Don’t let the title scare you it is a minor change and Im actually not quite sure how it will affect us.
When you create your ads you may have noticed, and hopefully used, ways to customize the look of your ads. This allows us to change colors of the fonts, background and border as well as changing the type of font we want to use and size. This allows you to make the ads look more a part of your site or make them really stand out. Most of us will use this to make the ads blend in more and this is recommend (more on this in a post to come). Changing the font to match your site along with the colors is one of the ways to do this and this is where the change comes in.
When you first start out you may not be changing these and leave it on ‘Adsense default font family’ , which looks like Veranda. If you leave it on this setting now Adsense will make a determination on what ‘ the best performing option’ will be. This will depend on things like the visitors browser and operating system as well as the ad unit itself. They didn’t mention things like your sites font. The goal is to have your ads perform at their best but my feeling is that this may not be the best option if you are concerned with the overall appearance of your site.
For the record I have not seen any effects of this on my sites, but for the most part I change the font to match my sites font (or close to it). So I am only speaking hypothetically here but if you have ads that are in your content you like them to blend in with your content (same font, color, hyperlink color) and wouldn’t want the font to be different or larger . Like I mentioned I select the font and size I want to match my site. Even though adsense says they will set it to give you’re the best performance, I’m just not ready to leave it totally up to them. Maybe it will make the ads perform a bit better but it may also mess up the look of your site which can effect other aspects such as bounce rates and retaining viewers
So what I’m I trying to tell ya? Not quite sure but to at least be aware of this new setting that took affect Dec 20th. It may be the best thing or it may hurt your overall site. I may try an experiment with one of my sites and see what it does.
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!!
A very timely post! I am a newbie with Adsense so I really appreciate the explanation and thoughts on performance.
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I hadn’t realized there was a change so this is great information. I am not sure how it will affect me, but it is good knowledge to have, nonetheless.
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I too have thought about this point. I even noticed some crazy font, and text size differences on my sites at various times. Im of the mind that google knows best on this one. They test everything and click thru stats are constantly being reviewed.
They will know which combinations of font and text size convert the best. Google only makes money when ads are clicked so their best interest is also the publishers!
Love how you did the headline. And of course, Google probably announced it with as little fanfare as possible while it affects a great number of sites (the extent to be unknown). I don’t think it will be too bad, but the problem I have is Google appears to be forgetting somewhat who made them that big.
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