It all depends on the quality and structure of your content. If you have content that keeps the visitor reading, then this will work. I think another factor is recurring visitors; newspaper site shave many recurring visitors who instantly jump to the content, skipping any ads they come across. Embedding the ads deeper into the content is probably beneficial,s ince all readers will now encounter them..

Probably because they've realized other ad sources are more profitable. Are there other affiliate type ads where Adsense USED to be?

That's what I thought at first but on most there's just a banner in the header and everything else is below the fold.

I've never had much luck below the fold, even on long pages. But I'm not a large publisher by any means.

Display advertisers (who typically pay by the impression) prefer to have their ads above the fold, and their contracts with media often require such placement.

Publishers who earn the bulk of their revenue from display ads are likely to view AdSense ads as filler ads--especially in the newspaper business, where contextual ads don't perform well on pages about suicide bombers, murders, local zoning disputes, etc. (In the online edition of one major newspaper that I read regularly, the AdSense ads are placed even lower on the page than text links for mesothelioma attorneys are, probably because so few readers are likely to click on them.)

I've been fiddling recently with ad size and placement. For me below the fold earns roughly 60% of above the fold. That was surprising for me.

I don't know whether people read a ad-free looking page for a little longer and start trusting it as they go down, or whether my experiment is bad. Most likely both.

In the online edition of one major newspaper that I read regularly, the AdSense ads are placed even lower on the page than text links for mesothelioma attorneys are, probably because so few readers are likely to click on them.

Isn't that a self-fulfilling prophecy? Won't putting them there guarantee less readers will click on them?

Below the fold, at the end of the content, works fine for me on some pages, and not on others.

In the middle of the content works fine on some pages, and not on others.

Above the fold works fine on some pages, and not on others.

You have to try this stuff on your own pages to see what works best for you.

And one placement may not work the same on all your pages.

The nature and purpose of the content on the page can make a big difference.

I believe banner blindness has transitioned to other areas on the page and visitors are now becoming blind to ads in certain "zones".

Maybe they've done some serious testing in this area and have realized that moving the ads to areas that may not be considered "blind" increased CTR and such.

I'm seeing more implementations of well blended units below the fold within main content. Those are the ones I would think offer the best CTR. Its a great way to close an article with a relevant ad unit for the user to click on. Shame on me. ;)

Isn't that a self-fulfilling prophecy? Won't putting them there guarantee less readers will click on them?

Quite possibly, but AdSense ads are a secondary or tertiary source of ad revenue on many media sites. Display ads are more important, and if the publisher wants premium CPMs, those ads had better be visible.

"...contextual ads don't perform well on pages about suicide bombers, murders, local zoning disputes, etc"

I don't think it's because of this as it's the same in their travel and lifestyle sections where contextual ads should perform well.

The ads are blended nicely though and look more like further reading than google ads. Anyway I suppose it's worth trying it out on a few pages and seeing what happens :)

I don't think it's because of this as it's the same in their travel and lifestyle sections where contextual ads should perform well.

Don't forget, newspapers usually have display ads in those sections, too. Display advertisers want "above the fold" placement because they're paying for impressions, not only when somebody clicks.

Whenever I read an online newspaper article, I look for AdSense or other PPC contextual ads to see how well they are targeted. More often than not, it's not very good.

Maybe they perform so poorly on newspaper pages they have been relegated to the bottom? With newspapers across the country experiencing revenue problems, if they could get good targeted ads that perform well, I'm sure they would get the best placement possible.

FarmBoy

Not directly related to the OP's question but some general comments.

Instead of griping about falling revenues (as I was doing a couple of months ago) I have been experimenting recently with different ad layouts (above and below the fold), different ad formats, colours, borders, etc.

My conclusion (based on relatively low page impressions compared to many advertisers here) is that what I do doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference. Some visitors click and some don't. It's as simple as that.

It doesn't seem to matter where the ads are, what size they are, whether they blend or whether they stand out from the page content, clickers click and those who don't click on ads don't click.

Most click activity comes in little flurries and when this happens I assume it is because a 'clicker' arrived. They click on an ad, return to my site, and then click on another ad.

I have a 468x60 banner displaying text ads only at the bottom of most pages and this seems to work quite well. I think that when a visitor decides to leave the site they scroll down quickly to the bottom of the page they are on to make sure they haven't missed anything.

When they do this they will sometimes see an ad that catches their eye and click on it. They were about to leave anyway so this is just another way of leaving.

These are just some observations related to my own sites.

My conclusion (based on relatively low page impressions compared to many advertisers here) is that what I do doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference. Some visitors click and some don't. It's as simple as that.

Having a few sites with the same layouts, same ad positions, but different themes, I can confirm that the most important factor for CTR seems to be the topic of the web site.

Signor-John may have hit on half the simple answer. "Display Advertisers want those spots"... but at the moment NONE are willing to pay the going rate with the economy, end of budget year and all, so they are pretty much empty, leaving only the GAds. They are too lazy to (and probably have never had to before) change the code to display GAds there when others are not available.