image ads

success stories or experiments?

[javahava]

has anyone had any luck or experiments using image ads through adwords? it it more/less cost-effective than using text ads?

[T_Media]

no experience here... but the general vibe I get from articles is that text ads get the best CTR these days because the general public have learned to ignore banner ads.

[lexipixel]

I've been running them on two sites for a couple months. I setup separate channels to test -- very poor CTR, (text ads in the same spots run 100:1 to 200:1 clicks)... I was hoping for a higher EPC on them, but that doesn't seem to be either.

I believe users get too much information from the image ad and don't feel the need to click to read more.

[Arnaud Destree]

From profitable to experiments...

Last year I ran some image ads campaigns.
It was profitable. 6 months later the same ads are not profitable anymore. Some ringtone ads took my place. So I experiment again. I think the real challenge it to find the right website for our ads.

[ildarius]

good if you're selling T-Shirts for example, kind of hard to find a grabbing image for IT solutions

[RhinoFish]

I encourage you to try them, sometimes, they work very well here within AdWords, both on a CPC basis for ROI oriented advertisers and on a CPM basis for branding oriented advertisers.

[edited by: RhinoFish at 3:04 pm (utc) on Mar. 11, 2008]

[lexipixel]

Just realized the question was about image ads through "Adwords", (not Adsense).

From a publisher POV, I don't like them -- as an advertiser they are probably good for low cost branding, (e.g. - design an ad that gets your brand name, site name or product info out -- if nobody clicks them, you don't pay).

If you want to generate clicks, user "leader" type messages, e.g.-

Want to know more about _______ ?

-or-

What our competitors don't want you to know...