Where to put ads?

Here's a layout I'm working on for a "hottest girls of Facebook" type site: www.myspacelayoutninja.net ... I'm just testing the layout now so no that's not the domain name and the content won't be stupid like it is now lol.

The only ad I have is a tower block in the right sidebar, although I've heard sidebar blocks aren't too effective? I would put it with each post but more than half the posts will be too short to have a "click to continue reading" link so it wouldn't work, unless we purposely did the content so it would need a "continue" link. Any ideas?

 

I see a big potential for that kind of website with dating referral ads...

You could try several positionning. I'd implement them all and rotate them; once you got like 300 clicks (so that the data is statistically significant) then select the best placement.

Possible positionnings:
- A 468*60 baneer in the middle of the pictures if there are multiple picture lines
- A 468*60 baneer right before the pictures (the little squares)
- The ads on the right are... too on the right.

You have to think as if you were a user of your website. Users tend to skip the ads if they can easily do so, not to look for the ads. As a result, your best bet is to put the ads in the middle of where the user will look so that he will HAVE TO see them. On your website, what does the user want to see ? The pictures of course - so put the ads near or in between the pictures.

You could also try something a bit deceptive so be careful, but that could work like a charm: make a fake picture with boobs or ass or whatever and with a small text like "Referral ad, click here for more infos" at the bottom of that picture, and put it randomly in between the other pictures.
The user might click on it and will land on a dating website landing page; if that page is appealing enough, you can get some conversions and some easy $$$.

Another idea would be to modify your lightbox so that when the user click "Next", every 5 pictures or so, you show an ad (and disable the Next and Prev button for like 3 seconds).
Might work well too...

Please come back in a few weeks and tell us if that worked.

 

I shut down the site awhile back but I reused the layout for www.stakloaded.net and experimented with some different placements. The one it has now is the most successful (in-post ads and a vertical banner at the side). Surprisingly the vertical banner in the sidebar gets almost as many clicks as the in-post ads, so I left it.