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New picture rules for Adsense

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promocode
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20 Dec 06 3:30 pm

New picture rules for Adsense

Ahh, the life of an internet marketer - just when you think you've got things figured out - someone throws a monkey wrench into your plans. :lol:

Google has posted new "Ad and image placement: a policy clarification" on their blog.

As we know adding an image near your adsense ads can increase clicks substantially. G has just changed their policy saying that the images CAN'T be related to the product or service in the ad OR you have to have a border around the ads keeping the images separate OR not line the images up with the ads - details here

Time to update some sites...

PC
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benz1
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20 Dec 06 9:54 pm

 Would be interested in your comments on this Mark as you promote the use of images in the tutorial videos. Should we now avoid using images with Adsense ads?

Thanks,
Ben
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sean06
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21 Dec 06 1:46 am

 Good old Google. Sounds a bit hard to enforce though. How do google know the image is related to the ad? Are they going to check every single website with adsense on it??
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markling
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21 Dec 06 9:28 pm

 Sean's right, it does seem a bit hard to enforce. I think the point they're trying to make is that you shouldn't have misleading pictures next to your ads. Their examples are pretty over the top, but you get the picture -- if you have a picture of a banana next to an ad for grapefruits, that's misleading.

The idea is that the advertisers are paying for each click, and if what you're doing on your page results in a visitor clicking the ad and then feeling disappointed or misled when they get to the advertiser's page... then the advertiser will be losing money.

Google aren't saying *not* to use images. They're saying "make sure the viewer knows that the image isn't related to the ad". Or "make sure your images are so generic that they're not going to be misconstrued." They recommend putting borders around the images or mis-aligning them, but I think if your images are reasonably generic (for instance, on a hair style site, having images of people with hair...) then I'm guessing it wouldn't be too much of a problem.

Another thing you could do is have an obvious style for your images. Like they might all be cartoon-style, or they might all be black and white, for example. I don't think it's the actual content of the image itself that accounts for greater success at getting clicks -- I think it's just the fact that there's an image. I haven't noticed any difference between cartoon ads and photo ads, for instance.

I still recommend having small images next to your ads. Just try to keep them generic and obvious, or as google says, place borders around them.

Also, images aren't everything, the main thing is that the ads are relevant, and well positioned. I have a friend who gets slightly higher click through rates than I do, and he doesn't have images next to his ads, I might experiment with that and see how that goes. Part of that success is due to picking and cutting irrelevant ads (which you can do).

Regards,
Mark
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Last edited by markling on 28 Dec 06 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
 

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25 Dec 06 12:38 am

 Or a simple cheat to circumnavigate this is to make a link out of your image as well, to something else. Now set the Modify/Page properties/ Links/ Link colour to the border colour you want. When viewed in the browser (Firefox and IE6 or 7) the image will appear to have a border (the way these browsers show something other than text has a link).

When the humans review your page you have a border. When they click on it (and I dobt they will go that far) it will be unrelated to your ad. When viewed normally, it will appear as part of the ad.

Keep in mind a committe makes these sort of decisions and changes and a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Stands to reason there'll be stuff ups.

I think they have had cases of webmasters placing tempting but unrelated pics next to slow moving ads and making the whole thing a hot zone. The result is you click the image (eg Hot babe) and get a months subscription to Watchtower - a tad inappropriate. So they have to show the advertiser that they are doing something about it.
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