AdSense doing more default ad style testing

The colors of Google

[Jenstar]

Google is doing a new round of ad style testing:
[jenstar.ca...]

All these are appearing only when the script is set to the default ad settings (if the script is customized, you will not see these new styles.) The skyscraper styles are all new, while the banners are the same ones that were being tested previously ( [jenstar.ca...] has the ad styles for the last round of testing). These new ad styles are only appearing on every 5-10 default ad styles.

The seventh and eighth skyscrapers are showing broken images - an image should be appearing there, but perhaps someone forgot to upload it ;) And the fourth banner I show (top right) has the top and bottom hotizontal line going further past the right vertical bar.

They are using some colors in the ads (in the Google colors as well) but the colors would definitely appear to make the ads stand out more. The first skyscraper ad style is something I would like to see offered as an ad style for publishers, and even better if they could be customized by individual publishers.

What are the thoughts on these new ad styles, particularly the multi-colored ones?

[wonderboy]

nice. I like the seperate coloured shadow ones. shame I can't use towers =(

[Imaster]

First sighted by NazaretH at,
[webmasterworld.com...]

I think its pretty cool. Jenstar, did you get any chance to see then on wide skyscrapers?

[Chndru]

Kuddos, NazaretH.

[steve40]

Jenstar
I like the first one as well ,
would be good if they set that as an option choice and they were to make changes to that option on a monthly basis would help ctr increase as visitors do become add blind on adsense as they did with banners
Do you know if testing on all styles or only testing on some
steve
PS thanks jenstar

[Jenstar]

It seems to be the banner and skyscraper the testing is done with. I will do some more checking with the other styles and see if I can find any other ad unit sizes being used for testing as well.

[freeflight2]

nice.

horrible.

[icedowl]

I like the one where they simply used the colored balls.

[NazaretH]

Oh, thanks God, I am not completely mad (and it's not for what I was smoking when seeing that ad LOL). I've seen the very first one of those on my page. YEAH! Cheers!

[Jenstar]

They are doing testing with leaderboards on Tuesday. Here are some more screen shots of what the leaderboards look like with the new ad styles they are testing.

[jenstar.ca...]

[tombola]

Next test: every ad with its own color/font/border?

or maybe they will place some ads upside down?...

[icedowl]

Ouch! Those leaderboards hurt my eyes. They'd be a good cause for me hitting the back-button.

I suppose someone somewhere likes them. :/

[nutsandbolts]

Great for those 1980 retro Web sites....

[mdurrant]

No way man. Great for those 60's hippie sites.

[NeedScripts]

I guess, Google is having too many AdSense publishers and is wanting to reduce the number significantly.

[ken_b]

I wonder what percentage of publishers run default styles.

I can understand why Google might want a variety of default styles. It probably would help avoid banner blindness.

But it seems to me that the mores variability in defaults the greater the likelyhood of publishers uing the customizing tools is. Especially if publishers are concerned with the apparance of their pages.

[europeforvisitors]

Hey, I like those multicolored borders. They almost look edible. :-)

[Fiver]

oh my. I'm so sick of the google colours by now, I just hate these ads. They just end up looking cheesy and poorly designed.

oh well. As long as we're given options to control the colours on our site, I can't complain too much.

[loanuniverse]

Too much color..... But I think that the number of people running the default colors is small and dwindling.

[adfree]

Nothing for me as my CPI and EPC are much higher with blended ads. It's just me though and I will still be testing with sites that are not mission critical.

[gethan]

Wasn't this an April Fool?

Grumble - I'm going to just ignore April 1 next year - first Gmail and this as well