phpbb forums and adesense color combination

728x90 leaderboard on top

[serengeti]

For those who have adsense ads at the top of their phpbb forums, can you share your experiences on what color combinations have worked best?

I use the default light blue phpbb forums template and haven't changed any colors through the admin panel as it seems to involve too many options and changes (and I am not sure if its easy to switch back to the default template without writing down all the numerous changes you make in the first place).

My 728x90 leaderboard on the top is of the Blue Mix type from the Google Adsense palatte.

Is it more effective to use the 468x60 banner on top instead of the wider leaderboard?

Is there a better color combination in anyone's opinion?

My forums largely entail serious discussion and do not involve fighting games and spaceships, Harry Potter etc...
Although I am still open to trying the black gothic look if anyone has good experiences with that!

Thanks.

[beggers]

I'd suggest matching the ad colors to the elements of your page. That's about all I can think of.

[swa66]

Try editing your subBlue template and add the ad deeper into the content.

see also: (sorry https doesn't link on this forum, so you'll have to cut&paste)
[google.com...]

But doing that might scare away visitors, so I'd suggest turning ads off in the forum for logged in users. and telling them they can register to get rid of the ads.

[MThiessen]

Yes, I have found the best sucess is matching the color to the background.

One more thing I might add phpbb is BAD about causing you to get dup content filters. Bet your forum is a PR0 correct? Do a search there are mods that will fix that. You need access to mod re-write and you will need to tweak robots.txt

Good luck.

[swa66]

To find the colors used by subSilver look in .../templates/subSilver/subSilver.css

Those colors in hex can be used right into the adsense configuration, resulting in e.g.:

...
google_color_border = "006699";
google_color_bg = "e5e5e5";
google_color_link = "006699";
google_color_text = "444444";
google_color_url = "DD6900";
...

that should give you something that depending on where you use it would do the trick to blend in and stand out.

Of course you can set the border to the background color to make it less obvious etc.