How far away should Adsense Ads be from content?

Google doesn't want web-surfers to accidentally click on their ads. They recommend 150 pixels between flash game content and adsense icons.

While you may think that accidental clicks are good source of revenue... The truth is that advertisers don't like them, and Google will reimburse their adwords buyer for false click-throughs---that means they may also adjust your monthly earnings down to remove such fraudulent or accidental taps of the mouse button.

Here's a sample of Google's thoughts on the situation:

One type of site we wanted to talk about are Flash-based game sites. Playing games on these sites, you'll notice that ads are often placed very close to the Flash player where the game is played. Publishers may reason that they're providing maximum value to advertisers by placing their ads very close to the area where their users are focused. However, many of these Flash games are played with a mouse, and the action in the games can lead users to do a lot of rapid cursor movements and clicking. We've seen many cases where ads were placed too closely to where the action was taking place, generating many accidental clicks.

Since each game and site are unique, we can't advise publishers on an exact distance between ads and games, but we do recommend a minimum distance of 150 pixels between the Flash player and ads.

Adsense Fonts---Bigger is Better?

Adsense recently has allowed publishers to increase the size of the font for the adsense ads appearing on their content.

Currently (prior to June-2009) the default font size is "small" (see below)... In the future Google will be figuring out which font size is optimal overall for adsense publishers---but you can select a bigger font size right now.

If you go into your Adsense account, "My Account Tab", you can select the default size for your adsense ads---I have recently changed my default from "small" to "medium" and I am currently pleased with the results.

I'd like to know what your experience has been with changing your font size---give it a whirl, and post a comment back here to alert other Adsense publishers as far as which font sizes are working the best on your site(s).

(And remember---It's not just with your type-size in which "bigger is better"---larger ads tend to be more profitable).

***Update*** A few days after the original post, Adsense changed the default font size on every publishers' websites to the "Medium" size. In their testing they found this size on average to be most effective---You may still chose to tweak your advertisements with large or small size fonts to see what is the optimal choice for your sites.
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