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Integrating Advertising into Your Web Design

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.

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Ratio of ads to content

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.

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.

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 you can place ads on the webpage, we need to divide a page in to five sections as listed below.

Header

Footer

Left Margin

Right Margin

Middle column

Note: There is a sixth area of the webpage which is the popup window. There are lots of forms of pop-up windows; pop--over, pop--under, delayed, as well as exit. The polite way to make use of popup windows is the self-shutting popup window. Because of popup window blockers, popup windows are much less effective today, and, from my very own experience, when I tried using popup home windows, the page views on my website dropped by 50 percent.

The most typical position to place advertising banners is in the header section of a webpage. Web users possess programmed themselves to ignore banners in this placement. The response price of banners in the header section of web pages has dropped in order to something like .0001 percent. The Internet Marketing Bureau (IAB) has tried to overcome this problem through defining giant (what I call "battleship size") ad banners. I don't know of any studies that demonstrate this works.

Using banners in the mind 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. Ad banners in the footer section of a webpage are actually less responsive.

Actually Web users possess programmed themselves to disregard all advertising on the web. However, from my own experience, you can get some response from advertisements in the right and left margins of a web page. Most websites are made with the menu in the remaining margin and possibly advertisements in the correct margin. This means if the user has a reduced resolution display, based upon the width from the webpage, the marketing may be from the screen.

Place your own menu in the correct margin and make use of the left margin to promote. This places the consumer with a low resolution display within the positon of having in order to scroll to view recption menus. Too bad. They should get a larger display. Website income comes first.

The most responsive position to put your ads is in the middle column of the webpage along with the content. As visitors are reading the article about the webpage, they come on the ad. It's unavoidable.

If you think of the center column of your webpage divided into 3 parts; top, center, and bottom, probably the most responsive position for your ad will be right in the middle. As the visitors are reading the content on the web page, they are pressured to look at the ad as they still the lower the main article. This might be a little annoying to the reader, but let's hope your content may be worth that slight irritation.

I would recommend putting your ad at the bottom of the middle column. As site visitors read the article on the web page, they end up taking a look at your ad. This is almost as effective as placing the ad in the middle of the actual column, and a lot less annoying to the reader.

As you can see, the way you integrate advertising into your webpages has a major impact on your ability to produce revenue from your web site. Poor ad integration will cause visitors to click away. Proper integration can make your site highly profitable. But, ad positon is not the only determining factor, don't forget the ratio of ads to content, ad management, as well as ad type relative to response rate.

Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, e-newsletter, website, offer because free bonus or even part of a product for sale as long as no changes are created and the byline, copyright, and the authors resource box below is incorporated.

Stephen Bucaro

In order to learn how to keep your computer and use it better to design an internet site and make cash on the Web visit bucarotechelp.com. To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter visit http://bucarotechelp.com/search/000800. or net

Integrating Advertising into Your Web Design