The Dos and Don’ts of Placing Ads on Your Blog
Written by: Eric Brantner on April 6, 2010 – 1:49 pm
For bloggers who are looking to earn a little extra income from their efforts, blog advertising is a popular way to monetize a blog. By including advertisements on your blog, you can get paid from advertisers either on a monthly basis or a per-click basis.
But there are some things you should know before you turn your blog into a digital billboard. Here are a few dos and don’ts I’ve come up with that will help you effectively integrate ads into your blog without alienating your readers.
- Do post relevant ads—The ads you post should be relevant to the audience reading your blog. In other words, if you’re running an internet marketing blog, advertisements for link building tools and WordPress themes make more sense than ads for online dating services and sketchy supplements. Relevant ads will get more clicks (which is good for you and the advertiser), and they’ll be more accepted by your readers.
- Don’t take up too much space with ads—The advertisements shouldn’t be the first thing I see when I visit your blog. At the end of the day, a successful blog is still all about content. So, give your content the most space, and keep the ads out of the way. I think ads are best placed in sidebars and in the header and footer in some cases.
- Do create a divider between blog content and ads—Don’t integrate advertisements into your blog content. There’s nothing more annoying than getting a paragraph or two into a post only to have to scroll past a huge ad before I can read the rest of the post. Keep your ads separate from your content. Successful blog advertising isn’t about tricking readers into clicking ads or shoving ads in their faces; create a clear divider between ads and blog content for enhanced usability and a better overall appearance.
- Don’t use AdSense text ads—Sorry Google, but your text ads just scream SPAM! Any time I come across a blog that’s filled up with AdSense text ads, I immediately lose respect for the blog. Blogs that have these ads just don’t feel credible to me, and they remind me of spammy websites that are littered with text ads.
Do you have advertising on your blog? Why or why not?
April 7th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
I completely agree with your about the hammy (spammy?) Adsense words. I hate them and always stop reading. they make reading a blog a chore.
Thanks for the post.
Jane
April 8th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
It's interesting you say not to use AdSense when even the BBC and the Guardian newspaper both use AdSense on their websites. They seem to have the AdSense positioned in such a way as not to e intrusive when it comes to reading the articles published. I do however agree that many websites which advertise AdSense do look spammy but can you really say this of the BBC?
May 20th, 2010 at 10:10 am
Interesting that you say don't use Adsense text ads. I have to say I completely disagree based on usabilty testing/research I've just completed. I recently conducted testing on advertising and blogs, and the end results show that users are much more likely to click on Adsense text ads, rather than traditional display ads. The research also showed that users completely turn off to display advertising (its called banner blindness) and that they don't like having them on blogs, more so than Adsense text ads. It also shows that multimedia ads take up your bandwidth and slow down your site somewhat, which irritates the user even more. So if you're going to have advertising on your blog, in order to make some money, go with Adsense, but place it where it doesn't interfere with the core content.