Written on March 8th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:03 am by Darren Rowse
Introduction to Advertising Optimization - Ad Design
Ad Design
Another factor to consider with many advertising systems is the design that you’ll go with on your ads. While some ad systems do not let you customize the look and feel of your ads (ie many impression based ad systems like Fastclick) a growing number do allow you to not only choose from quite a few different ad sizes but also give the option to change colors of different elements including the text, links, borders and background colors (for example AdSense, Chitika, YPN, AdGenta all give some ability to change the look of your ads etc).
There are as many opinions on ad design as their are on ad positioning - but the trend at the moment amongst most publishers is to go for a blended look with your ads.
One might think that the best performing ads would be ones that stand out from the rest of your page and draw the eye - but most publishers that I speak with have found that such a strategy not only annoys readers but brings about results that underperform when compared to more subtle and blended designs.
In general - to blend an ad using a system like AdSense, YPN or Chitika you’ll want to:
- make the background and border colors for your ads to match the same color as the background of your blog
- make the links (title and URL) on your ads the same color (or a similar one) to other links on your blog
- make the text color in the ad the same as text on your blog
So on a blog that looks like enternetusers ads might turn out like this:
There are of course exceptions to this and some publishers do mix things up a little in an attempt to both keep the look of ads fresh (to combat ad blindness of loyal readers).
For instance some publishers make the text and URL (at the bottom of ads) a lighter color in an attempt to highlight the title/link. Others rotate different ad color variations and even types to make every impression a little different in the hope of keeping them somewhat fresh looking (you can do this in AdSense by holding down the Control key and select up to four colour palettes when generating your ad code in the Ad layout code page of your account).
Having said that the blended look is popular among most bloggers there are also some publishers that I know of who take the exact opposite approach in their ad design and make their ads as loud as possible. Their ads annoy me of those TV ads that are full of screaming announcers and flashing visuals that obviously want to break through into TV watchers numbed state by being as visually and auditarily (is that a word?) offensive as possible. I actually saw one AdSense ‘expert’ a few months back advising publishers to make their ads a bright red background with a bright yellow text and links. Their argument was that these were the colors of McDoncalds which were scientifically proven to trigger people into a buying frenzy.
My own feelings on this that ads like that might be trigger a slightly different reaction in readers (violent ones) but I guess it’s each to their own.
The key with ad design (in all ad systems) is to experiment and track your results. Most ad systems allow you to do this in one way or another. AdSense especially allows it by adding channels which means each ad unit on your blog can be tracked to see how it performs. Some bloggers also use other AdSense trackers like AdSense Gold (aff link) to track their results as they give a lot more information which is especially helpful in working out what design and ad positions work best.
Ad Size
Another aspect of Ad Design that publishers can choose is the size of the ad. There are many ad sizes available for publishers in modern day advertising systems (almost too many to choose from at times). It is difficult to make sweeping statements about what ad size works best on a blog and as with everything I’ve written above you’ll want to experiment quite a bit with what works for you.
AdSense always advise that rectangle ads works best (300 x 250 for example). This size seems to suit many blogs not only because it fits nicely into numerous positions - but also because it allows image ads to be used (something that on one hand can be more lucrative in terms of income - but something that can also interrupt the design/flow of your blog as at times image ads can be very dominating and can even clash with your overall page design).
I also find that 468 x 60 pixel ads can work quite well as they don’t dominate a page quite as much as a rectangle ad as they are not as high - yet they show two ads. Once again they allow image ads if you choose to have them activated.
Keep in mind that you’ll want to choose a size that fits naturally into your blog in an optimal position without crowding out your content. The temptation is often to use a large size, but this can often leave little room for content above the fold. Usability for readers needs to be kept in the forefront of you mind when considering these factors.
Next in this series we’ll turn our attention to Ad Relevancy
Written on March 7th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 10:03 pm by Darren Rowse
Six Apart Launches Business Blogging Tools
Six Apart (the creators of TypePad and Movable Type) have today announced two new business oriented blogging products - ‘TypePad Business Class’ (a hosted service aimed at companies with high-traffic Web sites) and ‘Movable Type Enterprise’.
Their press release explains further:
‘According to Six Apart, TypePad Business Class offers advanced customization for layout control, advanced comment and spam controls, unlimited blogger accounts, additional bandwidth allowances and premium technical support.
TypePad Business Class is available immediately, starting at $89.95 per blog per month, for 4GB of storage and 40GB of bandwidth per month.
Movable Type Enterprise extends database support to the Oracle 10g database, integrates with enterprise authentication tools such as LDAP, and offers unlimited blogs.’
Written on March 7th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 01:03 pm by Darren Rowse
The Single-Page AdSense site
Eric’s written an interesting post today on The Single-Page AdSense site which might be of interest to bloggers.
It’s a different strategy to how most bloggers use AdSense (blogs tend to be very much about a linked site with loads of outbound links and options for readers to click on other than just ads) but I’ve seen some blogs that use the principles he suggests by having individual post pages that have few links to the rest of their blog or other blogs.
For instance Scrivs wrote last year about how giving readers less options for clicks means more CTR on your ads (Of course since that time he’s changed his very minimalist design on WorkBoxers to one that now has outbound links to other blogs in his network as well as other bloggers).
I guess it all comes back to your goals and strategies for blogging. While a page with few (or no) outbound links has some advantages in terms of CTR of ads it has disadvantages in terms of the interaction you might have with other bloggers.
Written on March 7th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 11:03 am by Darren Rowse
Generating Ideas for your Blog
Liz has a nice post on being an Idea Magnet today that I’m sure many will enjoy.
As she writes - one of the most difficult parts of blogging for many is coming up with ideas that are fresh and engaging. I know after three years of blogging I have days when I get up and wonder if there is anything else to cover! To this point I’ve not run out of ideas (although have had lean patches which I think are a normal part of the the blogging cycle).
If you’re stretched for ideas at present read Liz’s post - and if you’re still out of inspiration you might also find my battling bloggers block series of some help.
Written on March 7th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 03:03 am by Darren Rowse
Introduction to Advertising Optimization - Ad Position
Perhaps one of the most common mistakes that I see bloggers making with the positioning of advertising is with regards to position. In fact this is not a unique thing for blogs or even just online advertising as effective advertising relies upon positioning in all of it’s forms. This is why ads at Prime Time on TV, in the front pages of magazines and on the big billboards at busy intersections are in high demand (and are at a premium price).
The theory is pretty simple (and logical) really - if you increase the number of people who see an ad you increase it’s chances of converting (note that position isn’t the only factor, as we’ll explore later).
A good question to ask yourself as you consider ad placement on your blog is ‘where are people looking?’ Some of the factors to keep in mind when answering this question include:
Above The ‘fold’
When you look at the front page of enternetusers you will notice that only part of the page is showing. This is because I have more content than can fit on the screen (unless you have a massive screen of course). The only way you can see everything on the page is to scroll down.
If you were to draw an imaginary line across enternetusers’s front page at the point where you had to start scrolling this line is known in web circles as ‘the fold’.
Research shows us that elements of a website below the fold are seen by significantly less readers than elements above the fold. Of course it doesn’t take a genius to realise that in general (and there are some exceptions which I’ll outline below) this will mean a lower conversion for your ads.
Content
The content of your blog is hopefully the place where most of your readers are drawn to (if it’s not you might have a problem). This is the case whether your content is text, video or image and as a result one of the best converting positions on a blog in terms of advertising is within or close to content.
Different bloggers have different opinions on both on firstly whether ads should be put near content (that’s a debate for another post) as well as what is the best method to do so - but in general there are a number of fairly common ways that it is done. Let me outline a few:
- Between Posts - perhaps one of the most common ad placements running on commercial blogs at present is to place a rectangle or small banner ad between posts when running ads on the front page and/or category pages.
One example of a blog using this strategy is megablog - Engadget which places a rectangle AdSense unit between the second and third posts on it’s front page (see screen cap below).
In fact Engadget use this strategy between many of their posts on their front page (and category pages), using a mixture of AdSense ads and other ads (probably sponsorship deals). (Note: Engadget runs more than the normally allowable number of AdSense units per page. AdSense reportedly has deals with some larger publishers that allows this).
I currently use this strategy here at enternetusers also on my front pages - inserting ads between my second and third posts.
AdSense themselves have recommended this position in a diagram that they produced to show which positions work best (below):
- Before Content - Placing an ad unit slightly above a post can be an effective placement, especially if using an ad with a smaller height. 468 x 60 pixel ads are one such ad, as are the horizontal ad link units from Adsense which often are placed across the top of a blog just above a post’s title. My own experience is that ads above content are not quite as effective as ads IN content (see below) - but they are generally less intrusive than IN content ads.
One warning however with these ads - if you use an ad that is too large you can actually push your content too far down the page and actually end up with a page that has little content above the fold (something that is likely to frustrate your readers).
- In Content - There is some debate around this method of ad placement but in my experience it is by far the most effective in terms of Click Through Rate.
While readers do scan content - their eyes are generally in it’s vicinity and to have ads in this position means they naturally see it and if the ads are relevant to the content itself they are much more likely to click.
Ad sizes in this position vary in terms of conversion from blog to blog but some bloggers use a rectangular ad block aligned to the right or left
For example - The Movie Blog uses a rectangle ad directly under it’s titles and aligned left on individual pages (see screen cap of this page below).
Another example is here at enternetusers where I insert a smaller ad (aligned right) into my individual pages.
Comments
Another hotspot on many blogs is in the vicinity of the comments section. There are a number of reasons for this position converting well. For starters, comments are at the end of a post and at a point where a certain percentage of your readers are looking for something else to do. They’ve consumed your content and will either be looking for more of the same or wanting to take some action as a result of what they’ve read. As a result - an ad that is contextually relevant is sometimes quite clickable. The other reason ads near comments do well is because they are a place that draws the eye of your reader. The discussion that happens on a post can be just as valuable to readers as the post itself and so they become hotspots.
Here at enternetusers I place a rectangle ad at the end of my posts and a bit above comments. I find that these ads can some days get a higher CTR than any other ad on the blog.
Images
A strategy that some bloggers use is to draw the eye of their readers towards their ads by using images or other visual aids. While there are many poor examples out there of people doing this (many of which break the Terms of Service of programs like AdSense in my opinion) I’ve previously drawn readers attention to more subtle and stylish ways of doing this (like Karen Cheng’s approach).
Left Hand Side
When I first started experimenting with ads the advice I was given was that ads on the right hand side of a page did best because people looked over there to use the scroll bar. In more recent times the research and expert opinion on the matter is that the left hand side is best. Perhaps this is because those of us from countries which read from left to right are wired to look left when viewing a page - or perhaps there is some other reason - but from my own experience in tracking ads - it does seem to be true.
AdSense published the following ‘heat map’ to illustrate where they found ‘hot spots’ to be on web pages. As you’ll see - ads positioned to the left tend to do better than those on the right.
Of course there are many other things to consider when working on the placement of ads - two that I’ve written about previously include Aesthetics and Financial Considerations (this is a post well worth reading if you’re using AdSense - it outlines how it’s possible to have less ads and be more profitable).
Next in this series we’ll examine the topic of Ad Design
Written on March 7th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:03 am by Darren Rowse
Introduction to Advertising Optimization - Traffic
To round out the Blogging for Beginners section on blogging for an income I want to touch on a few introductory principles for optimising advertising on blogs over the next few posts.
There are many different direct income earning methods (as outlined previously) and each will have it’s own ways of being optimised - but the following are principles that many bloggers find across different forms of advertising programs (for the sake of this post I’ll mainly use blogs using AdSense as examples - but much of what I write can be applied to different ad systems).
The basic factors that I’ll be covering in the following posts are:
- Traffic
- Ad Position
- Ad Design
- Ad Relevancy
- High Paying Ads
I believe that all five elements are important to running profitable ads on a blog. Take any one of them out of the picture and you decrease the overall earning potential that you have. ie a blog with high traffic but with ads that no one see’s is never going to earn much. Likewise a highly trafficked blog with well positioned ads that are completely irrelevant to the topic of the blog are less likely to perform to their potential… you get the point. Each element should be considered and worked on simultaneously.
I’ll start briefly with the first one in this post and will follow in the next day or two with a post on each of the following four:
Principle 1 - Traffic
The frustrating thing about blogging for an income is that you can have perfectly positioned, designed and relevant ads that would pay a fortune but still be not making any money at all because your blog has no traffic. So while I encourage publishers to work on design, placement and ad relevancy, it’s worth remembering that you shouldn’t do any of it at the expense of developing a quality blog that people will come and read.
This isn’t the post for talking about traffic building strategies (try here and here for some strategies on that) - but a holistic approach to building an online income will definitely factor traffic building as a primary objective.
Speaking from personal experience - I know how easy it is to get sidetracked by the other factors mentioned - but if you simultaneously work on building a readership you’ll build a much more profitable blog.
Next in this series we’ll examine Positioning Ads
Written on March 6th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 02:03 pm by Darren Rowse
How to Check if a Site has been Banned from AdSense
Jensense has been a little quiet lately as a result of speaking at and attending different conferences but today she’s posted a very helpful guide to Safeguarding yourself when purchasing a site for AdSense.
I’ve heard of a number of blogs being bought in the hope of adding AdSense ads to them only to find that for one reason or another those blogs have been banned by the program. Jen gives some helpful tips for avoiding this if you’re in the market for a new site.
Written on March 6th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 08:03 am by Darren Rowse
Seth Godin speaks at Google - Video
If you like Seth Godin you might enjoy this video of him presenting at Google.
Written on March 5th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:03 pm by Darren Rowse
Penis Enlargements and the Problem with Comment Subscriptions
A few months back I installed a WordPress plugin that allowed readers to tick a box when leaving a comment to be notified via email when more comments on that post came in.
The idea behind the plugin is a great one - it extends the conversation on posts beyond their normal period of time (usually as long as the post appears on the front page of the blog).
The only problem with the plugin is that it reports to anyone who subscribes to the comment thread not only legitimate comments but any comment spam that you might get.
I have pretty good comment spam filters that pick up the vast majority of spam at enternetusers, but I have an ongoing problem with Penis Enlargement comment spam. It is not a large problem (no pun intended) as only the occasional comment gets through - but every time they do get through I find myself wondering how many readers who might have subscribed to that thread are getting notified that my blog is being spammed (complete with a title that doesn’t really help my blog’s reputation).
I’m unsure what to do at this stage - I’ve only had a couple of readers mention it so far in passing (in fact I’m unsure how many are using the subscription plugin at all) but it’s not really too good for business.
Written on March 5th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:03 pm by Darren Rowse
Speed Linking - 5 March 2006
- Blog Business World writes on Organic SEO
- Arieanna asks Traffic versus subscribers - which means more?
- Digital Point Forums has a discussion around the question ‘how many of you left your day job??’
- ipears writes on the Importance of a good Description
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enternetusers Sponsors
Team Blogs
Blogs from b5media management and staff members.-
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