Adsense gives advertisers and publishers with the opportunity to place ads in both text and graphical format.
Because publishers choose to include adsense into their site over banner ads, the question still remains. Which is the most effective for advertisers and which can be the very best for publishers?
On 1 hand advertisers might think that graphic adverts are much more responsive but much less probable to encourage a sale. On the other hand text ads may convert much more, although appearing less visible to the consumer.
Text based adverts are considered the least intrusive of the two formats. Even so does that mean that Graphic advertising is much better? People are used to image advertising from signing into free email accounts, and from using other web based services. Through being used to image advertising they've virtually programmed their selves to ignore it. Through the adverts being untargeted, the consumer is used to brand advertising that they feel is generally less purposeful. This might cause the consumer to ignore the image advert from the presumption that it'll be the same.
Text ads are not forced upon surfers. As a result of being less obvious some consumers will not see them at all, however those that do see them, and read them are considerably more likely to click on them. This is for several reasons, however the 1st is because they provide much more details. Usually, somebody who is reading text on a page isn't likely to be fully satisfied by what they read, and if they check adsense ads they'll more than likely read some thing which will further add to whatever their intention is next. With an image advertisement, it's far more of a gamble for the surfer.
Text advertisements also have a broader market appeal, as advertisers don't usually have the in house resources to produce an image advert, but do have the in house resources to create a text advertisement. This could mean that a wider selection of advertisers find text advertising accessible, through text adverts being much less burden on the advertiser, and being simple to change.
Text ads are also cheaper for the advertiser to create, where as a graphically designed advertisement could cost more than $200. By way of removing this fixed cost advertisers may be prepared to allocate a higher rate to advertising itself; thus benefiting the advertiser as well as the publisher.
Text advertising seems to be the preferred choice of the advertiser. They pay a CTR (click through rate) and only receive targeted traffic. This removes risks from companies that previously had to worry that advertisements were not only seen, but clicked on and stimulating sales. As CPC (Cost Per Click) is a lot more relevant to text adverts, advertisers have the ability to increase exposure with out needing a high click through rate to be successful.
Image advertising is often paid per impression. This is simply because the advertiser may possibly be attempting to promote their brand, instead of promoting a specifically helpful service. They therefore are assumed to have worse conversion rates, and with this text ads are in the consumers eyes much more efficient. However, if the text contained within an advert was put into graphic format, which would be the most successful? Well to start with it can be assumed that the reader will likely be more likely to notice it, however if there was multiple picture adverts appearing next to each other they might feel overwhelmed.
Graphic advertisements are also harder to regulate. Let's think about Google allowing ads to be changed often and without regulation. The advertiser could claim affiliation from the website they're advertising on, and have keywords like "ipod" which can not be contained within a text advertisement. Although more regulation and quality control might be in place, a pornographic image as an example might be made to appear in an advertiser's adverts unknowingly.
The major brands are willing to advertise in both formats however the wide market appeal of text undoubtedly makes it the winner. As flash web sites disappear with image ads, it's becoming clear that text and info is the preference of the web site users.