Do Adsense Image Ads Earn More than Text Ads?

So you run Google Adsense, and everytime before you finalize the adsense code, an option occurs to select image ads / text ads or both for that particular ad unit. How many times has it occured to you - Will I earn more with image ads?

Google Adsense support does answer that question in a limited way

“While we can’t make any guarantees about the earnings potential of image or text ads, we believe that image ads will prove to be a high-performing option for publishers looking to monetize their pages. In fact, we show image ads when they have a higher value to you than the corresponding set of text ads that might otherwise run in the same slot.”

Now Inside Adwords has some specific answers

How do image ads compete with text ads?
Because an image ad takes up the entire ad unit on a site in our content network, instead of being one of four text ads on a page, we use an effective CPM, or eCPM, model to rank all ads in the auction. This ensures that both CPC and CPM targeted text and image ads are evaluated in the same manner. As always, the highest ranking ad(s) will be served to our users. If this happens to be an image ad, this means that the ad has an eCPM that is greater than the sum of the next four ads that it out ranks.

Did you know that image ads can run on content sites in both keyword-targeted and site-targeted campaigns. Smart pricing applies to image as well as text ads that are served on the content network. i.e. smart pricing automatically discounts the cost of keyword-targeted content clicks if data shows that a click is less likely to convert on that site.

I always select ads that run both text and image ads. If you really like banners as ads and select only image ads, there is a small possibility that you might see PSA’s if there are no image ads available for those keywords. If you select both they will show whichever ad type pays best. So make money quickly with Google Adsense by using both text and image ads.