I find text links to be best. I have very few image ads, and the clicks are always pennies as appossed to $1-$3 clicks I get with text ads.
MOSTLY - Text ads are CPC - they pay about 10 cents per CLICK, on average, across many sites. Image ads are CPM - they pay about 0.1 cents per IMPRESSION, on average, across many sites. They pay NOTHING per click. For me, this is a total no-brainer. Years ago, I emailed Google to "opt out" of CPM ads entirely, which pretty much means "no image ads". I have never looked back. . .
It depends on the advertiser's preference. In AdWords, you can buy cpm or ppc. You will get a mixture of the two. Most are still ppc from what I understand. Also, the cpm is very low. If you are have high traffic, then you should look into a cpm banner network for higher paying ads, if that's what you're looking for.
I agree. I had to take all the image ads down recently....was getting too many Weight Loss and Google Phone ads.
You're weong, they DO pay per click, and some by impression as well. True, but we can have an opinion through experience. Google certainly wouldn't say in their FAQ's that image ads are crap.
The image has the same data sorted by three different metrics with the "best" being number one in each list. You can tell which metric each is sorted using by looking at the red oval around each. It's important to note that "text" is what shows when text ads are being displayed. Everything else is what will be displayed when it's "image / rich media ads". So you should consider these elements as "text" VS "everything else". I just didn't have a way to combine them all into one group without changing the way the report displays. This is for roughly half a million impressions of ad units in sizes Google suggested while I created the units and also allowing both text and image ads to display so that Google decides which to show.