How to Choose Your Ads Placement

Strategic ads placement is not just talk, it actually gives good results with AdSense. You'll see here how to find the optimum place for your ads, so that the visitor can see them and click before getting bored or annoyed of their presence.

Starting from the natural course of readers' eyes, namely from left to right, from top to bottom, we sustain the theory according to which the reader is inclined to grant more attention to content in these areas, being the first he lays eyes on, so the first choice for ads placement would be the top-left area of the page.

As it can be seen, Google's "heat" map relies greatly on this. It presents the hottest spots at the top and left areas of the delimited "readable section" -- that is, the section in the page that any reader automatically identifies as worthy of interest -- immediately under the top level navigation, at the left and above of the primary content, and within the same top-left areas of the primary content. Google offers also another "hint": that the reader would assimilate the section right below the end of an article, for example, as a sequel of the content, and would be drawn to learn more.

This works to a great extent, and in most cases, but it is not absolute, as Google agrees too. For the best placement depends on other factors, and what's more important, it varies from one page to another. It depends on the on the type of visitor who arrives on your page and on the page design and structure:

• Visitors: most of them are scanners and a smaller part are actual readers. That is why you should favour the areas that are most likely to be noticed at the first glance.
• Design: a design-related placement optimizes ads mostly for the "scanning" visitor.
  • Place your ads next to the eye-catchers on your page -- headlines, graphics, pictures, tables etc -- that direct your visitors' attention towards the areas they're placed.
  • In all cases, a simple, uncluttered design for a page serves the best. It makes the page look clear, inviting, and better showing visitors' options to leave the page through one of the links that are more visible this way.
  • It is better if the ads have more free space around them.
• Content structure: ads placement according to content structure targets mainly the visitor who actually reads your site.
  • Having a certain section of great interest on the page (such as something with "Latest..."), that the visitor will most certainly read means that the part of the page with that content will be most likely a good ads place.
  • Inserting your ads in the content, where they are the most contextually relevant is very effective, and results also in better ads targetting.
  • If you insert a skyscraper in the content (reader-directed), at the top-left or right, and its heigth is overpassed by the length of that content, it is probable for the visitor who really reads to skip those ads. In this case, it would be better to position them closer to or right at the end.

In all cases, keep the ads not too intrusive, don't make the users feel the ad is in their way, screaming for a click -- it's guaranteed, they won't click!

Blindspots

...are the places ignored by most visitors. Here are some examples:

• the bottom-right area (as opposed to the top-left one);
• outside what the "readable" area (the part in the immediate proximity of the content), namely beyond the page footer and in the right extremity above the top level navigation (as shown in Google's map);
• the traditional spot for banner ads -- don't place banner-shaped ads at the top or bottom of your page!

Multiple ad units

Many ask themselves whether to go for them or not. Many think erroneously that the more ads the better, without considering that in fact the quality of those ads it's what matters in the end. For a visitor will most probably not click on too many ads -- in fact the highest probability is that he will click only on one ad.

More ads on the same topic will mean display of lower cost ads also. You obtain nothing than more less-paying possibilities for the visitor to leave your page. Thus a lower EPC for you. So, it is better to find and keep the high paying ads and place them strategically.

To conclude, only if your content is varied and the ads displaying are also varied, it's worth keeping more ad units. But again, it's a matter of trials, see what works best for you.

Of course, these are just some lines to roughly guide you and spare you the unpleasures that others have been through. You'll obtain the best possible results by testing and testing again.

from : http://www.adsensehowtos.com/learn/choose-your-ads-placement.html