New font styling for AdSense ads - Anyone noticed this?

[livingingermany]

I just took a look at my site and noticed that new fonts are in place for the adsense ads, it looks like 'Comic-Sans.'

I look at the style sheet for the adblock (right-click and View Source) and see "font-family:comic sans ms,arial,sans-serif;" in the Style definition for the header and text.

Strange really, as I try to use Arial, like Google do. Link ads are still in Arial but Adsense for content blocks are using comic sans fonts. I always found that Comic-Sans-MS looked so amateur as a web font.

Also, the up and down arrows are missing on this ad. A refresh of my page and I see the old style, it seems to be in testing at the moment.

Example below:



Anyone else noticed?

[pioneer1]

First time I see this. I don't like the font

[markn26]

looks like some kind of a glitch!

[snowbird]

I saw it last week, with small type fonts. I'm all for different font faces and types, however this should be something Webmasters have control over and not Google.

On most of my sites I try to blend the ads. What Google is doing will make it more difficult for me to do this.

[abdobasha2004]

not true
did not see in any site

[livingingermany]

@abdobasha2004: Sorry but when you say "not true", I don't quite understand to what you are referring. The picture that I included as an example is a screenshot taken directly from my site. I am not a premium publisher and have not edited the picture in any way (other than cropped it a tad smaller than a full screen shot).

I believe that the big G are sample testing across various sites. I have also not seen it elsewhere, only at my site. But saying that, I am Google ad blind as a publisher, so I generally don't pay any attention to google ads on other sites.

[kashifmahmood]

I don't see any picture attached

Where is it ??

[zexy]

I see this fir the first time. It's pretty ugly don't you think? I like better the old one.

[jambo182]

Looks extremely amateur. If they're planning to give publishers increased control, they should be looking at hover styles, rather than static styling. I'd love to be able to dictate a hover colour for my ads. Time will tell.

[godmode]

I have seen this ad on my blog yesterday but it vanished after a refresh. God knows if they are testing this or just a glitch

[NathanCH]

These is most likely to do with your own internet browser. It seems the attached css wasn't applied and your internet browser settings took over. If your font is set at Comic San, that's why.

[profire]

maybe your niche has to do with kids

[FanAddict]

Could be they are trying to get away from publishers trying to match the AdSense font style.

Just as they do with link colours when you try to match perfectly - they change it a few degrees.


Anyone else have this thought?

[yongjj]

i haven't seen this before. Send an email to google adsense to clarify it.

[killerkiwi]

i noticed the same thing on a site a couple days ago... awful font imo...

[Freewebspace]

Arial is best for anything

Comic sans looks very bad ! No one would click these ads!

[silveraden]

Originally Posted by markn26

looks like some kind of a glitch!

I believe so yes...

[livingingermany]

Well, after analysing the source of that ad, it was completely different to the source of other ads, so I believe a glitch is out of the question for me, the structure and order of the definitions different too. I believe they are means-testing it for performance, one showing per thousand impressions perhaps, hence why I could not see it again later. Obviously I do not want to refresh my page a thousand times and bump down that CTR number just to see it again.

I am all for testing and since the second font listed in the family definition was arial, then users of non-Microsoft operating systems would see an arial font there instead of the amateur Comic-sans.

One thing is true however, I do use arial thoughout my site, partly because I like the simplicity of the type-setting but mostly as it blends well with the google ads. If Google have a mechanism to detect which fonts I use on my site from my stylesheet and purposely choose a completely different one in order to stamp-out good blending, then my CTR will decrease dramatically.

That said, I have to look back at my initial reaction. The ad jumped out at me, they don't normally have that effect on me, but this ad stood out and made me inquisitive. Perhaps this is the intention. It was a few hours after spotting it the first time that I managed to see it again and take the screenshot that I included in the first post.

Shame that they chose to test with Comic-Sans, this has to be the most amateur web-font around, surely Helvetica (as used in many Web-2.0-styled sites) or Verdana would be better to try out.

Anyway, one can debate this for a long time but I personally belevie they are simply means-testing a variety of fonts to randomise the look of their ads, fair enough, they can do that, but should we not have been informed first?


ALSO REPORTED HERE: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google...se/3639653.htm

[diehardtechie]

I havn't noticed anything like this. But i believe it will be true. Bcos in the last few days google is tweaking Adsense in many ways. So it may be one of them

[Jalpari]

1st time i am seeing adsense ads in COMIC font i think tahoma, arial and verdana mostly use for adsense ads and they give a professioanl look.

@kashifmahmood its ur browser or connection error. we can easily view attach file