drop down menu and ads under it.

Looking for recent info and guidance.

[swa66]

I've a well performing leaderboard under a 2 line menu on one of my best working sites. To those worried: there's a bit of white space between the menu and the ads - I do not aim for accidental clicks, I just want to keep the ads before the main content as that works really well.

I'm likely to do a redesign of the site soon as it needs a refresh in the way it looks and I'd like not to touch the well working ads.

But I'd love to give the site a more modern drop-down menu.

More than 5 years ago adsense had this to say:
[adsense.blogspot.be...]
Has anybody seen more recent guidance or rulings ?

I always felt this was wrong: blending ads like they are your menu was marked as OK. I think that in the mean time we saw guidance (sorry no link, just memory) that blending ads to look like menus was NOT OK, so I guess the first part of that entry has been invalidated. Yet it's still saying "recommend against" drop down menus going over ads ...

I also remember reading about guidance to keep 15px between online games and ads to avoid accidental clicks.

So ...

How about doing the drop down menu and make it so that the drop down has a 15px "margin" on left/right/bottom that's invisible to the user but keeps the user from clicking accidentally on the ads and makes them interact with the menu even if they click next to the visible portion of the menu ?

Would that not satisfy the spirit of the anti-accidental click rationale ?

Anybody had any luck getting feedback on such things recently ?

[zarathustra2011]

I had drop down menus, but never risked placing ads underneath them, and eventually I got fed up of the pulldowns and removed them altogether. I've seen sites do far worse, but personally I wouldn't risk it. Either put the ads above the menus, or out of the way, so they do not interfere at all.

[swa66]

I stand corrected: [adsense.blogspot.be...] talks about 150px between ads and flash games, not 15px. Ouch: that's a lot of pixels for a menu, and might confuse people as to why the menu does not go away ... now it's a menu, not a game ...

[swa66]

zarathustra2011: I'd agree if it were not for having tried those things already and knowing they do not work.

right now the site has top down:
- banner (with a number of interactive things, like a search field, print buttons and as background a -for the niche- celebrity artist (commissioned before he passed away) Integrating the ads in this pastel background is very hard - tried it and failed to get anything pleasing
- 2 line menu
- ads
- content
- footer

So the only option left is either dropping the menu under the ads - which is silly - or moving the ads much lower into the content - which pushes them on small screens/window sizes below the fold.

Really this "rule" bugs me to get a functional drop down menu with my visitors as my focus. I can't help but say that I "need" this. The 2 line menu is becoming increasingly limiting (too many items too little space).

Drop down menus from the browser drop down over the entire screen (think bookmarks and the like), but my little menu can't cover an ad block as that's misleading visitors ?

It's just wrong IMHO.

[zarathustra2011]

I think primarily a site needs to be made for the visitors. I've always placed Adsense on already well established sites, and if it meant compromising and placing a smaller unit in a slightly less conventional place, I have done so, in order not to make the site look messy and spammy.
I appreciate some sites do need more elaborate means for navigation, but I think you'll have to work with that and either display the ads lower down, or have them feature prominently right up at the top (being wary of Panda of course). There's usually compromises to be made. Can you have the menu down the side, and have it pull out sideways?

[jbayabas]

Personally, I think you should redesign your whole site for the future. The 728x90 leaderboard at the very top is no longer effective because of ad blindness. Most users see big box ads now placed on the middle of content above the fold. I'm a website designer so I'll give you some advice. Here's what I recommend:



Site Logo -- Navigation Links (don't use dropdown) -- Search Engine


Content................ 300x250 ad
..........................
..........................
..........................
..........................................
..........................................
..........................................
....................................................... Right Hand Side (Widgets here).
.............................full story>>


300x250 ad


Content...................................
..........................................
..........................................
..........................................
.............................full story>>


300x250 ad


Content...................................
..........................................
..........................................
..........................................
..............................full story>>

Footer here

Note: you can put a small graphic indented to the left before the start of the content so it's pleasing to the eye.

[edited by: jbayabas at 3:32 pm (utc) on Aug 17, 2012]

[swa66]

The site is very well established: it's mush older than adsense, in fact older than Google itself. I started it in 1994 ... you cannot have sites much older than this.

Some of the content on the site really needs width, So pushing the menu to a side doesn't work. (The site used to have no navigation (back in 1994 all one needed was the back button) , then got a sidebar navigation using iframes (I actually got a webby awards nomination for that one) , then onto an inverted L in tag soup with tables abused for layout, and has been this look and feel for almost a 8 years now.
I just need to freshen the look and feel a bit and get more space for the menu without using up more space on the page and setting up for more width for the content (some of the newer content really struggles to fit in the 790px wide body - and that prevents me from updating some important content as it's too crammed).

It seems to also have survived panda reasonably well (although outranking wikipedia is no longer - which is bad as I feel wikipedia is like communism and they stole content from me attributing it at first and then finding "better matches" for their references (in those that copied the content from wikipedia ...) - circular reference now that lacks any credit to the original source ...).

Im thinking about contacting adsense support and see if I can get anything useful out of them - but I'm trying to keep my expectations low there.

[Lame_Wolf]

The 728x90 leaderboard at the very top is no longer effective because of ad blindness.

It is the best performer for my client.

[netmeg]

Yep, I just put in a 728x90 this year for the first time, and my revenue soared.

So, as always, YMMV. All you can do is test.

I have had some drop down issues between menus and ads; mostly I have tried to resolve them, but my drop downs are dynamic, and occasionally run a little long. I try to keep them to a minimum and fix them when I notice them and hope they don't cause an infraction. I think it's likely that if that's the only problem, and Google notices it, the most they will do is send you a notice. I hope so, anyway.

[IanCP]

@jbayabas

While that "might" be good for AdSense, what might the Google Animal Farm make of it?

[ADDED] That layout would pee off my visitors big time. They come to my sites for information not a plethora of ads and in my genre, it would indicate you're not supporting site costs with modest ads, but have morphed into a MFA site.

Professional credibility out the window.

Something people should consider.

[swa66]

FWIW: I'm not taking about a leaderboard at the very top, I'm talking about one under the banner and navigation. If you look at google's heat map:
[support.google.com...]
The orange horizontal one below the navigation bar. (and only there).

Using that spot with a navigation built with a drop down menu is next to impossible.
And even if you want the darker orange spot further down: you'd have to find stuff to fill the spot below the navigation on every page and find some soft of guarantee the menu never gets larger than that content (pretty hard to do if you consider we have no control over things like user style sheets).

[jbayabas]

@IanCP

Why would you say it would pissed off the visitors? That layout is very good for mobile so I don't even need to convert my site to mobile. The ads are big and beautifully designed. I have retained my traffic consistently since I launched that design a year ago.

[IanCP]

Nothing racks me off reading a technical discussion than to scroll down to an ad.

I've given up visiting a formerly good site "How Widgets Work" for two reasons:

a) Ads clutter everywhere and;
b) What might have previously been one or two pages is now fleshed out to 8 or 10 pages.

Getting answers now becomes a tortuous ordeal.

In my case, I wrote technical lectures and believe 728 X 90 is a fair thing above the content. I don't annoy anyone. My visitors come first, my sites pre-date both Google and AdSense, were solely written for visitors and I only added Amazon when my site costs were becoming a financial burden in 1998.

AdSense was merely a later bonus in retirement, not a reason for my site's existence.

[jbayabas]

I had used the leaderboard 728x90 for a number of years but I got rid of it when more users were using mobile phones. The leaderboard is not big enough for mobile site and is not effective. At first I created a mobile version of my site but my earnings didn't do well. I then redesigned my site using only big box ads and stick with the desktop version. The result is quite good.

I don't find the ads invasive at all. They are well designed and usefull to my visitors.  I have high traffic sites so User experience is always my top priority. If it were not, they will not keep coming back. 

AdSense was merely a later bonus in retirement.

Adsense is more than that to me --it's enabled me to quit my main job as a graphic artist, buy my own house, car, support my family; and most importantly, work from home: no more long commute, I am my own boss, casual atmosphere, got time to take a nap  and more quality time with my kids.

[Leonard0]

If each of your menus contain around six items or less, you could use a menu that drops one line and fills the page horizontally. It could push the content down if it is too close to the ad.
I'm not sure what this type of menu is called. There seems to be many types of horizontal menus.

[swa66]

I already have a 2 line menu, I need more space - the only realistic way is to get proper drop downs (some will even have to become multi-column I'm afraid)
And no it's not about SEO: I need the more complex menu for the visitors who seem to get lost as it is now and with adding more content it'll only become worse if I can't help them navigate better.

Anyway: In this thread: [webmasterworld.com...] ASA did not seem to object - on the contrary - but she never came back to confirm we can do drop down menus over ads either.
(although the rest of us did object to it)

Essentially that is what you see everywhere: regular people saying NO, but goog staff being tight lipped ...

[Leonard0]

A wide mega drop-down menu would be safer than the narrow drop-downs you most often see.
There should be plenty of space between the menu items and the border of the drop-down box.
On touch screens it's not that easy to hit a narrow target with your finger.
Also for touch screens the top menu should be clicked to activate the drop-down since mousing over the top menu isn't possible.

[swa66]

Had a first reply from adsense support - the somewhat generic answer one would expect. Pity.

Tried again pointing out in more detail the measures and seeking the permission.

If that fails, it's off to calculate what dropping adsense from the mix would do financially. I know some of the advertisers that are on it all the time well enough to see if we can't work out something directly.

Stopping drop down menus really is silly. And if adsense is going to force me to chose ads over visitors, they might well loose out completely.

[swa66]

@Leoanrd0: the way safari handles this on an iPad (I've never touched a andriod device) is that the drop down which happens on a hover event with a mouse in pure CSS, happens on click on the menu with a touch interface.

[Leonard0]

Had a first reply from adsense support - the somewhat generic answer one would expect.

I can see why it's hard to give a specific answer when there are so many variations of drop-downs. Combine that with the possible need to zoom out on small screens makes it hard to give a definitive answer.
Apparently, Adsense will send a warning email if they find something they don't like and give you a few days to fix it.
IMO the safest type of expanding menu probably is an accordion menu that pushes everything on the page down so that nothing gets covered.
The next safest menu would likely be the mega drop-down with lots of margin.
-Just my opinion though.
Both styles can handle multiple columns of submenus.

[swa66]

Shifting the contents down would indeed make sense to get rid of the insane limitation they're imposing now. I'll look a bit deeper into how to do that - even though I dislike "things that move" on a webpage - it might be a way out of this impasse. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Leonard0]

After further consideration, I'm not sure how Adsense would feel about having the ad shift down.
Also, if the accordion menu is closed by clicking a button, the ad may shift to where the click occurred which may be a cause for concern.
Maybe you will have more luck checking with Adsense about accordion menus.

[swa66]

Maybe you will have more luck checking with Adsense [...]

Well, they keep answering while avoiding the question.

They don't say either way loud and clear, just answer either vaguely or completely aside of the point and with unhelpful suggestions (the last was a pointer to a site that had drop-down menus but no google ads whatsoever - I kinda know how to make drop-down menus ...

It all feels pointless - Maybe I need to do a test for a week or two without adsense and see what the impact is. If I replace it with a well made "banner" for some on topic books over at amazon. The tricky bit is that I might start to look too much like an affiliate if I do that ... or I'd had done it already.