He found that removing borders increased his click-thru rates. I agree, and this is especially true if the ad units are positioned as part of the content.

using no borders should result in increased click-thru because visitors are less likely to think the links are advertisements. Off-line publications tend to keep editorial and advertising separate. The advertising is formatted in a bold, obvious way, often using thick borders and boxes. As a result, people often ignore these areas online. People who read publications aren’t looking for links - web visitors are.

I personally find borderless ads to be more effective and less intrusive to my readers as you can see in all my blogs.

I’ve also started experimenting with borderless ads in some of my forums. The ads are positioned as part of the thread, i.e. after the first post. See how it doesn’t look like some banner you have seen many times?

I believe this will increase the click-thru rates even more.

However, in certain situations, I find that using ads with borders works better, such as when placing them at the bottom of a forum page. This makes the ads stand out and draw readers attention even when they are placed outside the content. The trick is to make those ads look as part of the page elements, and not as advertisements.

Borders or no borders, the most important strategy that you should use is to keep testing with different ad formats to find the most effective one that is suited specifically to your audience.
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