YNOT EUROPE – In previous columns, we have seen how to place ads based on the type of portal and the visitor behavior, and and we also discussed AdSense, the popular Google service, and an alternative identified in Heyos.

Today we talk about another way to put advertising on your site without making things uncomfortable for the user.

It’s a fact that you should not put too many banners on your web pages for three basic reasons:

• Many services (AdSense, for example) do not let you put more than a certain number of ads.

• Too many ads increases page load time.

• Too many ads on the same page could have the counterproductive effect of lowering your search-engine ranking.

Imagine your website as a piece of standard glossy paper. No doubt you appreciate a magazine with advertisements in the right places rather than so many you can’t distinguish the information you want to read.

In this light, it is good to use alternative forms of advertising in addition to traditional banner ads, and that’s where PubStop by ISM comes into play.

This service is useful because it will insert a banner among the images on your site in place where it is likely to receive clicks.

Using the service is very simple and is based on three basic steps:

• Create a service account, indicating the URL of your site and all its features.Then wait for an email from the portal letting you know whether you have been accepted into the circuit.

• Paste a snippet of JavaScript into your page(s). The service supports many commonly used services such as WordPress and Blogger, but you can enter the code in almost any page.

• Wait less than 24 hours for the advertisements to begin showing up.

Once you have earned at least $25, you can request payment on your PayPal account.
As you can see, registration for and use of the service is easy. The service will include images on your website in a small transparent bar at the bottom, and users move their mouse to open an ad contained within the perimeter of the image within which it is associated.

In this way you can raise the level of advertising that will be exposed to your users without increasing the perception of “ad heaviness.”

PubStop by ISM is limited by a lack of customizability. It is not possible to define the colors used for the ads in order to make them more integrated with the layout of the site.

The service is recommended for those who have structured their portal for dynamic updates. More traditional forms of advertising are better for pages with content that rarely changes.

One last important consideration: The service may not be used on sites that contain explicit material, but for educational and mainstream sites, it’s a viable option.

This article was written for YNOT Europe by Eng. Antonio Lodesani. For more information, visit ingoccupati.blogspot.com.