If you want the biggest revenue impact for the smallest effort, we recommend optimising your colour palettes. Choosing the right palettes can mean the difference between ads your user will notice and click on and ads he/she will skip right over.

We have outlined a few strategies below that are designed to decrease ad blindness, the tendency for users to ignore anything that is separate from the main content of your site. By making these changes, you will be making your ads more visible to users. The goal is not to confuse the user into thinking ads are content, but to get the user to see and read the ads so he/she can click on those that interest him/her.

The colour strategy that you should use on your site varies depending on the ad placement and the colour of the background where the ads are placed. Review the table below for a quick reference about which strategies we suggest will work well on your site.

Let us briefly define the three techniques you can use to design colour palettes that will be successful for your site:

• To blend, make the background and borders of your ads the same colour as the background of your page where the ad is placed. If your site has a white background and you do not want to spend a lot of time choosing ad colours, we recommend using our pre-designed Open Air palette.
• To complement, use colours that already exist on your site, but do not match the background and borders exactly where the ads are placed.
• To contrast, choose colours that stand out against the background of your site. Contrasting is recommended only for sites with dark background, so we suggest using a palette with white background, white borders and blue titles.

Blend	Complement	Contrast

For most colour techniques, we recommend using colours for your ad text and links that already exist on your site. For example, if the links on your site are all green and your text is black, use green links and black text in your ads as well. Since most users are accustomed to seeing blue links, you might also try using blue.

In general, use common sense when choosing your colour palettes. If your site's main colours are pastels, do not design ads that are all primary colours. Users will not click on ads that are visually offensive.

Even if your ads are designed perfectly, the techniques above might not work for a couple of reasons:

• Does your site have mainly repeat visitors?
  If your visitors come back day after day, they will likely become blinded to the position of the ads over time, regardless of the ad colours. Try rotating colours or occasionally switching the location of your ads on the page.
• Does your site have a lot of ads and busy content?
  If your site is filled with ads or packed with loads of competing content, chances are that you will need to use more visually arresting colours to make your ads catch a user's eye. If the techniques above are not getting results for you, try using more prominent palettes

Tip for making your ads visible: open your page and give it a quick glance, putting yourself in the mindset of a regular user. Do the ads draw your attention, without being garish? Would you be likely to notice and read them or do your eyes glide right past them? Try to find a balance between ads that overwhelm your content and ads that your users will not even see. Imagining that you are a user, look at the examples below. Would you notice the ads in these implementations?

Tip for testing colour palettes: add variety and freshness to your ads by rotating between several colour palettes. All you need to do is choose the Use multiple palettes option when generating your ad code during the Choose Ad Format and Colours step in the ad code setup. Then, hold down the Control or Command key and select up to four colour palettes.