Making Cash On The Web

Maximize Adsense Revenues Through Changing Colors

Google’s AdSense control panel offers some interesting color combinations, but its hard to know which one you should use. As a result, most people seem to fall back on using the default scheme.

But the default color scheme is not going to maximize your AdSense revenues. In fact, for many, the default scheme is the worst possible choice.

To make the most money from AdSense, research seems to show that you should choose a color scheme that closely matches your site’s color scheme. If you have a white background, choose one with a white background. If your headlines are orange, choose one with orange headlines.

The idea is that your ads should be integrated into your content as much as possible. This isn’t an attempt to disguise the ads as content—even a bear of little brains can figure out that they’re ads—but to make it look as a part of a whole.

It helps to think of your ads as adding to the value of your website. People will come to your site looking for information. Sometimes your material will offer them everything they need. Other times, they will exit your site via an ad which may offer them what they are looking for.

Another way of integrating the ads more fully into your site is to get rid of the surrounding box.  To do this, you’ve got to tweak the Google ad code. In the actual text of the code is a line which specificies the color of the border. Changing the numbers there to match the numbers in the background color line will get rid of the line.

If none of the color schemes integrate well, you could do some custom tweaking. Just look at the Google ad code. There are a series of lines that identify themselves as controlling the color of various parts of the ad. The numbers at the end of each line are hex codes for various html colors. (You can find a list of such colors here.) Tweak the codes until they blend well with your site.

Be careful not to mess with anything else though (especially the Javascript), as that would violate the AdSense TOS.

Once you have the colors set, give yourself a week or so to see how it affects your click through rate. Mine doubled once I made the effort to coordinate the colors with those of my sites.

If your CTR does not increase, then you may have one of those oddball sites where integration doesn’t work. If that’s the case, continue to experiment until you find the colors that do the best job.

Posted by The Editor on 09/02 at 03:14 PM
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