Smart Ad Placement At DogToysMart.com

25.8 Smart Ad Placement At DogToysMart.com

Fig. 25.10 Featured ads at DogToysMart.com

The challenge for AdSense publishers is to persuade people to look at your ads without letting them realize that what they’re looking at is an ad. One general strategy to do that is to camouflage them on the page.

DogToysMart.com does this in a truly fantastic manner.

It’s got the usual vertical ad unit in a sidebar and a link unit at the bottom of a list of other links. But above each section, the site also has a very neat header which it carries into the ad sections.

So the left-hand side bar contains sections called “Information”, “Resources” and “Sponsored Links.”

“Sponsored Links”?

You got it. That’s where the link units are.

The right-hand sidebar does the same thing, calling the links in its ads “Featured Sites.”

But it’s in the middle of the page that this technique works the best. There’s an introduction, a section marked “New Products”, a section marked “Featured Sites” and a section marked “Recommended Reading.” By sandwiching the ads between two sections offering valuable products, the site makes the ad section looks like it contains something valuable too. It looks like it’s been put there by the site itself and not by a third party and I’m sure it’s going to deliver great results.

The moral of this story is that one method of promoting your ads is to put them between two other valuable areas instead of at the bottom of the article or whatever it may be. That might require that you create those sections specially for the purpose... but it could well be worth the effort.