Best Ad Placement Strategies and Improved CTR's

Better ad placement on your web page means better CTR. Usually the best performing spots are above the fold. "Above the fold" is the section of the landing page that is first visible without scrolling down the page. Also, in general the higher your ads are on the page, the higher your earnings will be.

Google has the following diagrams that give us a good idea of where to place ads for:

• Web sites
• Blogs
• Forums

As stated before, correctly placing ads is essential to having a good CTR. People read left to right and top to bottom, so putting your ads on the right would make them read toward it without becoming a distraction. If you place your ad on the Left side of the page, viewers tend to ignore the ad while looking for the start of that pages text. It is just a natural thing to look right past the ad to the content on the page.

These subtle differences can mean 90% or more in the difference in CTR for the exact same ad unit. Try it and measure it yourself sometime. Rarely does an ad work better while violating these rules.

It may be possible to violate the rules by the use of special graphics or text tables which are used to draw attention toward the ad. Images can draw attention toward an ad, but avoid flash and banner type ads because the mind learns to filter out these as ads as distractions and again the reader will reflexively avoid the ad contents without being aware of it.