This is probably because their skyscrapers are their poorest at converting, as far as I know. I don't even use them at all myself.
This is something I noticed yesterday on my site while checking links, and I just caught it at the corner of my eye as I was flipping through pages... I thought I was seeing things. I actually got a glace today. Most of my site is running custom ad formats now, but this particular area happens to have a standard skyscraper format:
I saw one on a site of mine today. I don't think the image itself is an ad, but I didn't test it =). When I scroll over the image, it shows a direct URL, as opposed to the text ads which show nothing. It looks like Google took a page from book of innovators from this forum (and others elsewhere, probably) and noticed that related images near ads increases CTR.
Are, that is something that I have not seen. That looks like an image on a different ad block than the 90/120x600 ad blocks. Is that on a leaderboard?
it could also be in a square, or a rectangle... The way I look at it, if google is up for experimentation, then everything is up for grabs...
That's from adsense? Do you think Google will change their terms about labling ads with images if they're doing it themselves? EDIT: Oh wait, you're allowed images as long as they're context based, ne?
I think they noticed the trend of placing images next to ads actually working, CTRs will be up for a while, but people may get ad blindness to these even... Although I find it interesting to see what stock pictures Google decides to show up.
Yep I still get it on the samp page. And I think forums get these units and full image banners mostly. But these might be a success. And I get Ad searching units for text ad units on some pages. At first I thought they were only given to premier publishers.