With more and more options are being test on us webmasters as guinea pig by Google in particular is the image ads.
Below are reasons why you should stay away from image ads.
1. Did you not remember the whole reason why Google ads get to be this big in the first place? Because at that time there are so many other advertising method using image that is intrusive, prolong the page loading time and simply does not blend with the surrounding. Came Google with text only ads, long story short, Google won, so why do you now want to go back to the dark ages?
2. On Google ads format, if you have text and image ads selected you may end up with image ads, video ads or even gadget ads. You will never know for sure what your page will look like.
3. Image ads only have one advertiser per section, text ads can have as many as 16 advertisers for example for the Medium Rectangle 300 x 250 though only 4 showing at one time (to see more you have to click the arrow). This will give your visitors more option. If they don’t like ad number 1 maybe they do number 2. With image, if they don’t like it, ignore, end of story.
4. Subconsciously people hate banners. They automatically ignore them and don’t even read what are the ads are all about. It’s like selective understanding.
5. It is very hard to blend the image ads with your site. You can only customize its border and that’s about it while appropriately formatted text ads can really look like your content.
6. Image ads will only likely to attract teenagers. They would click and as we are all aware that most teenagers are borderline poor, it will not convert. You may end up with the still much debated smart pricing.
7. AdWords are very hard to regulate. It is simply because they are paying Google rather than Adsense where they are paid by Google. On many occasion Adword advertisers doing close to prohibited activity such as putting affiliate links rather than website etc. Imagine if those sneaky advertisers were to put some sneaky image and it went through. As they say picture says a thousand words, what if it’s all bad.
8. As people read your content they usually skimmed through ads be it text or image. Text tends to convey more than image because it easily recognize structure rather than image with its free form letters.
So stay away from image ads, at least until there are more advertisers for Video and Gadget ad units
Great article indeed. Thanks, I’ll keep away now… ( Used Image ads only before
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