YNOT – The basic objective of most adult websites is to make money. One way to do that is to place banner advertisements on your pages.

Finding the best space to place banners without making their presence too invasive, and therefore counterproductive for generating traffic, can be challenging. Behind the placement of advertising is a very important study on the propensity of users to click in certain spots. For example, a banner at the top of the page is much more profitable than at the bottom.

In the case of Google’s AdSense, for example, we can enter only a limited number of ads per page, so their placement is of great importance to maximizing revenue.

Banner dimensions were standardized years ago by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and among the various dimensions can be found sizes suitable for all types of needs. But which locations earn the most?

The service center for Google AdSense offers the image shown here (link opens in new window). The colors of the various fields that divide the hypothetical web page grow “warmer” as the profitability of the banner location increases.

Thus we can see a leaderboard just below the navigation bar is much more profitable than a banner placed too high, because readers tend to seek the content on the page and overlook marginal elements.

The same goes for a skyscraper in the left column: It is highly profitable because it vertically accompanies the user as he reads downward and, in Western culture, left to right.

The banner at the bottom is important because it plays to the reader’s subconscious urge to “finish” the page with a click.

As you can see from the picture, by far the most profitable location on the page is in the middle. The reasons are twofold:

• The spot tends to be viewed with more frequency and attention by the user because, logically, the most important content resides at the center of the page, while less important material moves towards the edges.
• The spot is directly above the content the reader is looking for, so he is “forced” to view a banner in that location.

Positions to avoid are on the margins of the page, especially in the lower right where, for cultural reasons, the user tends to ignore page elements. As regards blogs — which are characterized by dynamic, frequently updated content — a position of great importance is the space that follows any post. It has been demonstrated that banner advertisements at the end of blog posts provide an above-average return. Before placing your banners, consider how they will function and look in harmoney with user expectations and the overall design of the site.

This article was written for YNOT by Eng. Antonio Lodesani. For more information, visit ingoccupati.blogspot.com (in Italian).