Advertising Optimization – How to Choose the Best Ad Position

For a new blogger it may be challenging to determine where the best spot is to position your ads. If you follow a few basic rules you can increase the effectiveness an ultimately the profitability of your blogs advertising.

Choosing the best ad position for ad placement is really very simple.

Follow these 2 basic rules:

Place your ads where people can see them. (Basic right?)
Place your best paying ads above the fold. (Read below for an explanation)
There are typically a few optimal placements for ad position. You need to test the various positions to determine which one works best for your blog. In all cases you want to place your ads above the “fold”. The fold is considered the point in which your blog ends at the bottom of the screen or the point in which your blog is no longer visible on the screen.

By placing your ads above the fold you are essentially making it very easy for your readers to see them. Because they don’t have to scroll down on the page your ads will be one of the first things that your readers see.



Typical ad positions include:

Before Content - Place your ad right after the post or page title.

After Content - Place your ad right after the post or page content.

In Content - Place your ad in the center of the post or page content.

Some bloggers tend to place ads in either the left or right column however this does not always work well for CPC ads. This is usually reserved for paid direct advertising space that you can sell on your blog once you have established a significant amount of daily traffic. These ad spaces are typically sold in 125×125 pixel ad blocks or a similar sized configuration. (Typically placed in the right sidebar)

Some research has shown that placing ads on the left side of your blog above the fold generates better click through rate however I have not experienced that to be entirely true. The theory is that most peoples eyes tend to gravitate to the left because generally people read from left to right.

I have had good click through rates with ad placement before and after the content. I have found that people are sometimes distracted or annoyed when ads are placed in the content so I typically try to avoid those.