which is better for adsense ads - text, image, or both?

[trade-show-oracle]

Google adsense gives you the option of running either text (word) or image (picture) ads, or a combination of both.

Does anyone have any experience with which works better (or is it the famous "it depends" answer).

I would think that text (words) would be more likely to be clicked, but then again, another famous saying is "a picture is worth a thousand words."

Which would you go with... text, image, or combo?

And has anyone done any testing?

Thanks.

[chrisJumbo]

"it depends" - sorry I couldn't help being a smarty pants.

I use a combo, however, on one of our other advertisers, the text links are clicked over the image like 300 to 1. It may be that people are used to text links and just following them where as they just don't realize you can click the image ads.

I use the combo in Adsense since the advertisers do create some quite attractive ads. I have just never bothered to test it.

The other ad network we use (Chitika) has a small thumbnail next to the text. Those ads were pretty well also.

cd :O)

[bhartzer]

With AdSense, I would say text ads only. If you allow image ads, then you're most likely going to be allowing ad advertiser to run image ads on your site where they pay only CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and not for the actual clicks. If you allow text ads only, then most likely you are going to get paid more.

[Sweet Tooth #3]

Before I did my actual testing on this, I did a lot of reading on it. Most articles I read swear by the text only ads. A couple I read swears by image ads only. But according to Google, you should use the combo. That way, there are more advertisers in the bidding pool for the spot. And Google claims that it will select the best performing ad of the 2 formats.

I ran a test with custom channels. They were the same page format, ads in same spot, same size etc... After 10's of thousands of impressions my text/image ads outperformed the text only ads by at least 75%. But I'm sure the *It Depends* mantra applies to this somehow.

My sites are pretty bland looking...so maybe it goes something like this...boring...ho-hum...bland...blah...sigh...OOOH, something shiney! Click!

Hard to say really. But these tests were for ads within the post content, and there's never 2 on the screen at the same time...one at the beginning and one at the end. I'm sure if you had 2 large image ads right next to each other it would look tacky.

And in the left sidebar, the skyscraper (text or text/image) didn't do crap, but a link unit does ok...probably because it looks like a menu.

I hope that helps a little, but in the end you're going to have to set up some custom channels. Upping your ctr by just .5% can be a huge boost.

[jordanmcclements]

I've also done some testing on this (though my testing is not totally exhaustive and results can vary as mentioned above depending on your site).

Look at it this way - Google does not make a quazillion dollars a day by showing ads that don't get clicked on. They have some very clever algorithms which (almost always) show whatever will make them (and you in this case) as much money as possible.

So I contend - that you can spend a hell of a lot of time messing around with the settings - but 99% of the time you are better leaving them at default and letting Google decide what works best...

The problem with the internet is that there are a load of people who pass off opinion as fact. You'll see a lot of people swearing that they get better income from one type of ad or another - but in reality it is probably just a short term fluke*.

*I haven't done enough testing to be able to say that this post is not just opinion to some extent.

[trade-show-oracle]

Thanks for the replies. They confirm what I thought... there is no agreement, and "it depends".
I'll probably stick with text only, but I agree with the logic that google is going to want their ads to be as effective as possible (or why have them), so maybe their default combo setting really is the best. hmmmm...
Anyway, thanks for the input!

[Sweet Tooth #3]

Thanks for the replies. They confirm what I thought... there is no agreement, and "it depends".
I'll probably stick with text only, but I agree with the logic that google is going to want their ads to be as effective as possible (or why have them), so maybe their default combo setting really is the best. hmmmm...
Anyway, thanks for the input!

Take 2 otherwise identical pages, 1 with the text/image, 1 with just text. Set up custom channels and see which one does better. Just make sure to give it at least several thousand impressions.

[Tubby]

maybe it goes something like this...boring...ho-hum...bland...blah...sigh...OOOH, something shiny! Click!

I love that quote . If for no better a reason that it demonstrates a webmaster attempting to place themselves in the position of a user viewing their web page) I attempt to do this sometimes.

[trade-show-oracle]

Take 2 otherwise identical pages, 1 with the text/image, 1 with just text. Set up custom channels and see which one does better. Just make sure to give it at least several thousand impressions.

Sweet Tooth, Thanks for the advice. But in my case, the saying about putting the cart before the horse comes to mind. I guess first I need to get some decent traffic, then I can run an experiment like this.

[Miklos]

It depends very much about the niche. I have two websites: one with the electronics reviews and one with the schematic electronics. Even the sites are using the same theme, the gadgets website works very well with Image Ads and the schematics one works with the text Ads. I guess it's about the visitor expectations.