Google Officially Changes Look Of Many Ads
Google has officially changed the look of AdSense ads and the most prominent type of AdWords ad, and the change isn’t going to be perfect for everyone.
First, Google has initiated the change in AdSense it has been working on for a while, removing the “Advertise on this site” link, moving “Ads by Google” to the bottom right-hand corner, and giving it a nicer graphical look. Here’s an example of the new look, via Google’s AdSense blog:
It appears (based on my own ads) that if your ads do not have a border, then the slightly skewed area over the “Ads by Google” logo does not appear, either. Jason wonder if this is sort of evil, since it sacrifices transparency in the name of higher ad click rates. I wonder if there actually are higher ad click rates.
Do you think you can do better than Google’s design? I’ve got an interesting opportunity for anyone with some decent knowledge of Javascript/XML and an hour or two to spare. There’s no money involved (unless it winds up making some money), but it could be a fun exercise in code hacking, and a chance to learn a little more about advertising. Send me a message if you are interested.
Also, Google has changed the background color of the ads that appear on top of its search results from blue to yellow:
The reason for the change is obvious: It blends better into the page, making it hard to distinguish between ads and search results. Is that bad? Of course it is. Google’s AdWords blog explains the change, and says that they’ve also made it so you have to click the actual link, not just the blank background area. Looks like banner blindedness probably forced the change. A lot of ThreadWatch users are not happy at the change, with some claiming their traffic is down as a result.
Google is also new sending AdSense publishers monthly optimization tips, based supposedly on analysis of their accounts. My first tip was that my banned advertiser list could be costing me money, which would be true if it didn’t only contain two URLs. I doubt the system is going to be very useful, at least based on the first tips.
Google has also started a TV ads trial, testing out a system with Echostar. The system will be based on data from set-top boxes, and only charge advertisers for the people who actually watched the entirety of an ad.
Google has recently added Google Apps referrals. Get $5 for every person you get to sign up for Google Apps, Google’s web-based business software suite.
Finally, I read about this company that can help advertisers turn a Google AdWords ad campaign into a Yahoo Panama campaign in a quick automated fashion. Sounds useful
I didn’t RTFThreadWatch, but from the sound of this post, the decreased traffic is probably due to not being able to click the background area of the yellow ads.
I think the change is a bit funny, since I’m only annoyed by ads that blend in with the background of a page. I’ve often clicked inside my Internet Explorer window, only to find out that the white area I clicked was apparently part of an ad area. With the blue, now yellow ads on Google’s home page, I didn’t have that “problem”.
Either way, after reading all this, I couldn’t find any evil bits, though.
But I’d still love it if Google would have proper feedback mechanisms.
Comment by Tim | April 6, 2007
[…] April 12th, 2007 The Technology Evangelist was wondering if Google is losing sleep over the fact that Digg users, sophisticated web users according to him (something that is debatable), don’t click on ads. In a somewhat related event recently Google did all sort of fine-tuning of their ads system, probably to try to improve the click rates. […]
Pingback by Suffering from ad-blindess « Robitaille’s Blog | April 12, 2007
Ilike to start with free adsense
Comment by kenona62 | April 17, 2007