Optimise the ads on your blog

When working with a blog, you are facing some interesting ad implementation challenges: a predetermined page format, highly targeted content and regular visitors, among other things. To make the most of your readership and content, here are a few suggestions:

Blend ads into your blog

To increase the likelihood that your readers will see and click on your ads, blend your ad units into the background of your blog. Choose a bold colour for the ad title to help draw attention to your ads then make sure that the background and borders of your ads are the same colour as the background of the area where the ad is placed.

Experiment with multiple ad formats and locations

In general, wider ad formats tend to be more reader-friendly. Placing an ad unit after the first post will likely catch your readers' attention. Take a look at our sample implementations to get some ideas. In addition, consider placing a Skyscraper (120x600) or vertical link unit on the right side of your blog. If you are using Blogger, you can find instructions on placing AdSense code in your blog's sidebar.

Offer readers more options with search and referrals

To make sure that you are earning the most revenue possible with AdSense, go beyond just ads to use AdSense for search and referrals. You can increase your earnings, provide readers with valuable information and take advantage of flexible formats.

Improve ad targeting

With section targeting, you can target an ad unit to a specific section of your blog, as well as block out irrelevant sections like navigational links. We recommend that only those familiar with HTML attempt to implement section targeting.

Tip for generating more traffic to your blog: If you are a Blogger user, activate this setting to notify Weblogs.com, a blog update notification service, whenever you have updated your blog. That means that your blog will be included in various "recently updated" lists on the web as well as other blog-related services.

Making AdSense fit your forum site

When you run a forum site, ad placement and formats are key to designing ads that will be successful but not intrusive to your regular users.

Placement: Display your ad units where repeat users will notice them Because forum regulars tend to skip the header and go straight to the meat of the thread, placing your ad unit above or below the first post can be more effective than ads next to the logo. Place a leaderboard immediately after the last post. This provides users who make it to the end of a thread with a 'next step' when the content ends. Try to avoid placing it after the footer, though, as your readers will likely move to the next thread without seeing the ad. Formats: Adapting your design for multiple ad units and limited space. Using multiple ad units, you can use a variety of formats to fill ad space throughout your site. Placing a skyscraper above the fold on the left side of your forum seems to produce slightly better performance than other positioning. However, when using multiple ad units throughout the page our horizontal bias still favours the leaderboard. Our heat map provides more details. Use horizontal link units, which are small enough to fit near the top of your forum just below the header. For the regular forum visitor, link units offer a wider range of relevant topics to browse.

However you choose to implement your ads, keep in mind that forums are highly interactive sites with regular users. Be sure to blend the ads nicely, so they do not appear overly intrusive, but do not blend them so well that they mislead your users! Every forum site is different and you know your community best, so as always use your own judgement to create the most positive experience for your users.

Tip for making the most of revenue opportunities: Like most sites, forums can benefit from opting in to image ads. Supporting image ads increases the pool of ads, particularly cost-per-thousand-impression (CPM) ads, bidding to display on your site. Since forums tend to have lower click-through rates than other types of sites, CPM ads can improve revenue without the need for clicks. Keep in mind, however, that CPM ads come in both text and image formats.