Google Still Reliant On Text For Ad Placement

Plenty of multimedia options exist for giving a website or blog a unique look, but when it comes to placing AdSense units, Google needs text.

The advent of universal search enables search engines to deliver more than the ten blue links of days past. When an image or video relevant to the query is available, people may see those items appear along with the usual links.

This lead to site publishers, bloggers in particular, to embrace the idea of pictures being worth a thousand words with their posts. A new post might be an image or a video, with little added to the post in the way of text, beyond the typical enthusiastic 'check this out' message.

It turns out that doing this on a site running Google's AdSense units gives the search engine problems when it tries to drop ads alongside that content. As noted on their Inside AdSense blog:Bad targeting likely means far fewer ad clicks, and less revenue, for Google and the site publisher. Despite the passage of time, Google's business model has not changed from a need for text to place advertising. It's something to keep in mind before posting one's next cute hedgehog pictures.