Text or Banner? Which performs better

in your experience...

[Tearabite]

I'm curious what your experience is between banner ads and text only ads..

My gut tells me that because the link ads look more like..well, LINKS, they may get more clicks from users that don't really know what they're clicking - whereas a banner is obviously an advertisement.

What's your experience been with banners vs text only links?

[hunderdown]

Text is better. But why is this in the AdSense forum? Are you asking only about AdSense ads or more generally?

[Tearabite]

I was thinking of directly comparing the AdSense text only ads to the AdSense "image" ads.. but i guess the AdSense image ad isn't much different from any other affiliate type banner ad..

The reason i asked is becuase my 'default' ad type is 'both text and image'.. usually i only get text ads on my pages, but recently i've been seeing more image ads coming down.

[greatstart]

Go with "text only" if you want a better CTR. I tried images, and it does not perform well.

[joaquin112]

yeah banner-blindness...

[AlexK]

728/468 Banner ads (from a well-known second-tier ad supplier) have an average eCPM of $0.42, whilst the same company's replacement 160/120 SkyScraper ads (no client javascript) are $0.63. The equivalent Adsense (SkyScraper) eCPM is $2.01.

The contrast is startling.