|
If you are going to be placing ads on your website, you'll want to put some
thought into how you'll integrate them. Poor integration of ads into your
website will cause visitors to click away fast. Successful integration of ads
into your site can be highly profitable. Before I show you where to position
ads, I want to mention a few important points about ads.
1. Ratio of ads to content
How many ads should you place on your website? There is an optimum ratio of ads
to content. If your website has too high a proportion of advertising relative to
content, the traffic on your website will suffer and you will lose money. If
your website has too low a portion of advertising relative to content, the sales
on your website will suffer and you will lose money.
What is the optimum ratio of ads to content? I can't point to any studies, but I
feel the optimum ratio is somewhere around 20 to 25 percent ads relative to
content. Go much above that ratio and, despite more ads, the revenue from your
site goes down. But, there are ways to exceed that ratio and still make more
money.
Ads as a service
Advertisements can provide useful information, as well as content. In that case,
the ads become content. Here's an example. Rather than post ads that pay you the
highest commission, post ads that provide the best value to the visitors to your
website. These are ads where the value is so good you might respond to the ad
yourself. This type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.
Another example is ads for gifts around the holidays. People expect and are not
turned off by an increase in ads around the holidays. Finding gifts for everyone
on your list is difficult work, and people appreciate gift ideas. Again, this
type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.
You can safely exceed the normal ratio of ads to content if you hide the ads in
the content. An example of this is product "reviews". For example, computer
magazines are almost 100 percent advertising posing as product reviews.
2. Repetition of ads and ad management
I have seen websites that display the exact same banner on every page. If I
didn't respond to the banner on the first page, what makes them think I will
repond to it on the second, third ... hundredth page?
Displaying the same banner on every page of your website is annoying to your
website's visitors, and a money losing propostion for you. Keep your ads fresh.
Ads are boring enough without repeating the same ad over and over. Display a
variety of ads, and use an ad management system. An example of an ad management
system is a banner rotator.
3. Ad type relative to response rate
I have heard claims that text ads receive the highest reponse. I'm sure these
results are not related to whether the ad is text or graphics, but more likely
related to the fact that text ads are usually placed in the more responsive
areas of a webpage. All thing being equal, a graphic ad will always get better
response than a text ad.
A graphic ad will get higher response than a text ad, and an animated graphic ad
will get higher response than a static graphic ad. But animation can be taken to
an extreme. Some types of animation are annoying and not only does the ad get a
low response, but it also causes visitors to click away from your website.
Examples of annoying animated ads are banners that flash or jiggle or do
something else that distracts the visitor so they can't read the webpage
content. Those visitors that don't click away will scroll the webpage so this
type of ad goes off screen while they try to read the webpage.
A secret few advertising designers know is that the graphic that will get the
most attention is a picture of a human face. People are genetically predisposed
to look at a human face in their view area. Try it yourself while you're
browsing the web. If a webpage has a human face on it, that's the first thing
you will look at.
Where to position ads on your webpage
To discuss where to place ads on a webpage, we need to divide a page into five
sections as listed below.
1. Header
2. Footer
3. Left Margin
4. Right Margin
5. Center column
Note: There is a sixth area of the webpage which is the popup window. There are
many forms of popup windows; pop-over, pop-under, delayed, and exit. The polite
way to use popup windows is the self-closing popup window. Because of popup
window blockers, popup windows are much less effective today, and, from my own
experience, when I tried using popup windows, the page views on my website
dropped by 50 percent.
The most common position to place advertising banners is in the header section
of a webpage. Web users have programmed themselves to ignore banners in this
position. The response rate of banners in the header section of webpages has
dropped to something like .0001 percent. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB)
has tried to overcome this problem by defining giant (what I call "battleship
size") banners. I don't know of any studies that show this works.
Using banners in the head section of your webpage is a waste of processor time,
but most webpages still use them. Making a sale this way is a long shot. Banners
in the footer section of a webpage are even less responsive.
Actually Web users have programmed themselves to ignore all advertising on the
web. However, from my own experience, you can get some response from ads in the
left and right margins of a webpage. Most websites are designed with the menu in
the left margin and possibly ads in the right margin. This means if the user has
a low resolution display, depending upon the width of the webpage, the
advertising may be off the screen.
Place your menu in the right margin and use the left margin for advertising.
This places the user with a low resolution display in the positon of having to
scroll to view the menu. Too bad. They should get a bigger display. Website
revenue comes first.
The most responsive position to put your ads is in the center column of the
webpage along with the content. As visitors are reading the article on the
webpage, they come upon the ad. It's unavoidable.
If you imagine the center column of your webpage divided into three parts; top,
middle, and bottom, the most responsive position for your ad will be right in
the middle. As the visitors are reading the article on the webpage, they are
forced to look at the ad as they continue to the lower part of the article. This
might be a little annoying to the reader, but let's hope your content is worth
that slight annoyance.
I would recommend placing your ad at the bottom of the center column. As
visitors read the article on the webpage, they end up looking at your ad. This
is almost as effective as placing the ad in the middle of the column, and a lot
less annoying to the reader.
As you can see, how you integrate advertising into your webpages has a major
impact on your ability to produce revenue from your website. Poor ad integration
will cause visitors to click away. Proper integration can make your website
highly profitable. But, ad positon is not the only determining factor, don't
forget the ratio of ads to content, ad management, and ad type relative to
response rate.
Copyright(C) 2004 Bucaro TecHelp.
Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use
for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for
sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource
box below is included.
Stephen Bucaro
To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a
Web site and make money on the Web visit
bucarotechelp.com. To
subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter visit
http://bucarotechelp.com/search/000800.asp
|
