Im always talking about the different strategies that publishers can use to get more people to click their ads. And Im always saying that theres one bottom line to all of those strategies: blending the ads into the page so that they look like part of the content... and not something served by some outside advertiser that the reader doesnt give two hoots about.

There are lots of different ways to do that. You can match the colors of the ad to the colors on your site. You can match the fonts used in the ad to the fonts on the site. You can take out the borders so that its less clear where the content ends and the ad begins. And you can put the ads where people are going to be looking anyway. Thats just to name a few.

All of those things help. But none of them will help if the users dont trust the content in the first place.

Everything we do to boost our income can really be summed up as saying to the user: Click here. Youll love it. Trust me. We cant say that straight out so we have to make sure that when a user sees a link on our websites, they understand automatically that that link comes recommended.

That understanding can only come with trust.

I think there are two sides to building that trust.

The first is to always give the reader exactly the sort of content hes looking for. When a user enters a keyword in a search engine, spots your site on the results page and clicks, you have to give him content related to the keyword. And not just any old content -- good content. Ive lost count of the number of times Ive clicked on a good-looking link on Google only to find a page full of keywords and ads. You can bet I didnt click the ads to get out of there.

The other side to building trust though is to make sure that the links on the page are good too. Users who come to the site should feel that when you offer a link, its going to take them somewhere interesting. A user who clicks a link on your page and regrets it is going to think twice before he does it again -- and that includes clicking the links in the ads.

Its one thing to blend ads into the page but if that page doesnt have good content and reliable links then what are you blending them into?