Colors that make cents (and dollars)

Scene 1: You walk into an elegant formal dining room done up in silk ivory at every turn. Guests attired in tuxedos and evening gowns mill about in the dim, romantic lighting. As you gaze around the room, your eyes are immediately drawn to a guest wearing a bright orange tuxedo and magenta top hat.

Scene 2: You stroll down the trendiest street in a cosmopolitan city, surrounded by flashy billboards and vibrant window displays. Gleaming Italian sports cars roar past you as you head to a nearby 4-star restaurant. Next to this fine dining establishment, you gawk at the small one-story cement building next to it, on top of which looms a 50-foot-tall inflated gorilla, advertising an upcoming used car sale.

Tip: Don't let your ads be the orange tuxedo or the giant inflated gorilla. Their design should be determined with respect to their surroundings (your site) and their viewers -- your site's users.

Blending your ads in with the color scheme of your site decreases ad blindness and in most cases can increase revenue. However, you should always keep in mind how your users will respond, and test what colors your users will respond to. (Sometimes it's okay to stand out a little.)

Take Neopets, for example -- a website for kids to adopt, nurture, and play games with their virtual pets. Chris Davis, the VP of sales for Neopets, used channels and A/B testing to discover that bolder colors which made his ads stand out worked better than blended colors. After making changes to his ads, Chris was able to double both his clickthrough rate and his revenue.

Before:


After:


During this Optimization Month, follow Chris' example and test whether your ad colors are the best ones for your site by using channels and A/B testing. Being smart about your site and your users can yield great results.

Posted by Phoebe Ho - AdSense Optimization Team