The YPN blog has posted a few ad placement tips based upon eye tracking studies that find that website users view pages in the following pattern:
They recommend a leaderboard ad above the fold between content and the top navigation bar.
Secondly they suggest using vertical skyscrapers to the right of content.
Thirdly they suggest rectangle ads in content.
I find this interesting strategy as it’s a little different from AdSense’s suggested ad placement which suggests the following ‘hot zones’.
The Yahoo advice of ads between content and the top navigational bar fits reasonably well with the AdSense heat map but the skyscraper to the right of content is a point of difference in the advice between the two contextual advertisers advice.
Both suggest ad inside content do well.
Ultimately the last advice they give is probably the main thing to listen to:
Each site is different, and each publisher has different goals,” Margaret notes. “Publishers should experiment with different placement, layouts, Reporting Categories and Ad Targeting combinations to achieve the best outcome.
About Darren Rowse
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from blogs like 
That’s very interesting. I wonder if it’s just based on how people scan a page, or if they’re also looking at things like overall click through performance.
Yeah, I have no idea how people scan a page but, based on my experience, their advice is dead wrong when it comes to CTR. By far the best slot for me is a skyscraper high in the left sidebar. Right sidebar is a (distant) second, followed closely by center and high on the page. I use the same layout on two pages in different niches, and it works great for both (the other one is raising4boys.com.
I tell you what… the way YPN has it laid out that’s how I personally look at a page. If you keep it up above the fold I would say you can’t really lose.
It surprised me too but then I started making a conscious effort to pay attention to my eye “flow” and I think YPN might be right on this…
I guess the biggest difference is if you are a first-time visitor to a site or a regular reader. First-time visitors have to scan everything for navigation…
Oh,. Why I hardly get any clicks? Can anyone please give me tips?
Everyone seem enjoying thier click here..
I also have good traffic…but not more than 40 clicks a day.
Anyone so kind give me tips?
I would be so delighted even little clue..Can check my site..
herfactor.com
:(
One of my blog(s) banner sponsors is positioned above the ‘fold’ and is producing excellent results!
I haven’t seen YPN’s ad placement advice until I checked out this blog entry you wrote. It’s nice for those of us who are relatively new to learning about ad placements read blog entries like this.
I have been thinking of putting ads in the content and I guess this blog entry you wrote confirms what I have been planning to experiment on.
I would like to put adsesne in my wordpress blogs, but wordpress is not easy to manage…
Who knows how to put adsense ads in the content for bogger.com?
And also If you know how to do it with wordpress?
thanks for help.
When I first saw that AdSense recommended the upper left before it did the upper right, I was a little taken aback.
The reason for that was when I worked at a newspaper, any big-time advertisement or story was shifted to the right or left or a page, depending on where the page number was; it’s where a person’s eyes tend to travel first, apparently.
With that sort of mentality, I would completely believe the upper right to be the better area for ad placement online, not because that’s where people purposely look, but it’s where people naturally look to use something we all take for granted: the scrollbar.