Jakob Nielsen on Text Ads in Google

Designing Web Ads Using Click-Through Data

[Xoc]

Really great article on designing text ads for Google. A must read if you are using that advertising mechanism.

Search engine ads are one type of Web advertising that can actually work. To create the best ads, do quick experiments and redesign ads based on usability principles for online writing. Doing so helped us increase ad click-through by 55% to 310%.

[useit.com...]

[Brett_Tabke]

The thing that is most interesting on that page is the click through rate. Other than that, it was as nice article for Google (one of his many employers).

[Gary_Snyder]

The click-through rate on the ads shown in the article appear to be only average. I've found an ad that will pull 5 times the click-throughs, and work for virtually anything. It's very interesting how powerful the right words can be in advertising.