Jennifer believes that people are making mistakes because they are in a “freaking-out” mode as a result of the economy. They are so consumed with reaching a monthly quota in order to pay bills and provide for their families, that they are committing serious ad blunders on their site. Jennifer shares a personal experience in which she visited a blog that had 27 300×250-sized ads and only 3 paragraphs of content. Unfortunately, some people think this is effective.

According to Jennifer, a webpage should have a maximum of 3-4 ads on a page, depending upon the rest of the content. In a blog post on a related topic, Jennifer suggests replacing your ads with boxes of the same size but making them an outrageous color. This test proves that if you are more focused on the color than you are on the site’s content, then you likely need to adjust your ad structure.

Another mistake people are making involves running Adsense on sites where it isn’t allowed. If you’ve ever wondered why Google is showing Public Service Announcements on your site rather than targeted ads, you may need to check the Adsense policies to ensure that your site is following the rules. For example, sites that sell goods such as prescription drugs, school essays, tobacco products, and adult content are not allowed to run AdSense on their sites.

To get your ad campaign “right,” Jennifer recommends being creative and innovative. Try adding a border or shadow to your ad units and wrap text around them. Do you have any other creative ideas for integrating ads into content? If so, we would love to hear about your experiences.

Google has been testing video AdSense ads that stream directly from YouTube. The Gmail Theater videos showing up on AdSense network sites are the first samples of that test. Google may be giving people a little too much information about this ad campaign, and here’s why. Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration said the Links feature in YouTube shows which websites link to a video, and how many clicks come from that site. It’s easy to see the number of clicks that come through the AdSense program. Google may choose to turn off the Links feature for future campaigns.

Fears of a bury brigade running rampant on Digg have been exaggerated. Digg founder Kevin Rose blogged about the controversy that started when Pronet Advertising claimed to have proof that a number of Digg users acted together to bury stories critical of Digg. That argument lost some strength when David LeMieux acknowledged the data he used, which was cited on Pronet, was inaccurate. Rose followed that up by saying Digg has spent two and a half years making sure that diverse groups of people vote up or bury stories. That would make claims about a ‘bury brigade’ unfounded.