Importance of Ads Positioning on a Website

Marketing is key to every business and advertisements are one powerful way to go about marketing a business. Advertisements on websites are trending for certain reasons: people visit tons of websites daily looking for helpful information. Businesses take advantage of the massive traffic to sites to advertise and put their names on the map.

If you are a website owner looking to sell ads positions on your website or a business owner looking to purchase ads spaces on sites, you’ll find this article useful.

Why is Ads Positioning Important?

It’s one thing to have compelling ads with artistically created graphics and carefully chosen words to win anybody over; it’s another thing to position them in the right places.

When you realize that visitors to a website get irritated by ads, especially when the ads positioning negatively affects user experience, you’ll begin prioritize ads positioning highly.

Since you intend winning over the visitors and converting them into sales in the long run, it is essential that you find a way to present ads without putting it in their faces. Visitors, on the other hand, understand that the site owners have to make money and won’t be pissed provided the ads are well positioned.

It’s a win-win for everybody when things are done rightly.

Benefits of Proper Ads Positioning

At this point, it’s clear that poorly positioning ads will negatively impact the visitors, site owners and the businesses that own the ads on the site.

So what are the benefits of properly positioning ads on a website?

Here are some of them:

• Improved user experience for the visitors
• Revenue generation through Pay Per Click (PPC) ads
• Increased level of trust in the website
• Efficient promotion of products and services
• Better targeting of desired customers

Effective Ads Positions

Ads definitely can’t be thrown anywhere on a website; so in this section, you’ll get to learn about the most effective positions for placing ads and the benefits that come with these positions.

The positions to be discussed are:

• Above the Fold
• Sidebar
• Page Content
• Bottom of the Page

Above the Fold

Above the fold is considered to be the upper part of web pages; this term for describing web pages was gotten from newspapers and magazines. Newspaper editors usually considered “above the fold” to be more enticing to people and made them buy the paper; this line of thought hasn’t changed much when compared with web pages today.

Benefits

Placing ads above the fold has a lot of benefits; some of them are that it:

• has 73% visibility
• gets the most attention from visitors
• has high revenue returns

Placing ads at an “above the fold” position can however cause the page content to be pushed down the page or interfere with the page content.

Sidebar

The sidebar is the part of the web page that flanks the page content to the right or the left. Ads are usually placed on the sidebar because it rarely gets to interfere with the page content.

Benefits

Placing ads at the side bar has a lot of benefits. Some of them are that it:

• does not negatively impact user experience
• appears when scrolling from top to bottom and can be seen for a longer period

Placing ads on the right sidebar may yield better results than placing them on the left sidebar; this is because visitors are naturally more inclined to look towards the right than towards the left.

Page Content

The page content field is usually positioned at the center of the web page, and it’s where the page content lies. Ads can be placed here in a subtle manner in between article breaks or section changes.

Benefits

Placing ads in between the page content has a lot of benefits; some of them are that it:

• will almost always seen as it is embedded in the page content
• can be placed multiple times depending on content length

You should be careful when placing ads in between the page content; it shouldn’t disrupt the content flow, else it could backfire.

Bottom of the Page

After going through the content of the web page, you’d arrive at its bottom. Placing ads at the bottom of the web page doesn’t necessarily mean putting them at the footer; it can be immediately after the page content.

Benefits

Placing ads at the bottom of the page has a lot of benefits; some of them are that it:

• grabs the attention of readers more if page content is satisfying
• offers quick visibility to readers who skim through web pages

Keeping ads at the bottom of the page however has less conversion rates than other parts of the web page. These days, it is rare to find visitors who get to the end of the web page as most zoom off as soon as they find what they need.

Bonus: Floating Ads and Popups

You are getting floating ads and popups as a bonus point in this section for one reason: they do not have a particular position. Floating ads are always there with the visitor regardless of the current location on the web page. Popups on the other hand jump at the users when they are about to take certain actions such as leaving the page.

Benefits

Implementing floating ads and popups have a lot of benefits; some of them are that they:

• are almost impossible to ignore
• have a high tendency to convert a visitor

Floating ads and popups can very easily backfire; they force the user to act on their message and can lead to a frustrating experience for the users.

Dos and Don’ts of Ads Positioning

Now that you know the popular positions on web pages where ads are placed and the effects they have, you may get a better result by making use of the dos and don’ts to be discussed in this section.

Dos

Here are some tips that can yield amazing results when placing ads on web pages:

• Place ads above the fold if you want viewers to see them without scrolling down.
• Place ads at the sidebar if you want viewers to see them while scrolling.
• Use ads that are related to the contents of a web page; for example, use sports ads on a sports web page.
• Find out the locations of higher engagement on web pages and place ads in those areas.
• Experiment with different locations until you find the best one.

Don’ts

Here are some things you should avoid doing so as not to lose all of the hard work and piss off the visitors:

• Avoid displaying an excessive amount of ads on the web page like a plague.
• Stay away from fullscreen floating ads that prevent visitors from viewing the main page content.
• Do not link to ads that keep opening multiple tabs on the user’s browser.
• Media ads such as video and audio shouldn’t be set to play automatically.
• Avoid placing too many ads between page content as it can distract the visitor.

Conclusion

One way to get a business out there is by using advertisements on websites; however, this is dicey and can have a negative effect based on the ads positioning.

In this article, you’ve learned about the intricacies of ads placement and the impacts you should expect when placing them at different parts of the website.

It’s not also about only the users here; search engines also note the positioning of ads on websites, and they can affect the ranking in the long run.

Therefore, you should place ads correctly to get the maximum benefit.