How people read websites and where to place an ad block

Webmaster’s revenue directly depends on the places where ad blocks will be placed on the website. The question is “where is the most profitable space to place ad blocks, and not to lose any of potential income?". You don't have to go far to find the answer: trust your intuition, borrow someone else's experience, or rely on eye-tracking research that shows the eyes movements of website users.

In this article, we will explain to you how Internet users “read” websites and where webmasters most often place ad blocks. Everything including pictures and specific examples – read and apply in practice.

In total, there are 7 common and relevant site reading patterns:

F-pattern. Focus on the top and left parts of the page.




Layer cake. The user focuses on titles and subheadings, less often on the ”body" of the content.



Spotted pattern. Focus on specific words/blocks scattered throughout the site's pages. This pattern is typical for users who came to the site in search of certain information.




Commitment pattern. Users are "committed” to your content and read it completely, from beginning to end.





Exhaustive review. The effect of this pattern can be described as " I Can't believe this isn't here.” This pattern is usually observed when the user interface or page content violates the user's expectations. In the example below, the subject repeatedly shifted their gaze to the upper-left corner in the hope of finding the site's logo (in most cases, this is where the logos are located):



Zigzag. The user's gaze moves in a zigzag pattern from one text block to another.




Love at first sight. It is more concerned with search results when the user does not pay attention to anything other than the first link. This usually happens when this link provides answers to all the user's questions. The example below shows the request "documents for crossing the US-Canada border". All the necessary information is contained in the first link — you don't need to scroll further.




Where webmasters most often place ad blocks on the site

The simplest answer to the question "Where to place an ad block on a site" can be the above-described patterns – you look at the examples from above and, based on the movement of people's eyes, you put ad blocks in the places where people's attention lingers the longest. An option for those who don't want to bother — that's fine.

However, we are not here for simple, superficial solutions. In this article, we will draw on our internal insights and the results of many years of tests.

As shown above, the placement of ad blocks directly depends on the structure and theme of the site (blog, forum, tube, entertainment, adult site, etc.)

For example, adult tube sites. Most often, webmasters place native ad blocks under the video, at the bottom of the page. As numerous tests show, this is one of the most effective places.



Blocks with banner ads are placed under the player (often a banner from the video sponsor) and in the sidebar to the right (2-3 banners):



With On-Site Push, everything is standard, in the lower right part of the screen:


Webmasters often prefer to place ad blocks between content:



Standard preroll:



Classic placement on mainstream sites looks like this – a fixed banner at the bottom of the page:



In the sidebar on the right:





As for internal pages, it is most effective to place native ads after the main content. The user finishes reading the article, sees the clickbait title/image, and clicks.



What should I keep in mind when placing ad blocks?

People scan, not read. You will rarely see a person who will read the content on a page from the beginning to the end. Even when trying to read all the information on a page, users never "read" it linearly — basically, they "jump" from one element to another, skip certain blocks of content, and return to the missing content.

Surface scanning is the main way to process information on the Internet. How much time the user is willing to spend on scanning depends on several factors:

• Motivation level. How important the information is to the user.
• Task type. Whether the user is looking for a specific fact, interesting information, or researching a topic.
• Personal characteristic. Whether the user prefers to scan information or get to the bottom of it; focuses on specific details or lacks superficial information.

Webmasters must accept the fact that people rarely read the entire content. They need information that best suits their current needs. To create content that supports “scanning”, consider the following:

• Clear and attractive headings and subheadings. The breakdown of content into meaningful components.
• The essence of the text – at the very beginning. This way the user understands what is waiting for them next.
• Text layout. Bulleted lists, bold.
• Simple and understandable language.

Result

People's habits have remained unchanged for several decades. They still don't want to spend a lot of time and effort searching for interesting content and prefer to “scan” sites rather than read them in full. Webmasters should not invent a Bicycle-it is much more reasonable to use what works and try to anticipate the users' wishes: what information they are most interested in at a given time.


Use the examples described above, correctly place ad blocks together with Kadam and experience the top quality of traffic that you will want to tell your grandchildren about!