We wandered into this topic in another thread - thought it might be worth bringing out.

The question is: what is the best way to use AdSense colors? As you may know, AdSense lets you pretty much pick any combination of colors for backgound, links, text, etc.

Bhopkins thought that the colors used might attract attention or be appropriate depending on the psychology of the viewer.

john678, luso and TonysDesigns suggest that making Adsense colors similar to your background makes the ads appear to be part of your site - just more of the useful links that you have for visitors.

Be sure to register your vote in the poll!

I'll explain my reasoning in the reply to this topic-starter.

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ChiefTechnovelgist
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction

Okay, here's what I did. When I first started using AdSense, I made the backgound and text colors exactly the same as my side column colors.

At some point, I went through a period of time where my click-thrus just went right through the floor - one tenth of a percent.

So, I decided to start fooling around with using deliberately contrasting (read gaudy, outrageous) colors. My click-thru rate went back up, but since Google (as far as I know) won't tell you which colors have more click-thrus, I can't tell what really did it.

One problem with my layout is that I have very well-defined columns; I think that this helps people to tune ads out.

Personally, I think the cleverest use of AdSense ads is found in sites that work the ads directly into the text column, using the same colors, and then puts additional reference links right above the google ads. See this page - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0214081214.htm - for an example. Although, in going back, I see that they are using mildly contrasting colors now.

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ChiefTechnovelgist
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction

maybe a little OT, but i read somewhere that 'orange' is a 'buy color' - a color that made people want to buy.

i set up one of my subsites with a lot of orange in the design, but i don't think it ever helped increase sales.

i've seen some sites use the colors to match their site exactly, with the ads almost not looking like ads. i like to stay away from that and make sure people know they're ads and not 'site content,' but i do try to make the highlight colors match the site.

-kpaul

I personally like to integrate mine, so they appear to be part of the site's content.

On http://www.GuruGazette.com for instance, I have them displayed just like the other navigation menus. Right hand column, white background.

I do a similar thing at http://www.ElectronicPerceptions.com - here they stand out a little bit more with a different background color, but the border/title match my site color scheme.

Some days I get really great click throughs and high payouts, other days I get no clickthroughs and/or miserable payouts. Unfortunately there's no way to know what's being generated where :(

- Kathy

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Take a look at the sites in my signature.

See how I blend them in?

Thats all the colors are for.

Plus I suggest not manipulating your website so people click the ads. Just blend them in to your layout.

Cheers!

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Ultimate Domains
Forum Organiser

Until earlier this year we had our adsense ads across the top of the page and in colour.

After changing the whole site design we added them down the right hand side and blended them in with the rest of the site by colour.

We have found that this has significantly increased click-throughs.

Example:-
http://www.citypublife.co.uk/websites9.htm

Our priority is content so we don't have adsense on the home page.

Probably because of the niche we are in with not too many adwords advertisers, we are getting a lot of charity ads on some of our pages e.g. function room pages. With this in mind we are beginning to remove those ads to include more relevant content, in the hope of achieving better search engine positioning and therefore, attracting more visitors to the site and, possibly more adsense click-throughs. http://www.citypublife.co.uk/frec.htm

For some reason I couldn't register my vote.

Regards

Citypublife