Bearfruit

OK, the previous blog post was on site credibility, lets continue on that theme for another post. This may seem off-key but follow with me. If you see a woman join a group of attractive women you will formulate an opinion of her. If you see a man join a group of other men who look like they are of ill repute you will probably hold him in a similar low regard.

We have a tendency to make assumptions based on association. I’m no psychologist but I’ve seen enough sitcoms to know that it’s true. The saying is that birds of a feather flock together, right? But how does this relate to your website and what does it have to do with ads? I’m glad you asked.

First, let me clarify that there are several kinds of ads. Anyone in the world can get Google Ads. Showing them on your website is kind of like hanging out with a woman who is wearing a sign that says, “you too can date me for only $20.” Again, I apologize profusely for the off-key illustrations, I can’t think of a better way to describe it though. The point is that you’re not going to boost your credibility by showing these kind of ads. If all you want is money then go for it, I know numerous people who make good income from Google. We’re not talking about income though, we’re talking about credibility. Same goes for your run of the mill random, untargeted banner ad service which is pretty much extinct now days.

Another kind of ad is contextual affiliate ads. For example, Get Rich Slowly uses these. They recommend products that they actually like and they get affiliate commission for them. These, in my opinion, are my favourite kind of ad. However they too are not going to boost your credibility in large part because they don’t look like an ad.

That last kind of major ad I want to talk about is, for lack of a better description, “elite ads.” These are ads that are high quality attractive ads and feature high end services. They typically avoid animations and other annoyances and often look hand picked to fit the site and the site’s content and the site’s typical visitors. They probably don’t advertise in-house products. And most importantly, they’re not going to be run-of-the-mill ads that you see just anywhere.

I’m going to postulate that well placed, well designed and well targeted ads can possibly boost your site’s credibility. Just like you might associate a person’s reputation or attractiveness with the company they keep you might also associate a site’s credibility by whose ads they show. Here is an example:

(I may replace the above image after some more searching, for now a web design site is shown)

Thoughts? Examples to either support or disprove this?