How are your image ads performing?

Currently I'm running only text ads across all my sites, and I'm considering switching some to Adsense image ads on a trial basis, or at least the text/image combo. But first I'd like to find out whether it's even worth bothering. Any of you Adsensers done a comparison of text vs image performance? No need for specific revenue numbers, just your comments on what worked best and why. Thanks!

 

Hmm...tough crowd. Let me revise the question. Anyone currently running image ads, and if so, are you even tracking them separately?

 

Image ads are working great on the sites with a ton of text but very little or NO images. You have to see the ratio between text and images to determine which type of adsense ads are best for your site.

 

I tested image ads for roughly 1 month on one of my sites. They didn't work too well for me.

Overall CTR was down a few percent and actual earnings were down 30%.

 

I have noticed that image ads are working quite good but they pay less as compared to text ads.

 

Thanks for the feedback - my sites are very text heavy so image ads would definitely help balance that out. But sounds like the $$ isn't always as good. I was just reading over in the Jason Calacanis thread that one of the big ways he optimized their Adsense earnings was by removing ad borders. Not really an option with image ads - seems like you just have to take what they give you. Wonder if the DoubleClick buy will change any of that...

 

Interesting, I'm sure I read somewhere previously on DP that image ads CTR wasn't that great. I'm currently running both image and text ads on my site but as my site is all about images I might try limiting the images to see if my CTR improves.

Cheers, p.

 

Good test i will try.

 

They don't seem to convert well for me. And some image ads, I've noticed, seem kind of self-explanatory in a way that doesn't try to persuade the user to click on them.

 

Yeah well once users know that it's an ad.. they don't click on it.. that's why well blended ads have higher CTR..

 

I find the image ads pay very little.
And, many times they have nothing to do with your site.
But, for my site, it's what being clicked the most.

 

This is true. There's even a study to confirm these findings.

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/online-ads.html

 

On my sites its the text ads that get clicked the most and its also the text ads that bring in more traffic to me.

 

I tried them For One Month, But they pay less thn Text ads

 

image ads only show 1 choice but text ads show 5. that might be the first reason. second, people seldom like to click at the image coz they might think it's not a link. third, some image ads look not attractive enough.
just my points.

 

Thanks...all interesting comments. Definitely seems like you have more options with text ads, and they're usually more direct and to the point which I think users like. Good point about people not clicking when they know it's an ad - whenever I see a Google image ad I say to myself, "Hey, don't see those every day!" but I haven't clicked on one yet

I should know this but do any of them pay on a CPM basis for views, not clicks?

 

Yep. I changed mine to just text/ads instead of only ads.

 

Well if image ads worked better than text ads, Adsense wouldn't be the powerhouse network that it currently is in the first place, would it?

 

Exactly It's all about psychology and marketing strategies! Pretty obvious in my opinion if you just look at yourself for an example. I know I never click on ads..

 

Well no, I guess it wouldn't.

Hot avatar ya got there.