My experience tells me that the best colors to use for your AdSense creatives are the same colors as your website.

More precisely, blend the AdSense creative into the background colors. Take a look at this website, and notice the AdSense 160x600 skyscraper ad in the second column. The background and border blends into the column.

There is another large following of AdSense publishers that says using background and border colors that are opposite of your website works best. To that, I can only say that each website is different. I'm just giving you my experience, which says to blend the colors into the background.

A few years ago, there was a concensus that blending the colors into the background attracted higher click through rates because visitors didn't realize that the AdSense creative were ads. They thought they were navigational links, and is why they received higher click through rates.

However, the concensus today is that this isn't actually the case. Blending the colors into the background seems to work well because it looks cleaner. That is, it doesn't give the website a cluttered look. Perhaps this allows visitors to see the ad text more easily.

I tend to give the Title colors on AdSense a brighter color than with the links on the rest of my website. Take a look at the AdSense skyscraper on this page, and notice that the links are a bright blue, whereas the links on other parts of this website are a darker blue. I want to give the AdSense creative just a little bit more shine without making the entire creative itself look annoying.

Labels: AdSense Colors