short-term profits in mind.
If this becomes wide-spread and Google addresses it, just remember you heard it here first. :-)
I repeat the link here [google.com...]
site background color: white
ad background color: white
ad border color: white
In conjunction with ad title color matching site text color and ad link color matching site link color (especially if font type and size are similar) the average user probably doesn't even notice that the AdSense ad blocks aren't just text content like the rest of the site.
I made my skyscraper's border the same color as the background -- but then put a box around it so it is clearly a separate column. With the 'Ads by Google' text at the top, I think this approach has very little ad concealing effect. Rather, I think it counteracts 'banner blindness' -- users are likely to look at it without auto-ignoring it via their peripheral vision ad recognization process.
However, if one interspersed a 4-column(*) leaderboard into a column of content -- with matching text, invisible borders, and a backgound color matching the column -- a user, reading from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, could very easily click _before_ seeing the 'Ads by Google' in the bottom right of the 720 pixel wide ad.
I think the former rather than the latter is what Google has in mind in their tips and by highlighting the petplace example.
* 4-column leaderboards do not include the www.JoesWidgets.com text at the bottom.
I think richmondsteve has a valid point -- and I think Google's advice is ethical and in the long-term interests of text advertising.
Thanks for all the input.
I don't believe using the above mentioned "color blending" means tricking the user into clicking a link. If: the ads are clearly separated from content by position.
But: maybe using this color theme "tricks" users into LOOKING at the ad, thus overcoming the banner- or ad-blindness. And if they are interested, they click.
