Stumbling Across the Optimal Ad Spot
Over the last couple of weeks I started to notice an interesting stat when it came to my Adsense placements. The slot that seemed to bring in the most money was the 468×60 campaign located in between the actual post and comments section.
I first noticed the change once I altered the look of the theme on my stock market site. The 468×60 ad now seamlessly blends into the theme, but instead of just putting it at the bottom the location is even more specific.
I placed it right under the post, and then have it followed by the article meta information and related articles. Because of this placement, I think many people often think it is either part of the site and/or they see something interesting and click on it. The clean look also gets the ad to stand out.
This placement is also working well with other types of ads that I have tried, but they need to be very targeted ads. That is why I think the Adsense campaign works so well there. Creating custom post templates will help with targeting your ads.
You can see a picture of the placement:

