Make Your Ads Look Less Like Ads

The basic goal of this document is to make your AdSense ads look less like ads,

and more like content on your page. It has the second goal of putting the ads exactly

where they need to be to draw the most clicks.



“Wait a minute,” you might say, “isn’t that a little shifty?”



No, it’s not. The AdSense publisher’s problem is that the typical Internet surfer is

plagued by “banner blindness”. People automatically overlook anything that looks like

an advertisement because of being bombarded with ads all the time. It’s not that they

aren’t interested in what the advertiser has to offer. With AdSense you know that they

are interested most of the time, since the ads shown are related to the content of the

page. The fact that the visitor clicks on the ad is an expression of their interest in

whatever that ad has to offer.



What I’ll focus on in this document is not hiding the fact that the links are ads, but

putting the ads on the page in such a way that they are not overlooked by the visitor.

Google makes it very clear that the links are ads by placing their “Ads by Google” link in

the ad block.




Bottom Line: To get more clicks, you’ve got to get your visitors to notice the ads by

putting them in the right place and making them look less like “traditional” web

advertising.