New bold "ads by Google"

[therob]

I noticed on one of my ads this morning had a new bold ads by google design. It has since disappeared. Has anyone seen this yet? It looks nice. I would describe it as bolded text with the Google name font size larger.

[Andy_Peters]

My ads had a google logo today

[Ossifer]

Not sure what effect this would have - draw more attention to the ads, or more to the Google logo?

[adfree]

1st time at my site today: Image with Verdana-like "Ads by" followed by a larger (ration approx. 1:1.5) Google logo, all b/w. As you hover over the image it spells "Ads by Gooooogle".

I like this new version better. But that's just me.

[potentialgeek]

Last week I was going to ask if anyone else thought the "Ads by Google" text was too small. A lot of wasted or invalid clicks can result from the text being overlooked or too small. It's now like fine print.

If you compare the text size Google uses in context to, say, magazines, which have ads that blend into the copy, I would suggest it has been about one font size too small. What would the FTC think? This whole idea is very basic and certainly not a new concept.

A while back I think Google may have forced the font color for the Ads by Google to white when the background is black, obviously so the text would not be overlooked as often.

Given the context of websites which allow a lot of confusion wrt navigation links, I would suggest it would be good to increase the font size of "Ads by Google" one more point. Or make it more clear in some other way that isn't too jarring.

I would certainly like to see some data, i.e., percentage of site visitors who clicked on ad links without realizing they were ads. Page layout is one of the sources of confusion, either deliberate or inadvertent. So many Adsense ads are on pages which are an awful mess. The ads are an afterthought which bring more mess to the existing chaos.

p/g

[esnet]

Noticed that some of the image ads do not have "ads by google" at all..

and some text ad boxes did have bold "ads by Google" .. the text itself looked like an image though..