Images and ads (Once again)

So im sure everyone knows about the new phenomenon about images above or next to adsense ads. (Was it critters who came up with this?)

Anyways, I ran into some confusion from the google adsense team. I had setup a page that had images above the horizontal ads (With no borders) and I had sent an email to the adsense team to verify it was ok to do this.

They sent me an email back saying that I needed to increase the spacing between the images and ads. So I did that and emailed them back letting them know. Then I get another email back from them saying "sorry we meant that you need to have borders around the images and the adsense" so I did that. Now my CTR has dropped big time...

Now, as some of you have recently read, Jensense recently talked to an engineer as well about this and the engineer said as long as there is a "visible border between the ads and the images". But if you note that towards the end of googles response to jensese they said "We generally do not ask publishers to remove the images completely, we just ask that they add borders to avoid confusion."

Notice the keyword 'borders' as in plural... So what do you do? Add borders around everything or just inbetween with some spacing?

Anyways the difference between borders around everything compared to a border in-between (divider) is HUGE... So that's why im posting on here to see if im interpreting things incorrectly, or if im missing something.


Thanks

 

use a border color in your adsense code, make it different from background color. Your adsense background color remain the same as your site background. So you will have a border around your ads but the ads still blend with your site. I'd try this tricks with the image above ads and my CTR remain the same like without the border

 

yes that's how it was before... I guess that's just another way of interpreting it. There always was a border (Just not visible) and the adsense guy said 'their needs to be a border around the adsense" he didn't say if it needed to be visible or not...

Thanks for mentioning that

 

make the border visible. lets say your site background color is white, make the adsenseborder color blue, and adsense background color white. That way, you'll have a blue border around your ads.

 

If I make the borders visible I might as well not have the images above them (The CTR will drop back down if I do that) Im talking a difference between around (not the actual number) 30%

 

You have to think about this a bit... Why do you think people are clicking on your ads without borders so much more frequently? With smartpricing are you really going to make any more money in the long-term? The most likely reason you get more clicks is because people mistake them for something they are not. I doubt the elimination of borders all of a sudden triggers a browsers interest in a particular ad.

So if they are clicking because of this, then it is likely the conversion rate is significantly lower, which means less more per click in the long-run.

While it is a nice goal to increase click-through rate, you have to determine at what cost. If you only deliver clicks and no sales, your site holds little value to advertisers.

So realize that you are in a partnership with Google as well as the end advertisers to deliver customers. So you need to determine the most efficient and effective way to do that. Focusing solely on click-through rates without any other consideration is extremely short-term thinking and strategy.

 

I added a border and it hasn't hurt my CTR any...a good color choice relative to the rest of the site and ads is probably important though.

 

Don't put border(s). Don' put image(s). Just put adsence code.

This makes sense.

 

Well for me the images do make sense... it's a partly a picture related website. So pictures are almost expected...

 

u hv to chose between 'sense' and 'adsense'.