Deliberate Mismatching

When it comes to choosing colors, I recommend 3-way matching and using blue for the links. But there is another strategy that you can use.

You can deliberately mismatch your ad colors and styles, provided you keep it to the top of your page.

This distinction generates two powerful 'zones' and therefore two types of experience for the visitor.

The first zone is always at the top of the first page, above the main site banner. The titles and text colors match colors found in the banner graphic heading. (Important — the URL links are hidden, so only certain text ads wiallow you to do this.)

The end result is that these ads, placed above the banner graphic look like key control points for your site and are just more likely to be clicked. The visitor feels that they are visiting another major area of that site.

an ad zone at the top and a free article beneath. Implementing this design increased their revenues FIVE-FOLD!