google often recommends ad blending:

[google.com...]

i didn't mean color blending,
i ment blending it in a way that can make people click on ads as a mistake, for example: to put an ad inside a set of links, that looks almost exactly like the adsense ads.
in essence - ads on the middle of the page on a sensitive spot vs ads at the end of an article/post/etc ..

Make your own tests and see what happens.

I have also been told by Google and other people here that changing the name of the channel will NOT increase the CPC on ads, but I have found that NOT to be true. I regularly change the name of the channels if the CPC is too low, and the name change of the channel shocks the algorithm into recalculating the CPC and I always end up with a higher CPC on the ads for that channel.

Google also tells people to opt INTO the CPM system of showing 1000's of ads for a small amount of money. Google makes it difficult to opt OUT of that system. You have to send Google an email and tell them to take you OUT of that system. I have done that and always get higher CPC on my ads. I never get ads for a HALF cent, or a QUARTER of a cent per. click. Such ads are a joke for most small publishers. Small publishers will never reach the volume needed to make any real money with such ads. So it is best to opt OUT of that system. But Google does not make that easy.

[edited by: ArtistMike at 11:52 pm (utc) on Jan. 23, 2009]

You have to send Google an email and tell them to take you OUT of that system. I have done that and always get higher CPC on my ads. I never get ads for a HALF cent, or a QUARTER of a cent per. click.

CPM ads are sold by the impression, not by the click. (CPM means "cost per thousand," with the "thousand" referring to 1,000 impressions.)

Too much blending can be considered bad and might lead to action by GOOG against you.

Don't overdo the blending.

John, you are correct, I mistyped. I have still opted out of the CPM system because it makes no sense for a publisher that does not get 1000's of impressions a day. Small publishers that are still in that system are not using their ad real-estate to the best use. A 1/4 cent ad is taking up the space that could be filled by a 50 cent ad, if they would take themselves out of the CPM system. But many publishers do not know that they can opt out of that system, but they can.

Excessive blending, such as trying to make ads look like navigation bars or editorial content, is foolish because clicks that result from user confusion are unlikely to convert for advertisers. Being a source of low-quality referrals can have several consequences:

1) "Smart pricing" (discounts for advertisers that mean less money for you and for Google);

2) Advertisers blocking your domain because it performs poorly;

3) Getting booted from AdSense for being a danger to advertisers. (Scroll back through the forum, and you'll find any number of "I've been banned" threads that discuss this.)

In a nutshell: When blending, let common sense and a respect for advertisers be your guide.

It's generally against AdSense policy to position ads in a manner that may cause accidental clicks, as well as to style on-page elements in a way that make's it unclear the AdSense ads are ads.

[edited by: martinibuster at 8:42 pm (utc) on Jan. 24, 2009]

thanks

ArtistMike wrote:
I have done that and always get higher CPC on my ads ... But Google does not make that easy.

Well, I would be really interested which contact form did you use to contact AdSense regarding this issue. I contacted them using the suggest feature contact form but am almost sure this was the worse possible. It's extremely annoying to get 1 dam cent per click and I do know that am not "smart priced"

Deleting all channels once in a year also help to reset lots of things. Google do not recommend this as they lost the tracking ability.

[google.com...]

Down at the bottom of the page is a link to contact Google directly. Do that. Tell them you want to opt out of the CPM AdSense ad system.

hey,
i just generated myself i target-based report of my entire time in adsense (3 months),
and i saw zero placement-targeted ads -
there were only contextual targeted ads on all my channels (2 websites) .
so my questions are:
1) should i really opt out of the cpm system at this moment if none targeted my site ?
2)is this good or bad that i have zero placement-targeted ads ?

1) should i really opt out of the cpm system at this moment if none targeted my site ?

No, because CPM targeting adds competition for your inventory, helping to push the price up. I've run CPM ads and they're not cheap. Having been on the advertiser side of the fence gave me an appreciation for the increase in revenue that may result from having CPM turned on.

2)is this good or bad that i have zero placement-targeted ads ?
Neither good nor bad. Doesn't mean anything other than nobody wanted to host their ads on your site. You know your site and it's demographics, so you should be able to figure out why.

CPM targeting adds competition for your inventory, helping to push the price up.
===================================

You would think that is true, but I use to be in the AdSense CPM ad system and got crappy ads that were worth less than 1 cent, I got out of that system and now DON'T get crappy ads that are worth less than 1 cent. The ads now are still sometimes crappy, but they are worth more. Plus my site never had the volume to get any real money from CPM ads.

You got
>>>ads that were worth less than 1 cent

Because

>>>my site never had the volume to get any real money from CPM ads.

That is exactly what I was thinking was your situation, low volume. You're entitled to disagree but my sincere advice, and with great respect for you because you've been here awhile, is that with a lower volume of traffic you'll have to look at the month to month, or even year over year trend, not the day to day or even week to week trend over the course of a month to have enough data to make the most accurate decision about whether it's working or not.

There are many posts on this forum expressing surprise at how the day to day performance averages out and what was once perceived as a downward spiral averages out to something higher than what the granular view (day to day) would have suggested.

I'm a hardcore skeptic that has to see it and measure it before I make up my mind. I opted out of site targeting when it first came out and didn't go back for years because my initial experience was jaw droppingly bad. I am on the record in this forum stating that CPM site targeting sucked. I am on the record in this forum as stating I opted out because it was measurably bad. When anyone posted asking how to opt out I am on the record here explaining how to opt out.

But I gave it another chance because I thought maybe enough time has gone by and Google has worked out the initial kinks. My experience after having opted back in is that Google has fixed whatever shortcomings existed in the beginning. This was confirmed by my experience as an advertiser where I had to bid relatively high CPM to get decent placement on the sites I wanted to target. It was either bid high or go low and scrape up remnant traffic after midnight and before sunrise, when anyone with a credit card is sound asleep.

FWIW, my experience is almost exactly the same as martinibuster's (I opted out, and then opted back in)

As far as the original premise of this item - I find I get a TON better results if my ads are not too blended with my site. I use a different (complementary) color, or place them in a box; if they look exactly like the site, people just plain seem to ignore them.