Of the text ad — The end

Google Adsense continues to move away from text-only ads.

Image of fresh Google Adsense ad styles that show both text and graphical elements such as logos and product images.

Is the Google Adsense text-only ad regarding to die?

Google sent an email to Adsense publishers today detailing some changes to its ads. It states:

We’re moving towards richer ad formats, phasing out text-only and display-only ad units to further improve user experience, and to fully reflect the pool of ads we have in the market. As a result, the “Text ads only” and “Display ads only” ad units in your account have been renamed to “Display ads” and from early 2019 will be updated to serve all ad types.

Text ad styles

We’re deprecating text ad styles for “Text & display ads” ad units. From now on, you won’t be able to create ad styles for your fresh ad units. Your fresh ad units will have Google-optimized text ad styling. As this feature is being deprecated, your existing ad styles will also be optimized by Google in the following months.

Google frequently adjusts based on the performance of its ads. Its text ads have become more stylized over time, adding simple elements like arrows. Now they are shifting more to include graphics and other elements.

The image at the top of this post is an example of fresh ad styles that Google states publishers might see on their websites. Note the addition of a logo with text or text overlaying an image.

While these might perform better, I doubt we’ll see many graphical elements on Google’s own search results.

Also on the wire