My initial reaction was that it was a good move as it would reduce unintended clicks, but having considered this more thoroughly, my belief is that if people clicked on the old clickable area then they probably meant to clcik on an ad anyway. But knowing how impatient web surfers are, if the first click does not work because it was clicked on the new non-clickable area, they will move on rather than clicking on the actual link because they would form an impression the link is not working.
Personally, I don't care whether people click my ads accidentally or intentionally, as long as they click them.... However, I'm not sure you are right about people moving on if the first click doesn't work. I would hazard a guess that if a person was really interested in the ad and the first click didn't work, they would just try again. Just like you do if a menu link doesn't work first time. Originally I wasn't keen on this new layout, but in all honesty, I haven't noticed a great deal of difference in the CTR.
I don't think...when you want to click a button you click the button not an blank area at 10cm distance
Same here, i set up my sites to deliberately confuse my traffic, into not realising they are ads. 100% legal.
AdSense Changes Clickable Areas :: What To Do Now My opinions on the whole AdSense clickable areas change, if anyone cares .
Maybe you are right. Maybe this will have positive long term effect in that people clicxking through mean to do so in the strictest term, so there is less likely to being smartpriced.
This will certainly decrease CTR. But in long term its a good move for both advertisers and publishers. Advertisers will get better return of the money they have invested in their advertising campigns. For publishers, cost per click may increase in near future.
In the long term this will be good for Publishers and Advertisers and legitimize the whole net advertising industry. Advertisers won't pay for useless clicks anymore-thats the heated news right now.
HMM of course this change cut some worthless clicks .. CTR is lower but conversion should be much better for Advertisers
I'm a little pissed off that the description text isn't clickable. I don't care abnout the blank space but the text SHOULD be clickable. Would image ads be better now?
I get a new point different from yours. As the new clickable area locating at url and the link, not all the ads area as before, when surfers encounter ads, they are more likely to take the ads link as the site's own content links, then click it. for me, I have seen the ctr increasing.
Yes, that'd probably combat the adsense blinding of surfers. Hey, over 60% of sites today use adsense (atleast I think so), so people are getting used to adsense. Hope this change makes it appear part of the page as the poster above says.