Images Over Ads - Compliance Terms

very interesting. Jen (from jensense.com) talked to the google engineers about this growing trend.

they haven't added this into their TOS yet i don't think...

 

The google adsense person at the SES for the contextual advertising session demoed ways to better convert... placing ads above and to the side of the ads was highly recomended.

then at the google dance this adsesnse guy was telling this dude he needs to take off the borders for adsense to better convert.

 

sounds like mixed messages.
ps. that image doesn't work

 

Not really. Googs tells you to put borders as not to confuse the visitors to cover their a$$ in case the advertisers come to them complaining about it, but no doubt they'll be happy if you keep converting for them.

 

i dont think its mixed messages... I thought it was pretty clear.

 

really ? where do they say that. I have never seen anything in the TOS that says you have to keep the borders (meaning you cant blend the border color into the background)

 

It becomes an issue when the images are confusing in relation to the ads. If the images are too specific the user may think the ad is for a certain product that it is not.

An example would be if you had a site about cars and you had pictures of various cars above the ads. Everyone knows what kind of car it is just by looking at the picture. They would expect the ad to take them to a site/page about that specific model of car.

If the images are more generic there isn't a specific expectation created by the image when/if they click an ad. The expectation would be created by the ad text, as intended by the advertiser.

 

Right... however this is exactly what was being demoed as tips to increase your ctr.

 

Well I was going by the first post and what you said about what the ADsense guy told you. I.e. the first post has Google telling that Jensense chick/publishers they may ask publishers to put borders around their ads as not to confuse viewers, and then the Adsense guys tells you to not put borders to convert better. I.e. The letter in the first post was the "official stance" and the guy telling you was the "psst. Do this" variety. Or maybe the Adsense guy talking to you was "on the record"?

 

I guess it's a judgement call. I'm sure if you ask 6 different people at Google about it you'll get 5 different answers.

The best thing to do is use common sense and think about what the users are experiencing.

 

Jensense's Jennifer was the first person I saw display this at the expo... funny you brought her up. You can download her presentation from the ses site.

I dont know shit its just what I saw and heard.

Im going to blog about this sometime cause I dont understand why people dont get the google thing. I guess I just have weird opinions.

Google has always made ads that look like regular content to fool advertisers.

Google adlinks look identical to adlinks

google HAS to say DONT TRY TO FOOL PEOPLE because they have to appeal to there advertisers yet at the same time they have to help you try to convert cause if nobody clicks then nobody makes money.

Googles bigest secret is they are never specific on ANYTHING. This way it keeps everyone happy and they are not showing priority to anyone. The bottom line is (and this again is just my opintion)

If a adwords advertiser has issues with your site and they are spending good money you are in trouble.

Google can and will ban you or warn you it suites there best interest. Until then its your right to push the grey area.

again all my opinion

 

i agree with MattL. Just stay within the TOS.

 

>>>Publishers are still welcome to place images above the ads. The only exception is if it's in such a way that it looks like the images are part of the ads.<<<

this is the only thing that matters... i run adsense mixed with relevant images, with no visible border around the ads at all, and it was approved by google.

there is a thin border around each pic, however... the way the pages are set up, i don't think that a border around the adsense would hurt the ctr much anyway, because it's already clear that the pics and ads are not related.

bottom line: send your page into google for review! don't believe crap you read on the internet, there is too much at stake here.

 

but they leave this wide open to interpratation too, its cute how G! covers their ass from all sides.

 

Interpretation of this can change over time as Kalius said.

Keep in mind that Google can change what it deems acceptable at any time, possibly after you were approved. As more and more people use this technique they need to draw boundaries.

I had one question about something I was doing (not images) that they said was OK. I got sidetracked for a about a month and I checked with them again just before implenting it and they said no.

I agree, but a discussion here about it is interesting as well.

 

that is the money quote from this whole thread so far... nice advice man

 

>>>Publishers are still welcome to place images above the ads. The only exception is if it's in such a way that it looks like the images are part of the ads.<<<

there is one other piece of relevant info that i forgot to mention... all of the images next to my ads are clickable links, so there is no chance that they can be confused with the ads... there is nothing for google to "interpret" there.

the downside to that could be that too many clickable choices would decrease the ctr, so ymmv... i'm just presenting workable alternatives for you guys that no one has apparently thought of yet.

i also do not group one image per ad, like so many other people have done... so it doesn't matter to me how many ads google puts in an ad block.

 

My experience of images above ads on one of my sites

CTR without border: 20-25%
CTR with border:18-23%

Overall it's made little difference on the one site I've tested the borders on. I'm going to roll this out to my other sites to see if the effects are the same.

 

Just don't blend your ads with your content, your CTR still will be good and at the same time, comply with google TOS. Lets say that you have a white background, you still can put images above ads but make sure that the ads unit have different color than your page color, in this case if your page background is white, make the ads border/background to blue or anything other than white. I'd try this method and the CTR remain the same (sometime increase).

 

I remove all borders. I have started also with the leaderboard and images thing too.

Hasn't anyone here ever used a HR tag! jeez...it's pretty simple and I think a HR width of 650-700 should look nice...you can also css border-bottom for a similar effect.