Thanks for your comment on my blog regarding Aakash’s question. Much appreciated. I’m in the process of answering it as well in order to help him maximize his CTR.

Shine on,
Aaron

In regards to your questions, I can only give you my personal experience. No two websites will monetize the same way, but there do seem to be some constants.

About the background, right now I am testing exactly that. Through past experience, ads with the same color as the background (white, in my case) perform better than backgrounds that stand out. I will be switching to only white backgrounds here soon, as testing has proved it to be the clear winner. I originally tested the #EBF2F8 color for my ad background, as it’s the same color as my blockquotes, so I figured it would blend well. I like white better.

With the color of links, you definitely want to test on your own site using the “A/B Testing” method (I’ll post about it soon.) I try to keep my AdSense links on all of my sites slightly darker than the normal link color, but I’ve been making them increasingly darker recently, as through testing, I’ve noticed a general trend suggesting that the darker the link, the more clicks I get. Again, be sure to test this yourself and keep me updated on your results.

I agree that people tend to ignore ads, but mainly only intrusive ads (flashing, spinning banners, etc.) In my experience, AdSense and other similar contextual ads don’t turn people off too much.

You mentioned you would like having someone to talk to about AdSense. I have quite a bit of experience, so please feel free to give me your questions and thoughts.

Also make sure to keep us updated on your testing results.

Thanks!
Egon

I just posted a question here, at a similar blog entry. (Like this entry at your blog, I found his entry via the posts at this thread.)

Please take a look at that question… I’d appreciate your thoughts on the issues I inquired about, as well.

Your ad unit (at least the one below the title of this entry – which I referenced in that comment), already has a blue link color, which is the issue I inquired about, over there.

However, over here, I would like to inqire about your ad unit’s background color.

Have you found that making your ad unit’s background light blue works well, or have you tested it with a white background as well?

I know that it is advised that people make their Adsense unit’s background the same color as their web page’s background, so their ads look like part of their web page, rather than like advertisements (since people have become prone to avoid web ads).

That makes sense, though it also kind of makes sense that something be done to ad units, to make them stand out. Then again, light blue is also part of the color theme of your web pages, like with this comment entry field.

Do light blue backgrounds work well, for your ad unit’s background color, or have you tested it with a white background as well?

As I said in that comment at Aaron Cook’s blog entry, I wish there was someone who I could speak to, who is good with Adsense… But people like that are hard to come by – so this type of blog-comment interaction is the best I can do, at the present. Any advice that you and others could provide is very much appreciated.

Perhaps it’s just a temporary thing, or something on my end.

This new Adsense unit format is intriguing.