Clever Ads

I (somewhat shamefully) agree that I am not an ad clicker. On the average, I will click on somewhere between 0 to 1 ad a day, tops. I also do not fall too often for clever advertising on blogs and websites. I have learned to navigate around them. Some would say I have developed ad blindness. More often than not, I tend to look for clever placement methods, interesting ad services and such without actually clicking on anything or navigating away from the original page. If something interests me tremendously, I might distract myself for a few minutes but rarely have I actually purchased or signed on to a product or service that I was referred to by an ad. However, this evening, I came upon such a clever ad placement that I had to think about it for a few minutes before the bulb in my head flickered and flashed on. I could swear that the links at the top of this consumer reports article were actual links from the site and not ads. I even clicked on one to make sure. In spite of being somewhat fooled into thinking that these were real links, I am more impressed than annoyed by them. They are well placed, not obnoxious, mostly very useful and last but not the least, they were very clickable! Their click through rate must be to die for. I am assuming that this site is a Premium Adsense publisher and thus has been authorized the flexibility to do what they have done. I wish Google would provide more tips and tricks on how to put up ads this well connected with the material on a page or provide some of the functionality to regular publishers. My kudos to the developers. I hope I learn something useful from this experience.