By Stephen Bucaro

If you are going to be placing ads on your website, you'll want

to put some thought into how you'll integrate them. Poor

integration of ads into your website will cause visitors to

click away fast. Successful integration of ads into your site

can be highly profitable. Before I show you where to position

ads, I want to mention a few important points about ads.

1. Ratio of ads to content

How many ads should you place on your website? There is an

optimum ratio of ads to content. If your website has too high a

proportion of advertising relative to content, the traffic on

your website will suffer and you will lose money. If your

website has too low a portion of advertising relative to

content, the sales on your website will suffer and you will lose

money.

What is the optimum ratio of ads to content? I can't point to

any studies, but I feel the optimum ratio is somewhere around 20

to 25 percent ads relative to content. Go much above that ratio

and, despite more ads, the revenue from your site goes down.

But, there are ways to exceed that ratio and still make more

money.

Ads as a service

Advertisements can provide useful information, as well as

content. In that case, the ads become content. Here's an

example. Rather than post ads that pay you the highest

commission, post ads that provide the best value to the visitors

to your website. These are ads where the value is so good you

might respond to the ad yourself. This type of ad is more of a

service than an advertisement.

Another example is ads for gifts around the holidays. People

expect and are not turned off by an increase in ads around the

holidays. Finding gifts for everyone on your list is difficult

work, and people appreciate gift ideas. Again, this type of ad

is more of a service than an advertisement.

You can safely exceed the normal ratio of ads to content if you

hide the ads in the content. An example of this is product

"reviews". For example, computer magazines are almost 100

percent advertising posing as product reviews.

2. Repetition of ads and ad management

I have seen websites that display the exact same banner on every

page. If I didn't respond to the banner on the first page, what

makes them think I will repond to it on the second, third ...

hundredth page?

Displaying the same banner on every page of your website is

annoying to your website's visitors, and a money losing

propostion for you. Keep your ads fresh. Ads are boring enough

without repeating the same ad over and over. Display a variety

of ads, and use an ad management system. An example of an ad

management system is a banner rotator.

3. Ad type relative to response rate

I have heard claims that text ads receive the highest reponse.

I'm sure these results are not related to whether the ad is text

or graphics, but more likely related to the fact that text ads

are usually placed in the more responsive areas of a webpage.

All thing being equal, a graphic ad will always get better

response than a text ad.

A graphic ad will get higher response than a text ad, and an

animated graphic ad will get higher response than a static

graphic ad. But animation can be taken to an extreme. Some types

of animation are annoying and not only does the ad get a low

response, but it also causes visitors to click away from your

website.

Examples of annoying animated ads are banners that flash or

jiggle or do something else that distracts the visitor so they

can't read the webpage content. Those visitors that don't click

away will scroll the webpage so this type of ad goes off screen

while they try to read the webpage.

A secret few advertising designers know is that the graphic that

will get the most attention is a picture of a human face. People

are genetically predisposed to look at a human face in their

view area. Try it yourself while you're browsing the web. If a

webpage has a human face on it, that's the first thing you will

look at.

Where to position ads on your webpage

To discuss where to place ads on a webpage, we need to divide a

page into five sections as listed below.

1. Header 2. Footer 3. Left Margin 4. Right Margin 5. Center

column

Note: There is a sixth area of the webpage which is the popup

window. There are many forms of popup windows; pop-over,

pop-under, delayed, and exit. The polite way to use popup

windows is the self-closing popup window. Because of popup

window blockers, popup windows are much less effective today,

and, from my own experience, when I tried using popup windows,

the page views on my website dropped by 50 percent.

The most common position to place advertising banners is in the

header section of a webpage. Web users have programmed

themselves to ignore banners in this position. The response rate

of banners in the header section of webpages has dropped to

something like .0001 percent. The Internet Advertising Bureau

(IAB) has tried to overcome this problem by defining giant (what

I call "battleship size") banners. I don't know of any studies

that show this works.

Using banners in the head section of your webpage is a waste of

processor time, but most webpages still use them. Making a sale

this way is a long shot. Banners in the footer section of a

webpage are even less responsive.

Actually Web users have programmed themselves to ignore all

advertising on the web. However, from my own experience, you can

get some response from ads in the left and right margins of a

webpage. Most websites are designed with the menu in the left

margin and possibly ads in the right margin. This means if the

user has a low resolution display, depending upon the width of

the webpage, the advertising may be off the screen.

Place your menu in the right margin and use the left margin for

advertising. This places the user with a low resolution display

in the positon of having to scroll to view the menu. Too bad.

They should get a bigger display. Website revenue comes first.

The most responsive position to put your ads is in the center

column of the webpage along with the content. As visitors are

reading the article on the webpage, they come upon the ad. It's

unavoidable.

If you imagine the center column of your webpage divided into

three parts; top, middle, and bottom, the most responsive

position for your ad will be right in the middle. As the

visitors are reading the article on the webpage, they are forced

to look at the ad as they continue to the lower part of the

article. This might be a little annoying to the reader, but

let's hope your content is worth that slight annoyance.

I would recommend placing your ad at the bottom of the center

column. As visitors read the article on the webpage, they end up

looking at your ad. This is almost as effective as placing the

ad in the middle of the column, and a lot less annoying to the

reader.

As you can see, how you integrate advertising into your webpages

has a major impact on your ability to produce revenue from your

website. Poor ad integration will cause visitors to click away.

Proper integration can make your website highly profitable. But,

ad positon is not the only determining factor, don't forget the

ratio of ads to content, ad management, and ad type relative to

response rate.

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