Google AdSense

Matching Colors for Google AdSense

We recently signed up for a Google AdSense account (make sure you read the terms of service carefully so you don’t get banned). Deciding on the number, type, and placement of ads is more difficult than I thought. One thing I have figured out how to do is easily change the color scheme.

Mac OS X includes two utilities, Grab and DigitalColor Meter, for this. First, use Grab to take a snapshot of the screen (or browser window) from the Capture -> Screen menu item so you can sample the link color properly (moving the mouse over a link may change the color). Second, use DigitalColor Meter to determine the six digit hexadecimal color codes by moving the mouse over the part of the image you want to sample. Matching the title, background, link, etc colors in the ads was a snap doing this.

The open source program, Gimp, offers similar functionality but runs on Windows, Linux, and Unix as well as the Mac. First, go to the File -> Acquire -> Grab -> Screen menu item to take a snapshot. Second, go to the Tools -> Color Picker menu item, choose RGB in the Color Picker window to get the hexadecimal values, and select the part of the image you want to sample using the left mouse button. Piece of cake. If only building traffic were this easy 🙂

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