I just cant find this info anywhere. Assuming links and images are placed in the same place and are the same size, which one generates more click ? Also, everyone says that an average CTR is 2-3% and i have about 1-1.5. Can anyone post some websites that have at least 3% CTR rate ? I just want to see what they look like.
I don't got any websites CTR higher than 1.5. And for your first question, i think it's images, much clearer and attractive.
The success of images v text does depend on the market niche - but to generalise, images usually generate more clicks for a whole bunch of reasons. More attractive, draw visitor’s eyes, worth a thousand words, people are lazy and prefer to read as little as possible etc. So far as CTR is concerned 1.5% isn't bad as an average. I do have sites with much higher and lower rates - depends on how much time and effort you are prepared to invest. The opposing factors are that you need good content for SEO to get a page ranked and free traffic - but the more you have on a page, the more cluttered it is and the more options you give visitors, the less likely they are to do what you want. Ideally pages should give visitors just two options - do the one thing you want them to do or leave. But this may not be possible if you want links to other pages. Maybe a good idea to start looking at squeeze pages where many sites have sign up rates of 30% or more? One of my opt in pages http://freeoffer.buyadblender.com/ has an optin rate of 60% - even though it includes links to privacy, disclaimer and other pages. Hope this gives you a few ideas to consider?
OK. So if images have a higher CTR, why even use link ads ? Also, i have noticed that all the "big" websites have only image ads. I wonder why ?
There are many different ways of using ads. Some people earn more by text ads and some does not. It's almost all about positioning and coloring.
Image ads look like advertisement/ banner ads so people wont click on them as much, which is why text ads are better.
It is not true, link ads are not so much useful in adsense earnings.Better I suggest text or image ads.