I never optimize my articles for Adsense. Instead, I optimize my articles for readers. If my readers respond to certain types of content, I tend to follow that trend or suggestion.

Adding Adsense to those articles is simply a second thought.

When I do add Adsense to those articles, I place a 468x60 blended banner at the top and sometimes at the bottom. "Blended" meaning, a white background with the same text color as my articles' text color.

adamnichols45, You ask a lot of questions on these forums that is specific to your website you need to forget with the questions and dive right into it and test, test all your questions test all the colours, the best spots and sizes and figure out what works for you.

You know this and people tell you this all the time.

Go test, only you can find the answer.

I do just generally like to know what others are doing and have stuck with one small sky on the right hand side.

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Its nice to know what others are doing :)

I never optimize my articles for Adsense. Instead, I optimize my articles for readers.

Let me counter that optimizing article text for AdSense can also optimize for search engines, which in turn may optimize for readers as well. The types of ads shown on your site give you a clue of how Google is interpreting your article for AdSense. If you tweak the article to deliver the right advertising you also improve the odds of getting the right READERS. Just remember, if you see the wrong types of ads, you aren't feeding the spiders the proper food to index your site for the readers you desire as AdSense is a windows into the Googlebot soul as they both do similar things.

The major upside is you'll rank for the right words and the ads will be spot on when they get there.

Other than that, color schemes and such can be tested with good old A/B testing. Set up a couple of alternating schemes, use a different channel per scheme, and see which one gets the highest CTR.