3.3 Text is Design too!

That's right: the text size, font, color and the color of your ads must matchthe other text elements. If the text color of the ads is the same as the text inthe body of your page, it’ll help the ads blend into the site and make thereader feel that you’ve endorsed them.

And if the size of the font in the ads is the as the size of the main body of thecontent, it will have the same effect: they’ll look like part of your site and notsomething brought in by Google.

That’s the sort of blending that translates into clicks.

You can see this on my blog. I’m running a test where I’ve changed the titlecolor of the ads to match the color of the titles on the text. I’ve also matchedthe text color of the ads to the color of the site text and the background ofthe ads to the background of the page. (I could also change the size of thefont and see what that does to my CTR.)

This 3-way matching (titles, text and background) can generate excellentclick-through rates.

Too many text styles add clutter and can confuse your visitors. Instead, tryevery legitimate way to make the ads look like a part of your web content.

In other words use the colors to make sure that your ads don't look like ads!