Image Ad Colours Matching Site Colours

Forum Moderators: martinibuster

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Image Ad Colours Matching Site Colours

-is this happening?

IanTurner

7:26 pm on Nov 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

I've noticed something odd over the last few weeks, the image ads provided by adsense seem to be matching the theme colours of the site.

Thus if you have a site with pink as a theme, you are more likely to get pink ads. If your site is blue then ads are also more likely to be blue.

Most of the time the ads are reasonably on topic, but there seems to be more topic variation than there used to be. Sometimes I get something that is right off the wall - ad is a perfect colour match for one of the main images on the page but the topic is way off what I normally get.

netmeg

8:00 pm on Nov 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

Well... they definitely have the technology to do that if they wanted to, but I haven't seen it myself.

SevenCubed

8:11 pm on Nov 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

It's not that THEY have the technology. There are a few websites out there in the wild that permit inputting a webpage URL and it will immediately return the average colour of the collective of colours contained within the page. THEY, once again, probably just adopted the technology that someone else created.

But as for applying it in the manner that IanTurner is indicating is kinda nifty.

IanTurner

8:53 pm on Nov 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

I've noticed it most on white sites with few images.

Also discount ads that are fairly obviously remarketing, as these seem to completely override the rest of the adsense display algo.

lucy24

10:42 pm on Nov 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that would get you banned if it was you doing it instead of them?

netmeg

11:02 pm on Nov 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

I don't think so.

IanTurner

10:19 am on Nov 6, 2013 (gmt 0)

No Lucy, at one time it was recommended that you match your adsense ad colors (for text ads) with the colours for your site.

lucy24

12:05 pm on Nov 6, 2013 (gmt 0)

Heh. It's a fine line, isn't it, between matching the look of the site (good) and disguising the ad as page content (bad) :)

Google definitely knows how to identify colors. I think we all played with it when the image-matching feature was added to Image Search.

martinibuster

3:37 pm on Nov 16, 2013 (gmt 0)

disguising the ad as page content

For a mind experiment, try considering AdSense ads as if they are a form of content called, Commercial Content. As part of this experiment, consider what you normally call content, let's call it Informational Content. Now you have two forms of content blocks to arrange on a web page: Informational Content and Commercial Content.

Ok, continuing this thought experiment, thinking in terms of content blocks irregardless of the kind of content, just as content blocks, what is the best way to arrange these content blocks?