Text v Graphic on Adsense
Google Adsense offers advertisers and publishers the ability to place text and graphic ads. As advertisers decide to put adsense in their website on banner advertising, the question remains. What is best for advertisers and what is best for publishers? On the one hand, advertisers may feel that image ads are more responsive but less likely to drive a sale. On the other hand, text ads can convert more, while being less visible to the consumer.
Text ads are considered the least intrusive of both formats. However, does this mean that graphic advertising is better? Consumers are used to graphic advertising by logging into free email accounts and using other web services. Being used to graphic advertising, they almost programmed themselves to ignore it. Thanks to non-targeted advertising, the consumer is accustomed to brand advertising, which he generally considers less targeted.
This can lead the consumer to ignore graphic advertising assuming it will be the same. Text ads are not imposed on Internet users. By being less obvious, some people won’t see them at all, but those who see and read them are much more likely to click on them. This is for a number of reasons, but the first is that they provide more information.
Generally, someone who reads the text on a page is not going to be fully satisfied with what they read, and if they check the adsense ads they will probably read something that will complement more whatever their next intention. With an image advertisement, it’s much more of a gamble for the surfer. Graphic advertising is often paid for by printing. This is because the advertiser can try to promote their brand, instead of promoting a particularly useful service.
So they are supposed to have worse conversion rates, and with this text, ads are more effective in the eyes of consumers. However, if the text contained in an ad was placed in graphic format, which would be most effective? Well, first of all, it may assume that the surfer will be more likely to see it, but if their multiple image ads appearing next to each other, they may feel overwhelmed.
Graphic advertising is also more difficult to regulate. Take the example of Google, which allows ads to be changed frequently and without regulations. The advertiser could claim affiliation from the website they are advertising on and contain keywords such as ipod that cannot be contained in a text ad. Although more regulation and quality control can be put in place, a pornographic image for example could appear in an advertiser’s ads without knowing it.
Text ads also have a wider appeal in the market, as advertisers typically don’t have the internal resources to create an image ad, but have the internal resources to write a text ad. This could mean that a wider range of advertisers find text advertising accessible, with text ads being less burdensome for the advertiser and easy to change. Text ads are also cheaper to create for the advertiser, as a graphic ad can cost more than $200.
By removing this fixed cost, advertisers may be willing to assign a higher rate to the ad itself, which benefits both the advertiser and the publisher. Text advertising seems to be the advertiser’s preference. They pay a CTR (click through rate) and receive only targeted traffic. This eliminates the risks for businesses that previously had to worry that ads were not only viewed, but clicked and driving sales.
Since CPC (Cost Per Click) is more relevant for text ads, advertisers can gain visibility without the need for a high click-through rate to be effective. Big brands are ready to advertise in both formats, but the wide appeal of the text market inevitably makes them the winner. As flash websites disappear with image advertisements, it becomes clear that text and information are the preference of website users.