Choosing The Right Format for Ad Units

If you want to make serious money from your website one of the big questions you have to answer is what advertisement formats to use to get the best results. Unfortunately it's not as simple as just setting up a blog and sticking some ad units in whatever space is available.

It's important to note that I am not talking about color schemes here, just the actual size and shape of the advertisement unit. Color selection is a entirely different science I will talk about later. Right now, let's focus on the format, meaning size.

Optimization studies have shown that the various ad formats perform differently depending on the website, the topic and the readers. It's also been found that choosing the correct formats can be the difference between making a lot of money from your blog and making a little bit of money from your blog.

According to the good folks at Adsense, the wider formats usually perform better than the narrower, taller formats. Apparently readers usually perfer wider sentences enabling them to absorb several words at a time as opposed to narrow ones that cause a reader's eyes to have to skip down to the next line. I'm not sure about this, having tried it myself, I seem to be able to absorb both styles fairly quickly, but who am I to argue with the experts? They also suggest that the wider format keeps the reader from leaving the ad unit althogether. Perhaps. When I think about it, the wider units do tend to keep me looking a little longer.

Some of it has to do with the design of your site. You need to study it carefully and decide where your eyes go, where do ads fit logically, and where would people look if they read your blog post and then started looking for more information. Just because the wider formats typically out perform the taller ones doesn't necessarily mean that is what will happen on your site.

According to the Adsense folks the best performing ad formats are:
1) 336 X 280 Large Rectangle
2) 300 X 250 Medium Rectangle
3) 160 X 600 Wide Skyscraper

I have used and continue to use these formats in some of my blogs, I also use some others as well as you can see from this blog. I don't believe in using these if they don't look right on my page. Who knows, I may be cheating myself out of some money but I can't help it, I want the ads to blend in and fit my pages. It's just a thing I have about advertisements.

Of course, it goes without saying, (although I am going to say it) that you should be experimenting with different ad formats and tracking the performance. This is really the key to finding the right format for your blog or website. Try different formats, move them around and then sit back and watch how they do. I suggest trying them over a month or so, and then changing them up until you find the best performing formats. Even when you do, you will need to monitor your ongoing results to ensure they continue to work for you. Overtime, especially if you have a lot of returning visitors you may become victim to ad blindness as your readers, accustomed to your site, no longer respond to the ads, that's when it's time to change the colors and formats and perhaps locations.

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