Have a look at this thread in DP.
It's a loooooooooooooooong read but definitely worth it.

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=17104

Originally Posted by LordKaT

Check out *URL* and play "spot the adsense" game. I'll bet that at first glance you'll never actually see the ads.

I'm just wondering if that goes against the adsense policy or something? and how are your CTR? I would love to know.

Originally Posted by handsome rob

Nicely done

haha word, thats truly awsome

Every website is different. Blending techniques for one website might not work for another. The best way to determine which ad format and color is to split test.

The easiest way to do this is to use Adsense gold. If you don't want to shell out the money for it, even if it pays for it's self right away, then download PHP Ads New at http://www.phpadsnew.com .

PS. Adsense gold package looks and is totally spammy, but the software is a solid online app. You can read more about AG and reviews at http://www.seobook.com/archives/001705.shtml

to increase number of clicks i would strongly recomment using more square ad blocks, 300x336 and 250x250 are best. embed them into your content. if your are writing blog you have a great chanse as mostly people will concentrate on your posts and reading them they will see the ads for sure, and if the links are attractive enough they will click them.
forget the 120x600 block on left or right column under menus, they are dead.
run away from link ads as well, they are said to make little money.
give the visitor what s/he needs. 200x60 ad at the ending of article works good as well, it will be almost about what you had written in article so after reading the article visitor will like to get more on that subject, here u get the click. that`s it for now. i will continue sharing my experience on this forum. keep track, my best.

Originally Posted by Quizak

Every website is different. Blending techniques for one website might not work for another. The best way to determine which ad format and color is to split test.

The easiest way to do this is to use Adsense gold. If you don't want to shell out the money for it, even if it pays for it's self right away, then download PHP Ads New at http://www.phpadsnew.com .

PS. Adsense gold package looks and is totally spammy, but the software is a solid online app. You can read more about AG and reviews at http://www.seobook.com/archives/001705.shtml

can you put in non-adsence ads in it.. like if i want to mix CPA-Adsence etc... can you do that with adsence gold?

Originally Posted by hitzatak

I'm just wondering if that goes against the adsense policy or something? and how are your CTR? I would love to know.

As far as I know, it's not against Adsense policy. I've seen several other websites do this. Since the AdSense ads are not being manipulated in any way, I don't think Google has an issue with this.

For CTR ... well, Geekstreak doesn't get a lot of traffic. My theory on this is that the lower your traffic, the lower your CTR (for very low traffic sites it's a struggle to even hit 1% CTR). Although, since replacing the square AdSense block with that more interactive block, my CTR has gone up (and the level of traffic remains the same).

Of course, that leads me to start forming another theory: the more interactive you make the block surrounding your adsense ads, the more clicks you can get.

that theory sounds very convincing

But yeah, I'm all for the more traffic, the more clicks. Now I have to worry about my monthly bandwidth use of my site. Time to optimize my graphics.

Originally Posted by IsMaR

can you put in non-adsence ads in it.. like if i want to mix CPA-Adsence etc... can you do that with adsence gold?

Adsense gold allows you to see which formats and colors work best, but does not rotate them. PHP Ads New will allow you to rotate with non-adsense ads.

Originally Posted by Quizak

Adsense gold allows you to see which formats and colors work best, but does not rotate them. PHP Ads New will allow you to rotate with non-adsense ads.

then in that case its best bet to mix both of them

Originally Posted by elvirs

run away from link ads as well, they are said to make little money.

It depends. About 30% of my AdSense income comes via the link ad blocks.

I had pages with just a single ad unit.. worked fine, but adding a link ad block only reduced the clicks a little on the other unit and got a whole ton of new clicks to the link units. It also outperformed two regular ad units.

The good thing is users might load multiple ads from the screen when they go through a link unit, so you actually make more in some instances.

I agree with coop, it does take away from the ad blocks, but visitors on my site are clicking on text links more and more.

another thing you could do is start robbing people but instead of taking everything from them, have them click on your ads

I have mine in the middle of text - it seem to help a lot.

Make sure your site provides relevant information with a niche content, and never ask the visitor to click ads.

Well I missed on that one.

seems great... i mean the software

Originally Posted by deswire

seems great... i mean the software

What software are you referring to?

As for the articles instead of the banner arrange right under the title it could IMO work improve to identify a medium parallelogram or square format in the text, adjusted either to left or right.

How do you get people to click?

It's important that you blend you ads in your post so that it doesn't look like ads.