Why you should disable google image ads Google has been pushing image and media ads lately and i tried them. From my result image ad don't get clicked as much as text ads. Why?: Blending 1. People have natural ad blindness. If it looks like an ad they ignore it 2. Image don't blend into your content, they stick out "like ads" 3. They take up an entire ad unit "but you don't get more then the average for one click" If you have a standard 300X250 you have 3 possible ad's to get a click "if you blended the ad text properly with your content" with a 300X250 image ad you only have 1 possible ad to get a click "and it's not blended" 1 vs 3 you do the math! Call To action vs Branding: Image and media ad help brand, and do not call to action Ad in train stations are branding. Ad in Airport are branding. Classified are call to action. Most of the image ads i see only: State the companies name State the companies tag line But most importantly the ad don't call for a click And no click = no money for you + free Ad space for the advertisers. Chance for relevancy: If you have image ads, if the ad isn't 100% relevant you lose a click With text ad if one of the 3 are not relevant, you still have 2 that are. Proof Go into Adsense, click on reports, look for an almost hidden option choose "Entire account by day" and go to ad type and look at your results. Mine 24k impression Text 1.89 CTR Rich Media .87 CTR Image .00 Flash .00 Animated image .00 Google is paying me cpm "cost per 1000 impressions" for image ads, but it's super low. total $.89 cpm All of those wasted rich media, image, flash, and animated image ad were possible text clicks "3 possible clicks each" People are always saying Blend ads into you content, and blending works big time, then why would you spend the time to blend the ads then enable images ad that don't blend? Last Big companies can afford the high expected cpc for image, flash ads, not smaller companies. bigger companies are pro's at reducing their ad spend "their have whole adword departments", and if you enable image ad your ad space will become a target for them to push their cpm Branding ad. check you stats, and test this for you self. after i disabled image/media off some of my top ad unit my CTR went up big time. Side tip: review your ad units and block advertisers who's ads don't call to action. Thanks, C
How to view performance by ad type Choose option ad type Data show "my example on the unit i enabled for images"
You analyse the result based on only your own website and not applicable for all the niche Images ads is better than text ads on certain niche, especially game and entertainment niche
You're both right in thoses respects. On image pages i use image ads. But in content "i.e. a blog, text" text ad perform way better. I don't have to prove targeted text based ads blended with you content works better . also do the numbers on a 728X90 you can have 3 ad on a 300X250 you can have up to 3 ad on a 160X600 you can have up to 5 ads showing Why would you want 1 ad taking control of the entire spot vs 3-5. with more ads the odds are in your favor. take a page using all three 728X90 at the top, 300X250 floated right in the content, and 160X600 on the right side bar. You have a total of 11 possible click options with text. If your content is targeted to a certain subject "not just mfa" 3-4 of those ad will peak interest in a reader and command a click. now if those unit where images you drop to 3 possible ads "3 vs 11"' Advertiser are famous for paying per impression for 728X90 and 160X600 units with branding ad My niche is travel, and i see a ton of Expedia, Travelocity, Bookit ad that don't call to action. instead of a locale hotels ad saying Cheap rate for Val time day 40% off, limited time blah blah blah. I see a big flashing banners saying: Expedia, Book Early and save or Bookit.com "and a fancy picture" or The roaming elf holding a travelocity sign those ads are branding ad and will not drive clicks. --- Also i have done image branding ad before. I targeted my competitors sites, targeting 728X90, bid super high and created an ad that branded and didn't influence a click "matter of fact i discouraged clicks by putting a super high price". I got around 100k impressions on my competitor site for less then 25 bucks. "google stop serving impression because of low CTR" what happened "my direct traffic increased "people remembered the name", and incoming search term for my domain name "mydomain.com" increased "people wanted to know more, and remembered the name". This is what a lot of image based ads do. You can get this same problem with text, but it's used more in image and flash ads. Image ad are like Bill board "they give to benefits "branding, and possible call to action". while text ad are pure call to action. If you get paid based on clicks, you should want only call to action ads "no soft sales, and no branding". If an ad doesn't command a click your giving up free cpm ad space. Also i know for a fact a lot of large advertising demand cpm over high cpc, and negotiate with Google for super low cpm rate ".05 to .10" cpm. but CPM on a text ad sucks, but being able to get a 728X90 or a 160X600 banner for .10cpm is prefect for branding. I'm just warning people, depending on your niche, becareful with image and media ads before your site gets turned into a low cost Bill board sold on cpm. when i enable images on one of my unit, brand name advertiser dominated each zone, my ctr dropped. I blocked those advertised, change the ads to test only, my ctr went up sky high. don't take my example, at least test it for you self over a day or week.
it all depends upon the layout and niche of the website! You cannot say anything for sure! And yeah I have been testing it for years, but still I cannot say which one is better and which is not, and I am sure no body can!
Thanks for sharing information from the both sides! From the title I was a little surprised about that what can be so bad about using images as AdSense ads! In fact I do not use image ads from AdSense at all, because I simply do not like them, they do not fit to pages so well as it is possible to optimize text ads that they look almost like a natural part of website!
The main points i see are Blending and Ratio. A ton of studies have been done showing that surfer have banner blindness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness People "including my self" ignore ads "that look like ads" blending the adsense text colors, font, and location are the keys to success "at least in my case" replacing those ads with banner ad defeats the whole purpose. People might not be seeing the effects because the percentage of images for their units are low. but once they start to increase "watch we start to see threads about it "what happened to my CTR LOL" Ratio: More ads equals higher chance of a click "that should be common sense" ask your self this question? if you were selling direct ad space on your site, and you have a side bar ad spot: 4 125X125 spots at $25 a month each. How much would you charge an advertiser who wanted all 4 spot at once? common sense would tell you $100 a month. with an image ad, that spot can serve a single image ad for around the same cost of a click of one 125X125 unit. unless you can guarantee that image ad "in 4 ad spot" will command more click, then 4 single possible choices, it's would be mathematically improbable earn more with the image unit. Now like i said people aren't seeing it because the amount of image ad being served are no way near the amount of text ad. but when you look at the CTR for image ad, you also have to factor in the Lost potential "number of ad within the unit" so every non clicked image ad, was also a chance at 2-3 other possible clicks compared to text ad. wait until more company's start implementing image ads, you will start to see the difference. Thanks for listening
also one possible solution could be: dynamic image elements that help them blend into the ads color scheme "background, text, border, etc" Second: multiple image ads per ad unit "example 160X600 has 5 text ad, so it can support 4 160X200 image ads or an 300X250 can hold 2 150X125 image ads" losing content blending, and a reduced number of ads per unit is big issue adsense publishers should def be worried about!
Uhm, going to give it a try. I am in the gaming niche and also have a website that is related to images. Would love to see the differents between image and text ads and the differents in CTR/CPC ofcourse.
nice topic "ClarenceCM3" but as others said, it's totally depend on your niche, template and color combination. I've just compared month by month status and found image ads impressions are less but they're having good CTR than text ads.