Placement of Ads on Text Pages

[peterinwa]

Most of my pages are text, and since Google only allows one column of ads I have the obvious choice of placing them on either the left or right side of the page. Does anyone know which is the most likely to catch the reader's eye? I'm sure marketing studies have been done on this subject.

[richmondsteve]

My own results have differed by site. Others have reported mixed findings too. If it works with your layout, you may consider the leaderboard and medium/large rectangle ad units - CTR for those formats can be good, relatively speaking.

[peterinwa]

As I say I don't know much about this, but the problem I see with those formats is that they sit at the top of the page. As the reader reads down the page, they will quickly be left behind. Whereas a column of ads will get longer exposure, still displaying as the reader scrolls down the page.

[peterinwa]

BTW, it really bothers me that Google doesn't provide a column with three ads. Some of my pages only have room for a column on one side, and don't scroll. The columns of four ads would run off the bottom of the screen, so I have to use only two.

I can't see how there could be any negatives (costs or anything) for Google to provide additional formats.

[ChrisKud5]

I would like to see a three accross banner style ad format.

[whizkiddo]

I agree that as the ads go off the screen, the user forget about them. but skyscrapers are no big help either. Sometimes there is only 1-2 ads and these go off the screen soon enough too. I prefer the inline rectangle at the end or fitted neatly after about 3/4ths of the article. Make sure the backgrounds match and the links are bright enough to at least make the user read them. towards the end, the user is motivated enough to find out more about the subject. Its then upto g to give an ad targetted enough to pique the userinto clicking.

[annej]

I thought the inline rectangle would do well in articles but tested and found the skyscraper on one side or the other works much better on my site.

I'd like to hear if anyone has tested which side the skyscraper does best on. I'm really curious about that one.

[annej]

I thought the inline rectangle would do well in articles but tested and found the skyscraper on one side or the other works much better on my site.

I'd like to hear if anyone has tested which side the skyscraper does best on. I'm really curious about that one.

[alika]

We tested the placement with articles and found the rectangle works the best. If x is our clickthrough for rectangle, skys (formatted to blend with the text and no box) get x/2, while leaderboards get x/8. So we went with rectangles.

[Sunflux]

I really wish they'd add a 600x75 "mini leaderboard" format, for when the leaderboard is too big and a standard banner is too small.

[richmondsteve]

peterinwa, what will work for a given site/page will depend on a number of factors including the layout, whether there's text below the fold, whether the content is of interest to the user and location of the ad block. Depending on the ad block chosen and page length, an ad block can be arranged to always be visible, for example by using a leaderboard or rectangle to break up a content block. If the majority of page viewers aren't interested in a page's content and content spans the fold it may be better to have the ad block at the top and if pages are long and users tend to read the page it may be better to have the ad block at the bottom.

The only way to know what will work best for you is to do testing. I advise testing different ad blocks in different positions for long enough periods that you have confidence in the stats. By using channels and assigning the channels randomly to a given page you can even run tests on the same pages at the same time.

[morpheus83]

Google should provide an intelligent inline rectangle. In case it is able to serve only 2 ads instead of 3 it height should get automatically reduced.

[qualop]

it's natural (according to various studies) for the eye to travel to the far right of the screen... so, i would put the adds in the top right corner, just below your header.

[peterinwa]

And the other thought I had for my long text pages is that when they move the cursor to the scroll bar they will be looking on the right side.

[alika]

In our long text pages, the rectangle generated 2x CTR compared to skyscrapers. We moved to rectangle only after a couple of month's test to really make sure that it is the most effective use of our space.

[TampaLou]

I'm with Qualop -- I've found the best results with the 160 skyscraper on the right top, below my header. I try to choose an ad background color that will make it stand out without clashing (and while still matching the look of the site).

However, in choosing that method, I still try to make sure that I don't exceed a total page width of 800 (for people with smaller screen configs). It's bad news to have ads that people have to scroll to the right to see. So in certain cases (such as my online commentary -- yes Google approved me running my ads there) I use the skyscraper, as squeezing in my commentary with pics and what not along with my leftside navigation bar proved cumbersome. But long story short, if possible I recommend the wide skyscraper on the right top underneath the header.

[ogletree]

I make a lot of money with wide skyscrapers on the left.