Looking around Google’s Blog posts and documentation, it seems that Google’s image ads are not getting used as well as they should. Image ads for adwords provide a great way to syndicate your business’s unique image all across the content network - often at prices a lot less than it costs to advertise directly on a publishing site. Image ads offer the following features:
- Great branding opportunity (display your company’s theme or logo)
- Typically, a much higher clickthrough rate (CTR)
- Landing page configuration based on the particular keywords found in the ad group
However, there are some drawbacks to be aware of:
- Only available on the content network
- Image sizes are limited to 50k
- Your CPC or CPM bid has to be higher than the eCPM of the 4 highest text ad bidders, since the image that will display on an adsense site takes up the entire module
Nevertheless, our tests have shown that there is much opportunity in this field, and smart advertisers would be quick to take advantage and make Google Image Ads an important part of their internet marketing strategy.