The Adsense Heat Map
The Google Adsense Heat Map is something you should become familiar with as quickly as possible if you are planning on displaying contextual advertising on your website. (There is also a Heat Map for forums.) The darker the shade of orange, the higher the click-through rate.
The Heat Map will show you where your Adsense is likely to get the highest click-through rate.
Hopefully I don’t have to explain why that is important!
The other thing you may wish to think about when putting contextual advestising on your site is integrating it with the “look” of your site. This means getting the colours matching and using the right format of ad to match its positioning.
Look at this website for example - I have used the 780×90 leaderboard at the top of the page, but below the navigation bar. The colours all match the header and other colours on the page. I have also placed a “4 link unit” at the top of the left column which is a good hotspot according to the heat map. Because I still had some spare space I placed a 160×600 wide sidescraper at the bottom of the left column - once again integrated to the look of the page. (The 160×600 seems to get a better click-through rate than the 120×600 on most of my sites).
Now, the Heat Map says that the highest click-through rate will come by putting an ad right at the top of your content. Think carefully about that one, because you will get a good click-through rate, but you might also upset your readers who find it inconvenient to scroll past the ads.
So there you have it - integrate your adsense in accordance with the Heat Map and you will ensure the highest possible click-through rate. Now all that’s left is getting people to your site!
[...] I have talked about the importance of placing your Google (or any other) ads in the hotspots on your page before by using the Adsense Heat Map. [...]
January 10th, 2006 at 5:52 am