Best AdSense Colors
Talking about the different AdSense units it’s now time to teach you how to properly design your AdSense units. The colors are extremely important as they decide whether your visitor will click on your ads or not. Within this post we will discuss the best AdSense colors with the solely purpose to boost your CTR. This post is part of our complete AdSense guide.
Warning: If you want a long explanation with some information how we work then watch the video. Else, skip the video and continue with our direct to the point text explanation below.
Sorry for being offtopic sometimes, we tried not to make it a standard guide, but a little more entertaining (basically we just recorded what we were doing that evening).
Which AdSense colors not to use
We have shown some examples in the video, including one of ProBlogger’s posts. The idea is to make your ads look like content. Are you watching advertisements on television? Nobody likes to do so. Whereas if the ads would actually look like if they were part of the show you would probably continue watching them and eventually check them out later. Same applies to AdSense, making our ads look obviously like ads makes your visitor not click them. If we are however able to make our ads look like actual content then our visitor reads through them and in some cases clicks them, simply because he is interested in the topics. That’s why relevant ads are so important, your visitor is interested in your content and consequently also into the relevant ads.
So, don’t make your ads look like ads. Don’t use colors which don’t match your website, don’t use borders. Don’t use bright colors. Ask yourself, do you enjoy watching the ads, or is the layout annoying? Make background and border of your AdSense units the same color as your website’s background. This is very important since you want to blend your ads into the content, resulting in a higher CTR. The worst AdSense colors are those that make your ads look like ads.
- Don’t use bright, unnatural colors. Act like you were the visitor, do the colors annoy you?
- Don’t use borders.
- Color your AdSense’s units background the same as your website’s background.
Focusing all attention to the title
We want our visitors to have a look on the AdSense unit’s title and nothing else. Most of the people don’t even read through the text, they just see the title and then subconsciously decide whether they will click on the title or not. Make your title look like a link is one thing you have to ensure. To do so you will have to resort to the standard link color used on the internet. People got used to blue links, so you will have to use blue as title color of your AdSense units. There is room for customization as long as the color still is somewhat blueish. The best AdSense title color is the one that makes your visitor subconsciously think that the link is part of your content.
We see a lot of people using bright URL colors which draw the attention to the URL instead of the title. That’s a big problem, especially because the URL reveals that it’s an ad. Everyone knows instantly when seeing the URL that it’s an ad, simply because every advertising program does so. It would be best of course if we could completely remove the URL, but that’s not allowed by AdSense’s TOS. There is however one thing we can do, we can blend the URL with the text of your AdSense unit. To do so, color the URL the same color as your AdSense unit’s text color which in most cases is black. Several people also reported that grey seems to perform as good as black, so test whether #CCCCCC or your AdSense unit’s text color performs better for you. The best AdSense URL color is either your AdSense unit’s text color or grey. Test it for one week.
- Avoid other title colors than blue.
- Navy-blue seems to work best.
- Color the unit’s link the same as your website’s font.
- Grey is an alternative URL color.
Blending AdSense with your content
The ideal AdSense ad
Because we want to make our Ads look like content, we have to blend it with the content. We’ve shown some bad examples in the video, which attract the visitor’s attention but reveal that they are dealing with an ad. Result is that they won’t click. So to make our ad look like the content, we have to adopt our website’s design. Color your AdSense unit’s text the same as your website’s default font-color. That will make your AdSense unit look like it was part of the content. Black is the color used for most websites, we can only recommend you to stick. So when redesigning your website go for a black font color and either Arial, Times, or Verdana as font. Black is known to be the best performing AdSense text color.
Adjust the fonts of your website to Arial. By using the same font the AdSense units have we can make our ads look even better like if they were part of the content. The default AdSense font is Arial 12px, using that on your website should improve your CTR even further. AdSense now allows customizing your font to either Arial, Times, or Verdana. So, if you don’t want to use Arial then you should go for the other two alternatives. The best AdSense fonts are those that match your website’s font.
- Changing the font’s color and layout will blend your ads.
- AdSense text color should be your website’s default font color
- Black seems to perform best, so make your website’s font color black.
- Adjust your website’s font to the AdSense font. Arial 12px.
- Customize the font during the set up process if you don’t want Arial.
If you need further assistance then drop a comment or open a thread in our AdSense forum.
Nice… I just experimented and my CTR indeed gets better when it blends in with the contents….
Great info! I just made some changes to my blog – hopefully, it will work out.
I’m using adsense to make money on my blog, but I’m also trying my luck in affiliate marketing, it seems though it really works out well. Although I still have to learn more about increasing your CTR rate.
We used adsense on our money making tips blog. We need your kindness visiting to review our blog. We are very appreciated for everytime you’re on our blog.
Great Article on Adsense. Question though – most Adsense are just generic words. Do people really put colors on them? – I’ve never come across one that has crazy colors.
Since you told me about changing my Adsense URL color to the same as the text, I really had a higher click through rate, so thanks!
Like other ads, you can change colors …. how can I do that with adsense for search. I tried wroking with it but the color does not match my page at ll, or the ads.
Nice video. I will remove some color in my adsense and put blue.
Whem i rotate color in my adsense i put blue and waht other color?
How come ALL blogs talking about increasing adsense ctr and stuff have NO adsense ads???
Hi, that is because this blog is all about AdSense – it would be insane if we’d place AdSense on this blog knowing that everyone who visits this blog knows what AdSense is and will never click an ad. Guess that will generate an horrible CTR :)
great tips!! I will try changing to match the text on my site, I think black looks really nice for the text and dark gray for the url…but will try yours too :)
i have to agree with the blending part, i use grey for the text and dark blue for my links