What Is The Best Color Combination For Ads?

In my last post I discussed what ad formats are best for your blog or website, or at least I hope I was able to help you make an informed decision as to what ad format would be best for you in terms of making money from your blog.

Along the same lines is the decision you need to make about the color of your ads. Google's Adsense, as well as most of the other internet advertising providers allow you some options when it comes to color choice for your ads. They do this for a reason. It's been found that different colors work better than others, as does blending the ad unit to fit within the color scheme and look of your blog or website.

If you are serious about making money from your blog through contextual advertising, you have to be serious about designing and placing the ads in the right place. As I mentioned in my previous posts, and others before that, this requires some decisions and some experimenting to determine what works the best.

However, there is no sense in reinventing the wheel either. Others have gone before you and they have been kind enough to report back and tell us what worked best for them. The good folks at Adsense have also been very helpful in advising what color combinations seem to work the best as well so we have lots of information to work with.

It seems that most of the time, ads that blend with the content on the page do the best. This means that you should make the borders and and background of your ads the same color as the background of your website page. For example, if your page background is white, make the border and the background of the ads white.

There is also a school of thought that says complementing is the way to go. This means using colors that already exist on your blog but don't match the background and borders. This makes the ads stand out a little more which on some sites seems to encourage clicks or at least draw the reader's attention to the ads.

Finally, contrasting colors can be used especially on dark background sites making the ads stand out against the background. Personally I don't particularly like the look of these, but for some sites I am told they work quite well. Again, like everything else to some degree it depends on the site, the layout and even what the content is all about.

Blue has become the universal color of links, so of course blue text in your ads can be very good, especially on a white background. There is no doubt that blue ads on white stand out, perhaps more than most colors and people have become accustomed to seeing blue links symbolizing something that can be clicked on.

So those are the color options. But here is the deal. I truly believe that if you want to make money blogging it is not as simple as hitting on the right color combination for your ads. I mean really...do you think people are going to visit your ads just because they like the color? The fact is and will be, your readers have come to your site because you have great content, information or entertainment that they are looking for. No matter what magic color you come up with, if someone is at your site looking for information on making money from a blog, it is highly unlikely they are going to be interested in ads for something else.

So what am I trying to say? The same thing I have been saying over and over again. Content is King when it comes to making money from blogs or websites. Carefully written content, with carefully picked keywords will provide you with a bigger return than finding the magic colors. For that reason, for the most part I lean toward blending my ads into my content because I think it makes for a better looking webpage. If Adsense is doing it's job, and I have made sure to use the appropriate keywords readers will find the ads they are interested in regardless of the color.

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