Ad Placement to Maximize Revenue
Above the Fold
We are told that placing advertisements "Above the Fold" or were we can see them without scrolling up or down gets more results. The idea here is that a user will see them first, personally I find ads right in the centre of my view very annoying, I prefer advertisements out of my way, if I finish reading an article, I prefer any advertisments at the very bottom of the page so once I finish reading the article then and only then click on something else. Having said that when building a site we want our readers and visitors to see the adverts also therefore we need to get the balance right and that is not easy.
In the middle of the article
Google have also advised that in the middle of an article has a high CTR (click through rate), apparently readers tend to pause especially if the article is long so it's a good opportunity to place an ad - in my opinion this is true but you will need to write a very long article for readers to pause or stop right in the middle of it and perhaps not wish to get to the end.
Along the side of the article
Placing googleads along the side of your article has also proven to be very effective at increasing CTR. I know of sites doing very well with ads along the side of the article. A friend increased his CTR from .1% to 1.5% just from moving his ads and placing them along the side. It's not my favourite but I personally like ads along the side of articles because again it is quite natural to read from left to right and if the googleads are relevant I am very likely to see it and if the advertisment is something I may be interested in then I'm in luck.
At the end of the Article
The reasoning here is once a visitor reads your article, they think to themselves "what do I do next" - this is my favourite because as a reader the googleads are not in my way and I don't have to see it if I don't want to. If the article is a good one in my opinion I look for something else to read and the natural thing to do is to look downwards, one tends to read across then downward (at least according to the English language, other languages that I am not aware of may be different).
As I mentioned my CTR on my other sites are not that impressive, but it sounds like if the article is long and perhaps not that interesting the best place for an advertisement is right in the middle or where the user doesn't need to scroll. On the other hand if your article is so interesting that a reader will definitely read to the end then the best place for it is at the end.
