It can be worth experimenting

Image ads with higher cpc

[nickreynolds]

I'm always tinkering with things on my sites and generally I'm not sure it does much good. However a couple of months ago I noticed a little message from the Google elves suggesting I use more image ads as I may be missing out. Usually I ignore most of what they say ("you haven't got enough ad units on your page")

So I changed some pages' 336x280 text ads to be text/image ads. The result on two pages that I did this was that my cpc has doubled on one page and quadrupled on the other. I know I have to be vague here but let's say cpc was originally around the equivalent of $1. As these were two of my best paying pages anyway, you can imagine this has made a big difference to my overall earnings.

I now most of the time see image ads from an advertiser who is regularly doing tv ads, and so i guess they have a big budget. They don't seem to use text ads at all.

So just to say - you may do lots of tinkering and think you're wasting your time, but it may be that one change just happens to be the thing that makes a difference for your site in your niche.

[ember]

A few little changes, and yes, listening to what Google says, has made a big difference on my site.

[azn romeo 4u]

Yup, sometimes it does help to listen to them. But don't ignore your own stats that you have. Look through your adsense custom channels, and all the information that they have now in the new adsense interface.

That's the best thing about the net interface, you get so much more information to tweak and test with.

[londrum]

i think a lot of the success you have with images comes from the size of ads you make available. i tried a 436x60 at the top-right and had no luck at all, but apparently there are millions more ads available for the big 336 box and 728 leaderboard.
it's not always easy fitting the 728 onto your site though, without making it look spammy

[farmboy]

Yes, by tinkering I have learned some things that turned out good and some things that turned out not so good. For me, image ads is one of the bad.

I would be willing to give it another opportunity if I could set image ads by site instead of account wide.


FarmBoy

[ken_b]

I would be willing to give it another opportunity if I could set image ads by site instead of account wide.

Maybe use Text Only as the account default, and then allow image/text by channel?
.

[azn romeo 4u]

why dont u just create custom chnnaels for your different sites? and do it that way?

[farmboy]

Maybe use Text Only as the account default, and then allow image/text by channel?

I tried that once and image ads started showing up on channels where I didn't select image/text. I might try again sometime and see if it works now.


FarmBoy

[ember]

I tried that once and image ads started showing up on channels where I didn't select image/text. I might try again sometime and see if it works now.

Channels work well for us.

[netmeg]

For me too. But I went back to image/text on everything once I did some testing and figured out image ads were earning quite nicely for me.

[DaStarBuG]

I tried that once and image ads started showing up on channels where I didn't select image/text. I might try again sometime and see if it works now.

You need to create a new ad unit and activate image&text for this ad unit, then attach a new custom channel to it (that part is optional but recommended).

This way only the new ad units created will have image ads enabled.

[zdgn]

I've always loved display image ads and have never given up on them. Am glad too that AdSense has started paying very well for them lately.

To me, display image ads are honest and upfront look-like-ads ads -- as opposed to ugly half-hanging spammy-keyworded text ads.

In fact, some image channels are my best performing.

[JCKline]

I used to only run text ads, then for the same reason I switched to text/image. Things were great for a couple of weeks, then dropped again as if the change was never made.

[ken_b]

I tried switching a 728x90 leader board from image only to text/image. The results were really pretty poor, so after a couple weeks I switched back to image only.

[ember]

We used just text ads for years. About 6 months ago, we switched nearly all ads to image/text ads, and earnings increased by about 15%.

[zarathustra2011]

I use a mixture of image and text, and got an email from Google suggesting switching everything to image/text. I tried it for a few days, but didn't see any benefits so switched back. Yesterday was my highest earnings day ever with Google Adsense, and I'm very content with the CPC and number of clicks I'm receiving this month. Should it dramatically decrease I may experiment with Google's advice again in the future.

[bcc1234]

So I changed some pages' 336x280 text ads to be text/image ads.

Try 300x250 ad units in those spots. AdSense rep once told me that there are a lot more advertisers who supply 300x250 images (including third party networks) than 336x280. So with the 300x250 format more advertisers will be eligible to compete for your inventory which would result in higher RPM.

[farmboy]

There's an old saying something like, "I'll believe X is true when the people telling me X is true start acting like X is true"

In this case, I'll believe image ads are as great as Google seems to imply when Google starts including image ads in their ads on their search results pages.

I've tried them again since this thread started and the results are dismal.


FarmBoy