Google Adsense Ads: Text & Display vs. Text Only vs. Display Only

Brendan Flowers

Just wondering what people think is the best option to go with for Adsense Ads...Text & Display Ads, Text only Ads or Display only Ads?

I've always used Display only ads. I think they look better on the site and were more likely to attract clicks. I felt text only ads can often look untrustworthy (not sure why, just my opinion!).

However a friend of mine seems to think text only ads perform better for him than display ads. Does anyone here have an opinion on which is possibly the better option to generate revenue?

mneylon

Google has stats on what works best and are now recommending the "best" formats and sizes..
Their "heatmap" is also worth looking at

Brendan Flowers

Yeah it recommends Text & Display ads. Just wondering how accurate this is? Would it just be a generic recommendation?

Also would be good to know what people's general opinion is of text ads?

Mrs OBumble

It totally depends on your site content, and add placement.

In one site, I've an on-going experiment (using the AdSense Experiments feature) for one ad position where I strongly feel that text-ads are better, because they blend in well with the site content. In some months, the text-ads have performed far better, but other times it's been the other way around. I think the difference lies in what particularly is being advertised at the time.

In general, Google recommend selecting both and letting them decide what to show: a highly relevant text-ad based on your content may actually look less spammy that a less relevent image ad.

Something else to be aware of is that the look of text-ads has changed markedly in the last few months, to a "magazine style" (if I remember the phrase correctly) - they don't look as spammy as they used to.

Byers86

Hi guys,

A bit off topic but would anyone know the best free "build your own" website online?

Thanks,