I couldn’t hide my excitement when Chief_Atenista called me up today to ask about AdSense placement/blending tips for the Atenista.net forum. It’s not everyday that you get to help your alma mater (sorta). His problem: high ad unit impressions, paltry clickthroughrates (CTR).
Wrong Target Market
Being the de facto forum for all things Ateneo, I told John that his readership base fell under the Web-savvy category. His readers know their way around the Internet and are extremely ad blind. No caveman clickers in this bunch. I told him that with his target market, CPM ads would convert better. John echoed those thoughts. True, Ateneans aren’t click happy, but readers would still click on an ad provided that it was relevant to them at the time that it was displayed.
That made sense, so that’s what I focused on.
Click Heavy Areas
My first mission was to make the ad units prominent given the existing layout. Atenista.net’s existing AdSense inventory on the forum homepage consisted of a single blended 728 x 90 Leaderboard (same link/background color as the rest of the page). This had to go as this wasn’t bringing in the clicks according to John.
In my redesign, I opted to use a 468 x 60 Banner and a 468×15 Link Unit. I moved all member-related navigation elements to one side (upper right) and placed both ad units within that area, on the assumption that logged in members “frequented” this area. By moving the ad units close to the click-heavy areas of the website we make them more prominent.
Ateneans are snobs, therefore ads should be obtrusive, not blended.
For Atenista.net, I think the ads need to stand out. In fact, they should be annoyingly obtrusive. No blending whatsoever, similar to Digital Point’s 468 x 60 Banner. I recommend an ad color scheme that is in contrast with the existing color scheme of the page. If it were up to me, the color scheme of the 468 x 60 Banner should be in red.
Move your ad units close to areas where the mouse pointer frequently visits.
Other click heavy areas include the navigation area in the bottom part of the page. I slapped on a 728 x 15 Link Unit there, but that can be readily substituted with a 728 x 90 Leaderboard.
Do it now, while you have his attention
I also suggested placing ad units after the first post to take advantage of first time thread readers who are at this point moderately interested in the topic. By putting ads directly after their eye/mouse path, we get higher chances of conversions.
Got any more AdSense tips for Chief_Atenista?
Other Helpful Ad Placement Resources: