Not much else to say... http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/000452.html Looks like it's only for AdSense (we won't be seeing banners on Google's site for AdWords advertisers). - Shawn
I also noticed they added some new reporting features (just some different date breakdowns). I assume the image ads are going to work exactly like adwords, except they show banners for certain keywords instead of text ads? And the costs/payouts will be approximately the same?
oh boy. IMHO I don't like image ads and I hope most people will stick with the text ads. Image ads distract me too much and make me feel the site is bombarding me with ads. Plus text links have more to choose from within the size an image takes up. As a surfer I like having a choice of which text ad I want to click on, if any are relevant of course. But I guess it's a good idea for sites that want to use images. Does it say anywhere that you generally get a higher $% when you display image ads instead of text? I would think for the big leader board types you should get a higher % of pennies because you got the visitor to go to that ONE ad instead of giving a choice of FOUR. ----added later--- OK I actually did some reading and I see that you can't display ONLY image ads, but choose to also run images if it is relevant to your content. And Google doesn't say you'll get more $% with image ads, but says they will probably get more clicks. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I didn't set it as ad specific... so if users allow them globally on their AdSense account it will work (if it's your ad). For my account, I enabled it. - Shawn
I globally enabled it for my sites, however, haven't seen any image ads yet. I have seen a huge spike in earnings though. Not sure if that's a fluke or related to this or not.
A huge spike in earnings? I just got the email this morning about it. I guess I'll enable it and see what the results are.
Probably not much in the way of banners in the rotation yet, since it's dependent on AdWords advertisers making them and adding them to their account. So I imagine it will be some time before we even happen to see one. - Shawn
OH!! I just saw an image banner here in the forums, it was a VBulletin (sp?) ad. I usually don't pay attention to that spot much, unless there are bright colors, but this time I saw it as I clicked a link and was waiting for my slow arse PC at work to change the page. weeeeeeeeee!!
Probably was one of the alternate ads the system displays when there are no AdSense ads to serve up. Not an actual one from Google. I think the banners from Google show a strip along the bottom that say "Ad by Google" or something. - Shawn
I debated on switching, not sure if I will or not. CTR for banner ads tends to be lower than for text