I actually like the way your Google ads blends with your site. I mean, it's obviously not seamless (and shouldn't be) but they're not tacky white background/black text boring block ads either.
However, as a colleague of mine recently wrote on our company < self promo link drop > ,a recent study by Marketing Experiments found that ad designs that blended into the site content could improve CTR by as much as 127%. As the study concluded: Advertising that blended in and looked like a "native" site content performed significantly better than ads that stood out from the rest of the page. The idea is that users are getting better at picking out what is advertising and what is not, and are less likely to click on ads if they don't look like legitimate site content. However, because the study only examined one kind of site, it failed to account for how different kinds of users behave very, uh, differently. Essentially, it all depends on what kind of content you have on your site. Sometimes the more that advertising stands out, the better.
As always, it's best to know your audience. Despite what I said earlier about liking your ad formats, maybe some users prefer it when ads stand out a bit more, especially when it comes to entertainment sites. Check your conversions. If they're high, then you're already getting the right type of users clicking on your ads. You just need to figure out how to get more of them, and that you'll know by researching their habits. Do some marketing research, especially on user behaviour (ie behaviourial marketing). Find out what your competitors are doing and see if it's working for them.
Last edited by chrishirst; 04-13-2007 at 04:08 AM..
Reason: link drop removed.
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