Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I have seen some excellent examples of well blended ads on other sites - effectively all internal and external links are presented with the same styles and similar style headings and sub-headings to AdSense Ads - the only difference with the real ads is the "Ads by G" and the "Sponsored links".
It occurred to me that if I were to do this - and my internal and external links were all good - then may visitors would get into the habit of clinking the links and Ad Blindness would actually count in may favour - I would hope to achieve a good CTR.
However, the downside would be that visitors clicking on Ads may do so without intending to proceed to a purchase - my advertisers may obtain a low CTR for visitors from my site - leading to my site being smartpriced.
Q1 Is this sound reasoning?
Q2 If so, am I better off with a good CTR and suffer smartpricing or a lower CTR but higher earnings per click.
Smartpricing in my mind is that if your advertisers get accidental clicks this is no good for business, you could be earning 1$ click from a great conversion but from a standard click you could be earning 0.05$ a click because smartpricing is a penalty introduced when your site converts badly.
Time to start putting nice borders around your ads, make it clear it's an advertisement, I've seen some of the top sites on the net use this form of display for Google Adsense And they must of gotten the tips of the big G or arn't stupid like I've been the last years trying to 'blend it in'.
For example if there is any question as to if they are ads I do put a border around them but if my color scheme is muted I use a muted color and a thin line for my ads.
Of course I have no intention of fooling my visitors - nor do I want to highlight the Ads too much. How to blend or distinguish is another issue of course - its how much I wat to blend that I'm thinking of at present. Whatever I choose to do, I want the page to look professional and well presented.
But I still see a trade off: the more I blend Ads, the higher the CTR I can expect, but the more likely it is that I will be smartpriced. Does anyone know this to be the case? And does anyone have any good evidence about how much the smart pricing effect can be for an Authority site.
I'm happy with this, and hope to see increase in revenue whilst the clicks may be the same so far, the intention might be quite different and knowing your visiting an advertisement may not be a click back to the page they were last on as they know where they are going.
In the case of a new authority type site you want to do everything you can to impress the visitors with how useful you site is. It's not a time to worry about CTR or smart pricing.
Keep your ads pretty low key but not so much that people will click on them by accident thinking they are going elsewhere on your site. Your goal is getting natural links and to be talked about on forums, in newsletters and by word of mouse and mouth. You might even want to consider not having ads at all on your homepage and other major pages.
I use Amazon ads with graphics of book covers pointing to books on the exact topic of each page. They seem less like ads and more like you are just helping people find more information on the topic. So that is a possibility for you. It doesn't make as much money but looks less commercial.
Also be sure you link out to quality pages like examples at the Smithsonian and such. And build a lot of informative pages on the topic.
You want to have the kind of site that colleges and gov sites will want to link to as well as many other sites related to your topic. It's still all about getting good links.
Later when things are established you can concentrate more on AdSense.
Meanwhile just consider your other sites as your main money earners.
Building an authority is a lot of work and a long term project. But if you can establish one in the eyes of Google it's great.
FAQ pages do well with a blend. Article pages do well for me with a 160x600 unit surrounded by a 1 pixel black border.
Google Case Studies
FWIW, if you want to look at Google approved sites which can be considered authorities because of their endorsement, take a look at the Google case studies. These sites are out in the open so I think it's fair game to talk about them.
This guy at AsktheBuilder is said to be making $1,400 per day.
[google.com...]
You can see by visiting his site that he is also using a mix of strategies depending on the type of page.
There is a "sweet spot" you want, if it's too different they get ad blindness, if it's too similar it amounts to a trick. A good thing is totally similar, but with a border, or slightly different shade background.
After all, if the ads are displaying contextually, they really are in a way, a part of your site. You just want to avoid it being seen as part of site navigation.
