Customizing the Appearance

Your goal in hosting an AdSense unit is to make as much money as possible by having people clicking in the AdSense unit, which earns you money. You will want to customize it for optimal performance.

Choosing an appearance format

Google experts say that the wider ad formats tend to outperform the taller ones. This is because people tend to absorb more text visually in a longer text stream. Google recommends these three formats most often:

• 336x280 large rectangle

• 300x250 inline rectangle

• 160x600 wide skyscraper

You want visitors to your site to see the ad, so selecting a color palette that blends in with the color scheme of your site is not the best idea. This can confuse the visitor into thinking it is part of your site and create “ad blindness.”

Using themed ad units

Drawing attention to an ad on your page involves change and color recognition. Google can change the look of the ads on your site based on certain holiday periods, thereby creating themed ads or ads that are decorated to commemorate certain local and worldwide holidays. The holiday period decoration selected for display on your page is geographically chosen based on the IP address of your Web site. For example, red, white, and blue themes may accompany Fourth of July ads for sites within the United States.

To set up themed ad units, follow these steps:

1. Click the My Account tab.

2. Edit the Add type preferences.

3. Select Enable themed ad units when available.

4. Save your changes.

Selecting a background color

Selecting a background color can help overcome ad blindness. When the area behind your AdSense ad has a light background, consider ad backgrounds that complement or blend with the background. For example, choosing a color used to highlight other portions of your page might make a good background color. For ads that have dark backgrounds behind them, choose a contrasting, lighter color. It doesn’t have to be white and can be a complementing color, but it should just be lighter than the dark background.

You may consider changing the background color from time to time to draw the attention of frequent visitors to your site. You can rotate the background colors among four different colors by selecting Use multiple palettes and selecting four of the preconfigured color palettes in the AdSense ad setup.

Selecting a location

Consider moving your ad from time to time so that frequent visitors to your site are drawn to the ad. Static locations can cause the frequent visitor to overlook the ad. One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want visitors to your site to scroll down in order to see the Google ad unit. Position the ad unit, text unit, or referral so that it always appears on the upper portion of your page.