Image Ads - Work Best For What Audience? Ad Design That Works Is?

[Webwork]

Do image ads work better/best in certain verticals? (What say ye, ASA?) I can see how they might work well in the travel vertical: Beach scenes, cruiseship fun scenes, etc.

Not sure how well they work in other areas. Accident lawyers foisting scenes of car crashed? Eh . .

I also concerned about image quality and relevancy. How are the ads screened or approved for relevancy? Anyone know? Just the algorithm at work? Eh . . I'm on the fence about image ads. If I'm not the one to pre-approve them then my concern is that an image can be more offputting than a text ad.

It might be idea to offer a publisher a choice of image ads to approve/disapprove for inclusion on their site. Maybe an alternative approach would be to have all publishers "at large" crowdsource/vote on ads to be approvee or disapproved for distribution as "run of network ads".

What say ye, Google? Allow for a crowdsourced model of ad approval by placing image ads in vertical markets and then allowing publishers to give a thumbs-up / thumbs-down vote, perhaps not as determinative but at least as indicative?

(Jeff runs to US Patent Office to check and/or file for patent on publisher crowdsourcing of ad approvals . . Nah.)

[celgins]

I suspect that the success of image ads will depend on how well any banner advertising works. Since Google's image ad formats follow the industry standard (i.e. 120x600, 300x250, etc.) they don't look much different than image ads from the banner networks.

However, I have seen a few low-quality GIFs and JPGs used in Google's image ads. They were, for the most part, relevant to the page content though.

But I guess there is a way to screen those image ads (sort of). When you are in the Ad Review Center under "Allowed," the image ads show up there.

According to Google:

Running ads immediately means that all new ads that are placement-targeted to your site will be allowed to appear on your pages automatically. You can then review ads and take action on them by visiting the Allowed page in the ad review center.

The alternative to running ads immediately is holding ads for review. When you choose to hold ads, you'll have 24 hours to take action on new ads before they are automatically allowed to run on your sites... [google.com ]

[incrediBILL]

Oh Jeffrey...

You'll get ads on your site running the gamut from Alka Seltzer to Treasure Island as there seems to be no way to reign in the image ad insanity because of the sheer volume of crap out there willing to spend money no matter where they're displayed.

If you want better quality, stick to text only.

[Webwork]

Thanks, y'all, for taking the time to offer a bit of guidance. ;)

(It's all still a bit of a mystery to me.)

[bumpski]

The pages on my sites tend to be fairly long. I've been quite surprised at how well an Ad unit with images and text enabled has done at the bottom of these pages. This unit typically out performs a unit just below the fold. For convenience I have links to the bottom of all my pages and the layout puts this ad unit fairly near a hot spot in the Adsense heat map. I believe many visitors have learned to look to the bottom of the page for "about", email, and other site information. Until they click on this "bottom" link they have only seen text format Adsense ads and units. It seems like an acceptable trade off to allow images in this "out of the way" location.
But yes regarding vertical markets, the image ad content is certainly all over the place, non-contextual.

The heat map
[google.com...]

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Do image ads work better/best in certain verticals? (What say ye, ASA?) I can see how they might work well in the travel vertical: Beach scenes, cruiseship fun scenes, etc.

It really depends on many factors so the best way to find out is to test it out. Image ads run in the same auction with the same criteria as text ads do. So if an image ad wins, it's because Google projected the performance for that particular ad to be the highest in the competition. If you're new to AdSense, I'd recommend reading this article on how the ad auction works:


[google.com ]

I'm also concerned about image quality and relevancy

The quality score is one part of the equation (along with the highest advertiser bid) that makes up the ad auction. This score is made up of several criteria and advertising landing page quality and relevancy are two of the three. More detail in the above link on this.

You can control placement targeted ads that are displayed on your site in the Ad Review Center either by 1) running ads immediately or 2) holding all ads for 24 hours so you can block ads before they appear on your site. More detailed instructions can be found here:

[google.com ]

Ultimately, opting in to text & image ads gives you more opportunity to earn revenue because there's more advertisers competing for your space. So it's definitely worth testing.

ASA.

[netmeg]

There's an ad builder in the AdWords toolbox now that allows an advertiser without access to his own graphic designs to "assemble" an image ad. I've seen a few of them running on my sites, and they are not pretty. But there's no way to pre-block them.

[Webwork]

Thanks, ASA, for adding your knowledge and insight. I just took the time to read through the linked section @G and a few other related articles.

Your comment "depends on many factors" leads me to ask: are there markets where image ads are simply "known to work better"?

Anybody know? When/where would it most likely be a mistake TO exclude image ads as an alternative format?

I'm going to guess image ads work best on:

• Sites related to consumer behavior with a strong emotional component: fear (images of burglars), social rejection/acceptance, etc.
  
• Sites related to goods or services where an image is worth a 1000 words: before/after images (cosmetic procedures), exotic locations, buff bodies, etc.