Every person who wants to monetize their website will at one point or another have to make a compromise; in this case it is compromising design with ad space. This article will discuss the pros and cons of placing ads, and how to do it the right way.
Every person who wants to monetize their website will at one point or another have to make a compromise; in this case it is compromising design with ad space. This article will discuss the pros and cons of placing ads, and how to do it the right way.
First off, I know, it is a tough decision to make. I myself have thought about it for hours when designing and programming a website. I ask myself, “is this a website which I should be running ads on?” My initial answer is yes, I want to place ad’s on all my websites because revenue can be generated – but on the flip side, every ad that gets placed takes away from the design.
Do not place ad’s all over the place. What you want to do is ask these questions:
Are ads appropriate for my website?
How much design am I willing to compromise for ad space?
Do I want contextual ads, or should they be random?
These are a few questions to start, now lets break them down.
Are ads appropriate for my website?
Not every website is appropriate for running ads. An example of a website that should not run ad’s are, portfolio websites. A portfolio should take full advantage of design, and not have any extra distractions or fluff on it. Stay away from putting ads on a portfolio website unless you don’t mind having white noise on the page. Charity websites or website that are not for profit should not run ads, unless the ad profit goes towards the not for profit or charity website.
How much design am I willing to compromise for ad space?
This is the big question. How much am I willing to give up? Every ad you place on your website, potentially means more revenue, but also clutters your website. You need to find an ad to content ratio which you are comfortable with in order to find what is the correct amount. Everyone is different.
Do I want contextual ads, or should they be random?
This one is important. First off, what is a contextual ad? a contextual ad is an ad that is relevant to the content it surrounds. Usually the third party determines this algorithm so you do nothing but place the ad code on your website. Lets face it, if you have ad’s on your website it might make sense to have the ads relevant to the content. That would cause a higher CTR because the content would be relevant to the ads. But what if you are a business selling a certain product, what if a competitor ad was displayed. This would make sense to use a different type of ad, a ad that was not contextually relevant.
These are just a few of the things to think about. Don’t worry, you can play around with all of this. It is not like you cant change things as time progresses. That is what should happen. you should tweak things as time goes on to optimize your ads. And to be honest this should happen quite often for AO (ad optimization)
My next article will discuss some typical ad to content ratios and what could seem appropriate for a specific layout.
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15 Responses
Really Good Work…. You Helping People A lot
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