Adsense and the Mind

How many here believe that color, texture or a certain overall "feel" of a page template contributes to people being interested or compelled to click on one of your ads? There has been much discussion over the years of subliminal advertising in many forms. Does it (or can it) apply to the internet advertising realm?
Food for thought, if nothing else!

I'm just tossing out the idea as I configure some new sites, and need to make the obvious decisons before anything else.
2 columns or 3?
Light or dark?

You get the idea.

 

2 or 3 columns is really up to you as long as you either have adlinks or a well blended vertical ad unit in the left column. 2 can potentially convert better if you have your menu elements nestled amongst the advertisements.

White on black seems to be converting well for clicks as well these days since the trend for black backgrounds died sometime in the mid-late 90s, people are surprisingly not adblind on these pages (provided you integrate well enough).

If you're running an info site, placing a square adunit in the center column (without onsite advertising -> "Advertise on this site" removed) gives absolutely great CTRs. Try to place the unit so it rests in the middle of the screen, this is where most people rest their cursor after navigating through pages. I have consistently seen CTRs in the range of 25-40% (with a great deal of traffic to even the statistics out) as a result of this.

If you want to retain traffic (or capture escaping traffic), use a search box with a "Bookmark this page" link next to it

Hope this helps someone at least

 

That is some very sound advice indeed.
Thanks much for chiming in!