“We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads.”

Ok, so they aren’t saying that you can’t have images next to your ads, but that they can’t have any relationship to the ads.

So, if anyone reading thinks they’re going to get a nonexistent techy-web-icon when they click on an ad, you won’t :)

Google’s rule on this bothers me actually, I thought the point of a good designer and developer was to attract attention to certain areas, and if that so happens to be an ad, what’s the problem? That’s the whole point of advertising, we’ve been banging our heads against the wall trying to figure out where to best place an ad to get the most clicks. Now, I can see why Google is saying this, because some sites have very misleading images, which is why I’m not going to remove my images unless Google directly tells me. I don’t feel I’m violating their TOS, because my images are not suggestion any relationship to the ads whatsoever.

We’ll just have to wait and see though, right?

Interesting post. I came across this blog by accident, but it was a good accident. I have now bookmarked your blog for future use. Best wishes. Adrianne Curry.

It’s really hard to make a successful template for AdSense, because it all boils down to the content on your website and what type of visitors you attract. For example, on another website I run that’s not a blog, I have an incredibly CTR rate somewhere between 8-12 percent (can’t give exact numbers, hence the range). The kind of people that visit that site are already in the buying mood, and they’re looking for information on a product before they buy it. AdSense does wonderful there because of this.

Now, divspace is the exact opposite. The majority, if not all, of the visitors to this site are not coming here to buy something, they want information and information only. Also, visitors here tend to be in the non-clicker group. We know what ads are, we see them all the time, and we avoid them. We’ve had our “ad blinders” on for quite some time. Granted, you will get people clicking on ads, but don’t expect a very high CTR rate.

I have to admit, divspace does better than average in terms of its CTR, with the average being somewhere in the 0.50 to 0.65% range. You would be happy, with a site like this, to see an average CTR between 0.90 and 2.35 percent. Could it be better? I would say no.

After I finish the redesign, I’ll do a comparison between the current design that I whipped in a couple of hours, and the actual redesign, which will be much more thought out and optimized for ad delivery. If I do notice an increase, you’ll be hearing about it for sure and what you can do to increase yours (beyond doing the basics laid out in this and other AdSense articles on divspace).

I will also be looking at other ways to monetize the site, but there’s certainly a very, very fine line between “just right” and “too much” when it comes to your ads, what colors you pick, where you place them, etc.

More importantly is the fact that CTR numbers are deceiving sometimes, and they shouldn’t be your prime focus. Content is the most important thing, the rest will fall into place.

One more thing, I looked at those themes that are supposedly optimized for AdSense, and I would say the templates are not that great. I’ve played around with AdSense for countless hours, with every different ad unit size, position, and color, and most of the things I see on there, are things I’ve tried and haven’t seen good results with. The link units especially are not worth the trouble.

http://www.sapiensbryan.com/index.php/my-wordpress-theme-ads-minded/
http://pilkster.com/wordpress-themes-for-adsense/

Anything else?
I also can take a look at sights that have successful ctr adsense templates (But unless you want it public, please PM me it.)
OK I Just realized I mispelled Wordpress in the title, Man I am an Idiot.!
Ok now I am a bigger idiot for not realizing the “go to advance” edit. so i fixed my misspelling.

Yeah, the problem with that is the image has to include the four single icons grouped together as one image. I prefer to have it pull out four random icons and parse each one individually. It’s a bitch to have to make 20 “icon sets” when I could have just left them all as single icons.

I actually have that plugin running because of the headache involved with trying to get my PHP and XHTML to run right after the “Read More” comment you put into posts. I can enable PHP in posts, but then it actually runs posts where I want to show the code, and then it parses the XHTML all weird, so I finally went with this.

WordPress definately isn’t made for coders, which is why I’ll most likely be writing my own system.

Also, thanks for the add, once I finish up the redesign I’ll have a section for links and I’ll be sure to add you to it.

You can see it in action here:
http://www.joshkaufmanblog.com

Just refresh a few times and you’ll see what I am talking about.

Furthermore, I highly suggest that if you haven’t done so already, to check out the google adsense deluxe plugin found here:
http://www.acmetech.com/blog/adsense-deluxe/

@Divspace

I added you to my blogroll. this is a great site. look forward to the redesign. Wouldn’t want you to get banned from Digg:)