Comments on: Ads between Post and Comments – the Next Big Thing?

By: When Your Ads Aren’t Noticed Anymore : The Blog Herald

When Your Ads Aren’t Noticed Anymore : The Blog Herald — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:05:52 +0000

[...] is, the readers might get saturated, screening out these ads. I recently did a post on this over at Wisdump, and there are some interesting comments there to give strength to this line of [...]

By: Thord Daniel Hedengren

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:38:33 +0000

Certainly. I would rather play with different solutions, but that’s not my call to make I’m afraid. I’m required to have a set of four 125×125 pixel ads above (or at least around) the fold. Being the de facto standard works two ways – that also makes them the ad format wanted by advertisers.

Thanks for the input!

By: Gerard

Gerard — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:49:25 +0000

Thanks for the mention Thord.

I can say from my experience that the after-post advert (I use a 300×300 square) is the second best performing on my sites. That’s behind a 728×90 banner at the top of each page.

The logic is that on-page, people’s eyes work from left to right and from the top down, so the banner ad at the top is really quite effective!

Similarly, when the reader reaches the end of a post, they’re faced with the decision – what next? Do I stay on the site, leave a comment or do I go elsewhere? After my posts, I like to offer the reader a relevant ad block and a list of related posts.

So, moving on from what I said yesterday, the 125px ad blocks on the right are possibly not the best performing for your advertisers. On a personal note, I’d also avoid them because they reek of jumping on a design bandwagon – Mike Arrington popularised the trend on Techcrunch and then every other niche site copied it.

By: Sandra

Sandra — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:05:32 +0000

I don’t mind ads in the content area, but I don’t mind them in the sidebar either.

By: SS

SS — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:14:17 +0000

I disagree, that Ads between post and comments would be the next big thing.
For me ads, just break my flow of reading the articles, simply put “just read me what i am here to read and don’t force me to look at other stuff”. Users will look at ads and even click on them if they have enough time to look around on the best.

Wasn’t Content supposed to be the “king”??

By: CP

CP — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:11:14 +0000

You’re right in that square ads are less invasive to the eye but the growing number of bloggers trying to make a quick dollar off of affiliate programs – John Chow, ProBlogger and EntreCard users to name a few – use these types of ads. Thus, I’m growing numb to the square ads adorning sites.

What is the solution? I’m not quite sure yet but the placement of AdSense as they currently stand on this site is good location in my opinion.