Picture Above Ad To Increase CTR

Greetings,
Has anyone tested placing a relevant picture above or beside an ad to increase click-thru rate.

I am thinking of the following:

- Ads to the left.
- 160X600 Sky Scraper
- Small 200 pixel wide picture above the ads.
- If the article was about dogs, the picture would be of a dog. Ads should also be related to dogs. Even more specific, if ads were about dog food - picture would be of a dog eating.

Anyone experience better ctr with this approach?

Thanks.

 

It's an interesting idea.

I haven't tried it myself but so long as the image didn't click through to anwhere you could see an increase.

I'd love to hear what results you find when you try it...

 

What I have done with great results in improving CTR is to put a banner ad on top of a text only ad. This has always increased the CTR of the text only ad.

I assume it’s because of the growing resistance of people to clicking ads, as the more obvious the image looks like an ad the better the CTR improvement of the text ad.

.

 

Just look at my site http://www.osx-e.com You can see that I put three small picture featured download, featured wallpaper and April Desktop. And below of each picture I put adsense ads 125 x 125. What can I say, is the CTR is excellent because the picture really caught visitors attention to read what below its and if they;re interested, they will click it.

 

Either that, or it'll fool surfers into thinking that the adsense link is a direct link to what the image is showing.

 

yes, it gives you a great CTR but the users are being mislead: the pic says "April's Desktop" and the ad underneath is for Aqua Data Studio OSX, the universal db query tool

 

Its not mislead, you can click on the picture view the detail about it. Unless I put April's Desktop and below that I put google ads. All the images is link to their own page, unless I didn't put any reference to the picture, it maybe a mislead, because people doesn't know where to click so they will click on the ads. The pic is just attract visitors attention to see the ads. IF they just interested on the pic, not on the ads, they just click the ads. Its the same like your put your adsense ads below/above navigation menu and make it looks like one of the links. It might be mislead as well.

 

It's misleading because not everyone is net savy like us. For example, I know plenty of people that can't tell the difference between a web site's links vs a website's ads.

 

I don't care what people opinion whether its misleading or not. Everyone have their own strategy to make adsense work for their site as long as it do not breach google's terms & conditions.

I dare to say that 90% of adsense publisher mislead their visitors to make them clicks, thats why they make the ads to blend with the content. If you really don't want to misleading your visitors, why don't you make it contract from the content, and put at title, ADVERTISEMENT, so visitors will know that it is an advertisement and they will decide whether they interested to click on it or not.

 

Misleading is the essence of marketing. The goal is to sell. It doesn't matter if the buyer needs your product or not. The only rule is to stay within the law boundary.

 

You mean like this...

Home Repair Mortage

 

I agree... You're ad placement is within Google's TOS. The revenue you generate from those ads is ligit and is your rght. If adwords publishers don't like it, let them disable content ads altogether.

 

Isn't there a risk of violating the TOS? I know that 'encouraging' people to click on the ad is forbidden (like sites saying 'sponser us by click here'). If the picture is doing the same effect, google might not like it.

Ron Mertens
www.AdSenseLog.com

 

how can the picture have the same effect of text saying "sponsor us by clicking here" without the picture actually saying that in text?

I think the only picture in mind here is just another ad or a graphic unrelated to encouraging the surfer to click.
A picture like a simple product shot, or the editors face of an article, or even a image banner AdSense ad above a banner sized AdSense text block.

Hey has anyone tried that?
An AdSense image ad over a same size text ad?

I too am interested in any results one might find.

 

wow, you really got people talking (about misleading) there.

No need IMO.

Your ads placement is very crafty and tastefull. It's an example to follow.

I am wondering though... Are your CTR above one percent? Above two percent even?

I am trying not to be too specific here, yet getting a little bit more information on the effectiveness of this construction

 

My guess is it is above 10%

 

I would say more like 25%.

I like the position of your ads. Not against the TOS. Adsense is about making money right?

If you don't want people to click your ads, don't put them on your page.

If you are satisfied with $50 a month, put them at the bottom of the pages.

I am not satisfied with $50 a month, and neither is alang, and with those ads, he is making a lot more than that I would guess.

brandon

 

I guess you all might be surprise if I said the CTR is not very high on that page and its not the best revenue page for me. There is other page that the CTR is more than 20% without a single image on it.

I believe if you read all the ebooks that teach you how to maximise revenue from adsense, you will found this trick. It doesn't say that we must put picture above adsense ads, but we must do something to get visitor's attention to see the ads, and click the ads.

 

It's a very nice arrangement and it seems inside the TOS to me.

There is, however, a bit of a balance question: on the one hand you want your ads to blend with yur content, on the other you want people to be draw to the ad...I wonder which creates the better CTR...

 

Its depents on your page. If your page is full of links, then you might want the ads to blends with content, but if your page is full of article, I'm sure you want to do something to get people notice the ads. But from my experience, ads that is blend with content on a page that full with links, let say a directory, is the most effective ads. Like I say on the other thread, people went to articles page, just to read and scroll down, so you need to draw their attention to the ads, but people went to directory page to click on the links, so you have to make the ads looks like a links

But I'm sure every person have their own make to get a success from adsense, this might work for me but not for the others, and something that work for great for the others, might not work for me

I'm not really an expert on adsense, and I never got 5 figures income like most of the people on this forum, but I just want to share my experience and I hope others will share theirs too.