Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Here's the problem, my site has a plain white background. When I look at the choices for colors on Google I can't tell if there is a plain-white choice/no-border or not.
If there is a plain white background/no border choice or plain-white-background/very-light-colored-border choice would someone be kind enough to post the color scheme name?
Thanks.
Choose white as both your background and border color, and select the links and text colors to match your site. That's it. Name it, save it, and copy it onto your pages.
To access it, click on "Create New Color Palette" link, which is right under where you select the different default styles that Google offers.
Thanks!
As long as you use the code that is generated by the adsense site, and don't use any layers to cover anything like the "ads by google" and you don't try to entice people to click ads, is it possible to intergrate the look and feel too much?
What would people consider too far and possibly underhand? What is the worst example people have seen?
Of course that wasn't really the site's fault - I'm sure they would prefer to run 4 ads. But I do think that removing the border is a bit deceptive.
One thing I see a lot which bothers me is the placement of the skyscraper all the way to the right, often times in a format larger than 800x600, so that the ad is directly in the middle of the scroll bar.
This is deceptive, in my opinion, because the publisher is hoping that the user accidently misses the scroll bar and clicks on the ad without meaning to. This is equivalent to enticing clicks in my opinion.
Use of color, in my opinion, is far less of an issue than this type of deceptive ad placement. I would also bet that having a white border, or a colored border would probably have absolutely no impact on CTR.
Many people actually report that making ads blend makes no difference or even that contrasting schemes work better. It is a stylistic choice. Is it deceptive, then, to make the ads contrasting in color if it generates higher CTR?
This is a real concern for proper layout. Happens to one of my sites quite frequently and I have a suspicion that on days where this effects mounts the CTR slips a bit.
Anyway it looks ugly and imperfect. In this regard the blend-in advantage would be nullified.
Jens
Interesting comment about the far-right skyscraper, but I don't think there's anything to be done about that one.
When I first placed the ads on most of my pages I used the 468x60 block placed just under photos where you would normally find a caption.
Because of the layout of the page and the fact that the "ads by google" tag is at the bottom/right on the 468, most of the ad, but not the tag, appeared above the fold on most of these pages.
That wasn't intentional, and not always the case, it was just the way the page layout worked.
When I swithched to the 300x250 block which has the google tag at the top/left I wondered if it would have a negative affecton CTR because of the tag being more obvious.
Also with the 468x60 block both ads were showing at the top because they are side x side, and with the 300x250 block only one ad shows above the fold. These are at 800x600 resolution, which I believe is the most common for my audience.
Both ad blocks used rotating colors that do not blend with the site.
I only made the switch a few days ago, CTR has gone up with the 300x250 4-ad block, but not dramatically.
I might try blended colors next week and see how that goes, I want to give the current layout a full weeks run to get a better idea. That will be something over 100,000 impressions, which I think is probably a fair sample.
