website design - Where are good places to display ads on a webpage?

Where on a webpage is the best chance that a visitor will notice an ad and look at it?

Answer

Best chance is always the first part of the page they look at, the header(top). Whether or not you actually want to put an ad there probably depends on the content and design of the page. A lot of the time the logo will be on the upper left and you will have some space for an ad on the upper right. Another higher place would be right below the nav. (I'm not really a huge fan of most of these spots, but if its a commercial site, why not?)

The sidebar is usually a good spot because it is out of the way of the main content and if the content is long enough, you will have plenty of room. It is also pretty common to have an ad below the intro paragraph, or first blog post, on the home page. That way users will spot it while they are reading through.

But when it comes down to it, eye tracking studies have shown that users generally ignore any banner ads. Your best bet(and probably only) is to try and really target the ads to the user. Half the ads out there just look like spam so why pay attention to it? I suggest looking into ads that directly relate to the content of your site whenever possible.