Is too much blending bad for business?

[StarBuG]

Hello

after spending a lot of thoughts about smart pricing which is most likely
grained down to the Ad Unit Level on AdSense I came to the following conclusions:

• The better Users convert for the Advertisers the more money you will make over time.
• Users convert better if they click on an Ad Unit because they are interested in what is advertised.
• Blending is important to make the Ads complement your content and not make them intrusive.
• Too much blending however could make users see Ads as your content and make them feel "tricked" when they realize that they just clicked on an Ad. They will more likely not convert for the Advertiser.

Especially the last point is important.
I run several forums where my main audience is not very tech savvy and therefor don't realize the difference between Ads and Content even though Google places "Google-Advertising" below its Ad Units.

I just realized that after my brother visited my forum and said
"OH you have 8 doctors currently online?" and I said "no, that is an AD".

So I thought about better marking Ad Units more clearly as Advertisement
and do that consistently over my website. I tried to find the right balance
between marking the Ads as Advertisement but don't make it so obvious
that users get repelled from it. This way the conversion rate should go up
and Smart Pricing should work in my favor.

This is what I did ("ANZEIGE" is Germa for "Advertising")
(Sorry but I can't post the images directly)

adsenseexperts.com/images/screenshots/adsense_ad_welcome.png

and for Ads included into the content:

adsenseexperts.com/images/screenshots/adsense_ad_1p.png


What are your thoughts about this matter?
Are you marking your Ads as advertisement?

StarBuG

[hurn]

it depend on the site structure. For wordpress blogs i use whydowork plugin. I agree with you most of the visitors don't know about advertisiing.

[FuturePrinceofPrint]

How can too much blending be a bad thing?

[StarBuG]

Because if you trick visitors to click Ads then they will most likely not convert for the advertiser and that is what counts at the end. This is where smart pricing comes into play to level the field.

Google itself called some blending techniques as unacceptable:
google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=136882

Marking your Ads clearly (like all big publishers like News papers do) is not only improving the trustworthiness of your site for the visitor it also should work in your favor in regards to smart pricing.