Was just chatting with Connie a while back (she just launched a new Party Blog) when she asked for my opinion about ad types in AdSense. Which is better — include images ads or just pure text ads? Though I used to include a combination of text/image ads in my AdSense settings before, I realized that looking at it from another perspective, pure text ads could harvest more clicks (and revenue returns) than a combination of both.
I summarized the advantages below:
- Surfers are already immune to image ads. Thus, they are more likely to click on a text ad than an image ad.
- Text ads blend well with your content. Images ads can sometimes be obtrusive especially if the design isn’t good.
- You get more displayed ads — 4 separate text ads against 1 huge image ad. It’s possible that at least one of the four ads could catch the reader’s attention.
- Potentially more clicks — every once in a while, whenever I’m doing some Google searching myself, I find that I am clicking on more than one ad on a single ad unit.
That’s just my observations though. Works well with my blog. Might not work with yours though, but it’s worth the try.
@ markku
Yes, but see #1 and #2.
@ pau
Ahh yes, but I have yet to see a compelling image ad to click on it myself. :D
Image ads will earn you more. :)
The thing is, advertisers pay more per click to display image ads on publishers’ sites, so if you manage to get an interesting image ad shown in your adsense block, and it gets clicks, the overall revenue is sure to be higher than from plain text. Tradeoff: what you just said, users have generally learned to ignore image banners, so the burden is on the advertiser to provide a compelling image.