Either way it’s good, the result should be the same: an increased clicks through rate on your website, therefor increased revenues.

When you start developing a website it’s preferable you have an idea on how your website should look, where the ads should be implemented, how should they look in order to be visible and clickable, but in the same time not to interfere with your website content and design. In other words I am saying that the ads should integrate smoothly within the website template and content.

Now, as we have solved this thing, i will share with you some ideas about optimizing for ads and optimizing ads.

Optimizing for ads would be the work on your website design. The golden position where most people focus their attention and where ads would have a higher clicks through rate would be the center and right side of your page.

Optimizing ads means to use the right size, the right colors and of course the right context.

First is that many are still using the 468×60 banners or text ads, but the truth about them is that they started a long time ago to be something too regular, something people avoid looking at and clicking. I know, I have on this blog this size, but I will tell you later why. So, when choosing a size you need something visible, something that will even shock your visitors. If their attention is distributed to the ads as well, the CTR will increase significant. So I suggest using some Square banners / text ads, for example size 336×280 or 300×250, something big enough to attract the attention.

Also, if you have the option of choosing which types of ads to display, as you have in AdSense, you should know the text ads have a higher CTR than image ads. So try to display only text ads. Note here one more thing: the reason I would go for text ads is because they can get the feeling of the whole website content. That means that the text can have similar font size and text color just as the website content. Unfortunately no ad network let’s you customize the text font, but based on these ads you can customize the font of your website content (increase or decrease, change the font and the color so that it looks the same). This way the visitor’s attention will go to the ad message as well, and the clicks through will definitely increase. When customizing the ad you can choose the background color, text color, title color and the border. Just as said before, try to give the ad the feeling of your website, have the background color just as on your website, the title color usually as the rest of titles on your website. Something to remember here, as I’ve seen many websites with text ads with borders. People avoid ads, it just got into our nature, so using a border that would say like “Hey, this is an ad!”, it’s not a good idea.

And the last, but not least, the context.The ads that are related to context have a higher CTR. But this would not be a problem for you to concern if you get ads from a contextual targeting network such as AdSense or Bidvertiser, or any in-line text ad network.

To see a list of quality ad networks you could use to monetize your web pages please go here.

I hope this article gives you a nice overview on optimizing the advertising revenue.