How are image ads performing for you?

what has been your experience ...

[alika]

To those who are currently running Adsense image ads, how are the ads performing for you? This is the first day we see them running on our sites and we are curious how it will go -- particularly how it will affect our CTR, our EPC or worse, our revenues.

Has your experience with the image ads good or not?

[europeforvisitors]

I can't imagine that anyone is getting enough image ads to make a statistically valid judgment at this point.

[loanuniverse]

Do you even get the option for stats for image ads if you set them up?

If not, I don't see how you could notice a difference with the amount of inventory that Google has right now {pure speculation here}

/has not enabled images.

[alika]

We have enabled images since it was announced, but today is the first day we are actually seeing them.

I don't see any buttons that allow the segregation of text & image ads in the stats. I was expecting there would be one so as to be able to evaluate them better.

That is why we are getting anxious about running them, more so that they are running as leaderboards on our site. With text ads, you have at least 4-5 choices of ads that could potentially grab the attention of the reader. Now with the image ads, you have 1. As an advertiser, it is great for branding; but as for publisher, still a question mark for us.

We'll test it for a week and see how it goes.

[john_k]

I haven't seen any image ads show up yet. I know that doesn't mean none have been displayed, and I know that not many advertisers have started using them yet. But I am wondering if I missed something.

From what I saw, all I really needed to do was change my account default to show both text and image ads. Adding the code google_ad_type = "text_image"; is a way to override the default, right? So if that is my default, then I didn't need to make any change to my existing ad code, right?

[birdstuff]

I haven't seen any image ads on my sites yet although I signed up for them the same day they were introduced.

[shortz]

I have them enabled and in conjunction with an advertiser that I see in text also on my site, I saw one rotating with the text versions for that company for a while. During that time, I was getting the highest EPC that I've had sinc starting adsense on my site just less than three months ago.

I'm not sure if it was the theme of the ads, which were for lodging in an area that my site is somewhat slanted toward or the fact that the image ad touted a cheap upgrade for same..

I do not see as many ads of that type after about a four day run and my EPC has dropped to the toilet.

Unsure why the ads are not appearing any longer, either bad conversion for the adverts or maybe out of budget for the month.. but I'd love to see them back

[alika]

From the Google Adsense FAQ page:

Your AdSense reports will not show image ad clicks separately from text ads clicks at this time.

As image ads inventory gets bigger, I hope that this will be something that they will provide. It is important to assess the performance of image vis-a-vis text ads. If image ads do well, then G can expect more publishers to run it.

[ronin]

I've seen a higher CTR over the last seven days.

But I have no evidence that it has anything to do with image ads.

[Nikke]

I almost doubled the EPC today, and rushed to the logs to find the reason. Sure enough, the most viewed page (on quite a small site) had a very nice looking image ad.

It must have been that!

The site targets around quite a competative area, and of course it will be the highest bidder that gets the image ad displayed.

I think this might work out nicely...

[yulia]

"Google turned away seemingly lucrative banner ads early on and focused instead on less offensive text-based AdWords. The letter proved to have far higher click-through. Google AdWords CTR =5%, Banner ads CTR=0.44%" (Source: Business 2.0 June 2004)

[europeforvisitors]

Google turned away seemingly lucrative banner ads early on and focused instead on less offensive text-based AdWords. The letter proved to have far higher click-through. Google AdWords CTR =5%, Banner ads CTR=0.44%"

Google turned banner ads because it wanted to offer keyword-targeted ads on its SERPs. Remember, until Google began offering AdSense "image ads" last week, the vast majority of banner ads were run-of-network or run-of-category...and none were matched to specific keywords or keyphrases, because the online advertising industry hadn't developed a mechanism for selling and serving such ads.

[ChrisKud5]

do not use them, never will use them.

I have yet to see ZERO image ads on other adsense sites.

[Sunflux]

I've got them enabled, but have yet to see one. Of course, my subject matter is pretty niche.

[alika]

Yesterday -- the first day we saw image ads running in our leaderboards -- garnered the highest revenue ever for us since we started with the program in June last year. Impressions, EPC and CTR stayed within our normal range this month, but revenue was awesome.

While it is too early (cannot make statistical generalizations on 1 day), but we are very encouraged with the results. We will definitely keep on running image ads and see how it goes for a month.

[ChrisKud5]

"Yesterday -- the first day we saw image ads running in our leaderboards -- garnered the highest revenue ever for us since we started with the program in June last year. Impressions, EPC and CTR stayed within our normal range this month, but revenue was awesome.
While it is too early (cannot make statistical generalizations on 1 day), but we are very encouraged with the results. We will definitely keep on running image ads and see how it goes for a month.
"

Please share your findings when you do in fact have a good sample size. My first thought would be that they would not be any much better (possibly worse) preforming than text ads. It would be very worthwhile to see members results when in face a month has passed.

Might have to click on that enable button after all!

[jomaxx]

Impressions, EPC and CTR stayed within our normal range this month, but revenue was awesome.

Huh? In that case, to what do you attribute the awesome revenue?

Anyway, what I will be doing is lurking in the AdWords forum looking for discussions about the comparative cost and CTR of image campaigns. AdSense publishers just don't have the tools for measuring how they perform, but the advertisers do.

[alika]

I've been looking and looking at the stats. Everything's within normal range albeit on the high end (the days when image ads were shown are the highest for the month -- but we've had had higher CTR the past months). Same with EPC.

Last week when we started to see image ads, our revenues were pushed to the next level. As a result, revenues for the month is 26% higher compared to last month.

I just wish there are more image ads, not just in leaderboards that we currently see on our site.

[getadsensed]

I enabled image ads and didn't see any for awhile. But recently I've been seeing many on my board. One is for board skins....not really a good targetted image ad!
As for the performance there is really no way of knowing, but there is no harm in trying them!
G