Google Adsense is testing a more elegant background design for its text ads. I spotted the new text designs on our website while displaying text ad formats and seems to be visible in several ad sizes as well.
This is an interesting sign as Adsense forcing a background change in the text ads and actually making them look beautiful, but will it lead to a higher CTR and make you more money … that is what matters.
New Adsense Designs
Here is what the text ads look like on our website today –
Note that originally both these ads were set for verdana large size font, blue links, light gray url, dark black text and a white background. Now if you carefully see these ads – looks like they have Open Sans font (newly added to Adsense options), the color of the links seems a lighter blue, the text is several shades lighter, but what is noticeable is that the white background has been overridden with a shaded gray design.
Though I have observed in previous Adsense tests that they try testing different fonts and colors, I have never seen them alter the background. Another important thing to note here is that I had disabled enhancing features in ads like arrow and favicons, so probably they are trying to enhance CTR of our plain ads in some better way.
I love the text ads design as it blends very well with site design and looks less like ads, but will it make the CTR better, a detailed analysis will reveal. So what do you think about these new text ads?