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[Ads within content]

What color palettes are the most successful?

This is from an article I read:


What color palettes are the most successful?


If you want the biggest revenue impact for the smallest effort, we recommend optimizing your color palettes. Choosing the right palettes can mean the difference between ads your users will notice -- and click -- and ads they'll skip right over.

We've outlined a few strategies below that are designed to decrease ad blindness, the tendency for users to ignore anything that's separate from the main content of your site. By making these changes, you'll be making your ads more visible to users. The goal isn't to confuse users into thinking ads are content, but to get users to see and read the ads so they can click on those that interest them.

The color strategy you should use on your site varies depending on the ad placement and the color of the background where the ads are placed. Review the table below for a quick reference about which strategies we suggest will work well on your site.


                                        Ads within content                        Ads adjacent to content
Lt bg behind ads                        Blend                                        Blend or complement
Dk bg behind ads          Blend, complement, or contrast                Contrast or complement

Let's briefly define the three techniques you can use to design color palettes that will be successful for your site:

    * To blend, make the background and borders of your ads the same color as the background of your page where the ad is placed. If your site has a white background and you don't want to spend a lot of time choosing ad colors, we recommend using our pre-designed Open Air palette.
    * To complement, use colors that already exist on your site, but don't match the background and borders exactly where the ads are placed.
    * To contrast, choose colors that stand out against the background of your site. Contrasting is recommended only for sites with dark background, so we suggest using a palette with white background, white borders, and blue titles.

For most color techniques, we recommend using colors for your ad text and links that already exist on your site. For example, if the links on your site are all green and your text is black, use green links and black text in your ads as well. Since most users are accustomed to seeing blue links, you might also try using blue.

I read an article sometime ago on the subject of color palettes.  I believe it was based on google research.  I'm going to see if I can find it and post.

On second thought, I believe I'll try more of a blend but use a border to make it pop.  I'll see what happens

Thanks,

Palette color is a debatable subject (from my understanding).  On one hand you have my approach (making it stick out) which draws attention to the ad/advertisers and then there's the blend with the page approach.  I tried to blend it but the ads are difficult to discern.  On my site http://www.disabilityhelpsite.com I'm trying it both ways and have yet to see any difference in click rates. 

Any advice on click rates between blending the palettes and contrasting is appreciated.

I placed google ads below the menu bar (same area as the ad placement on this forum).  The code adjustment is shown on this post http://www.smfads.com/forums/index.php?topic=2318.0 and shown here: http://www.disabilityhelpsite.com/forum/index.php

I believe that ads can be placed in the footer area by adding the ad code into the HTML of that area.  I haven't tried it though.  My forum is going through reconstruction due to hackers.

I too want to get this mod to work and continue to experiment with uploading, file adjustments and finding the right code area(s).

Good luck

[<a href="'.$scripturl.'" title=""><span id="logo"> </span></a>'; echo ' </div> </div> </div> <div id="toolbar"> <div id="menumain">',template_menu(),' </div>]

Hey folks,

I never could get the ad management mod to work on the Anecdota theme, probably something I was overlooking.  But my needs for ad placement was simple - one ad under the menu bar (such as the ad on this forum).  So I changed the HTML a bit:

In the index.template.php

- You'll find in the section "beginning on line 59" (toward the bottom) this code:

<a href="'.$scripturl.'" title=""><span id="logo"> </span></a>';
      echo '
     </div>       
    </div>
   </div>
     <div id="toolbar">
      <div id="menumain">',template_menu(),'
   
     </div>
AD PLACEMENT
<div id="mainarea">';

The ad is then placed below the menu bar, such as in my forum (in maintenance mode):
http://www.disabilityhelpsite.com/forum/index.php

The ad shows up in the same spot on each page selected.

Just a FYI