Great Ideas For Integration

25.2 Great Ideas For Integration From FreeAfterRebate.com

Fig. 25.2 Perfectly blended ads at FreeAfterRebate.com.

Few sites do a better job of integrating their ads with the text as FreeAfterRebate.com. The ad units have lost their borders, the text matches

the text of the content and the background color is the same as the background color of the Web page.

The content itself is short as well. In fact, it looks a lot like an ad! That’s a great strategy to use. Instead of blending an ad unit into a Web page, you can create content that matches the ad unit. I’m not sure whether this is what FreeAfterRebate.com did but there’s no reason why you couldn’t do it.

First, you’d decide on the format of your ad units, then you’d create very short articles that follow the appearance of those units. Because you wouldn’t be able to include much more than a headline, a sentence or two of text and a link, you could really only use this strategy on pages that discuss products, or home pages that offer teasers to longer articles.

Look too though at the way this site uses an image. Instead of placing a picture right next to an ad unit, FreeAfterRebate.com puts it above the ad unit. That’s another great solution to copy.