Started with Image Ads.

Oh hum.

[Broadway]

I had one of those Adsense "telephone consultations" back in October. In hindsight, I really think the Adsense people were doing a lot of consults because there was a big push at their end to get more image ads shown. (The holidays were coming up and I think they had a lot of inventory to move, just like a butcher pushes the chicken right before it expires.)

As a result of the consult I started running image ads. Now that I've been running them for a while I thought I'd mention a few things.

Income - Image ads didn't seem to make that much difference with my site's income. Clearly there was no big bonanza, but they didn't seem to hurt things either.

Targeting - One thing I did notice was that very few of the image ads were really on-target with my niche. I saw a lot of ads for department stores, coupon sites, Kodak, all of which are off-target for my site. (Although I guess these off-target ads were paying ok otherwise they wouldn't be shown.)

When text ads were shown they seemed right on target.

I saw some of those image ads that had that targeting where if you just searched for something (like a new car), a lot of the ads you see over the next while are all for that (like ads from car companies), which were all off-target (of course on purpose).

I don't mind the image ads. I assume I'll continue with them. The only thing I miss is that now that the ad topics are off-target so much of the time it seems more like advertising than before.

Before (of course who am I kidding) it was more like "here's a listing of products or services you really might be interested in or might help you" and now its just a "McDonald's" ad.

[johnmoose]

I tried them a couple of times but went back to text only because there were just too many image ads totally unrelated to my site. I might try them again some day.

[RichTC]

Just out of interest Broadway would you care to share what return you are getting from these ads? I to have started displaying them on my site in the UK and finding the same thing here with coupon adverts etc but my main concern is earnings 1 million of page views pays about £200 does that sound about right?

[LostOne]

Tried the rich media ads (site wide 160 x 600 skyscraper above fold right of content) two weeks ago. Took off like a rocket until January 1. CPC up 50% over averages. Now 50% less than average CPC. Yes well targeted, but now it's obvious it's taking away from better paying ads.

Wait and see. Yes I had the phone consultation too, but I'm not going to litter the site with more ad sense. I basically did fine with one block above the fold in content.

Incidentally I was thought I understood those ads paid on impressions as well, but it doesn't appear so.

[farmboy]

I've been with AdSense since the beginning and I've provided AdSense two opportunities to show image ads on my sites - a few weeks each time. Poor results both times.

I don't think I'll be trying them again unless something changes significantly.

I'd like to try some small images with text beside or below type ads.

But regular image ads, No Thank you. Too much free branding for advertisers and too many unrelated images for my sites.


FarmBoy

[LostOne]

Can anyone explain why my reports show do not show the impressions I would expect them to? For instance the whole site currently averages 12,000 page views according to adsense. Yet these rich media ads only show about 700 daily by the individual ad unit and they're on every page.

Thanks

[DaStarBuG]

@LostOne:

Only the first Ad Unit counts for page views. Set your colum drop down to show Ad Unit impressions to get accurate numbers.

In regards to image Ads:

I think that image or rich media Ads can only reach their full potential if the channels are set up for placement targeting as well.
Also I would suggest to enable both image and text Ads for each Ad Unit.

Here are some stats:

On September 2nd 2010 I activated image ads for all my Ad placements so that all show Image&Text (all are opt-in for placement targeting as well).

August 2010: 0,9% of all my impressions were image Ads or Rich Media Ads
September 2010: 4,51% of all my impressions were image Ads or Rich Media Ads
Oktober 2010: 5,8% of all my impressions were image Ads or Rich Media Ads
November 2010: 10,43% of all my impressions were image Ads or Rich Media Ads

Since August the overall eCPM (RPM) raised about 167%
Since August the eCPM (RPM) for Image and Rich Media Ads raised about 565%

So this looks very promising.

[ember]

I also had the phone consult, and it was very beneficial, but turning on the image ads didn't do much. The epc is higher, but the ctr is terrible, so in the end, they pay about the same as text ads, and the text ads look better on my sites.

[HuskyPup]

From the start of image ads I have had several advertisers targetting my sites with some great trade widget ads that pay very well, apart from my current glitch with AdSense that is.

Occasionally I do seem to get some very off-topic ads such as mobile phone or flight ads but it seems to be very rare however whether that's the same outside of my UK viewing I have no idea.