Although this is not a publicised update that has been creating lots of conversation on the internet, I still feel that it is a huge update for Google Adsense considering the font that Adsense gives publishers the use of will effect the advert’s click through rate. Not long ago, Adsense opted to change the fonts of their text adverts while also adding a whole range of new fonts for publishers to use. In this article, I am going to look at all the new fonts Google have implemented into their PPC program, how this varies from before and why Google possibly did this.
For starters here is a list of all the fonts you can now change your text adverts too:
- Arial
- Times
- Verdana
- Open Sans
- Open Sans Light
- Roboto Light
- Ubuntu Light
- Lora
This list is likely to steadily increase to give websites the opportunity to blend their text adverts in more with the content of their websites. For example, I can be 99.9% sure that not every website on the internet that has Adsense ads enabled uses one of the above fonts for their default website’s font.
Putting this aside, it is good news nonetheless. The fact that there are more fonts to choose from will make it harder for web users to recognise what is an advert and what isn’t. More websites can blend their adverts into their website much easily now and the differentiation between two adverts can become quite significant now seeing that you can change the font much more and, of course, the colour and font size too. Adsense adverts are becoming more customizable and therefore less stereotypical looking adverts.
The thing that made me slightly confused was that the existing advert fonts have changed from bold to normal. For example, the below image is of the typical Adsense advert:
As you can see, the title is bold and is also underlined. Now, when you take a look at the Adsense adverts on my current website AskWillOnline.com, you will see some slight differences…
As you can see, a few things have changed such as the button below the description and the placement of the ad choices logo/brand name. However, above all that, the font has changed significantly. Instead of going bold and ‘look at me, I’m over here!’ advert, the font has changed the advert to a ‘you can read me crystal clear’ advert. It is too early to tell if this font change is going to affect the CTR of my adverts.
The one ‘coincidence’ I can draw from this cleaner and clearer looking fonts is that this update has come out at around the same time as IOS7 for Apple devices. Now, that might be a coincidence. But, I have a feeling that Adsense adverts are being viewed by millions of millions of times every day by Apple devices. Since IOS has gone for a similar clean and thin looking font system, it makes sense for Adsense to do the same since people will get use to IOS7’s new fonts and will elect to read anything with similar looking thin and lean font.
