Do you have any experience in using text links and banner ads?  If you do, then you might have some clue as to which one converts better.  Or you might think that it’s always better to be showing a banner than a text ad.

Well, in my experience, with numbers to prove it, I see that text ads will convert better almost 75-80% of the time with the same impressions.  People are banner blind, you may have read that in the past, but it is 100% true.  Take Google Adsense for instance.  Do you think Google was insane?  They knew exactly what they were doing with contextual advertising.  Allowing users to create ads that blend into their content was genius.  Some people were clicking those ads without even thinking about that fact that it was an ad.  On the other hand, if you have bouncing, flashing or talking banners on your site, the user is automatically turned off by them and will not click through.

I have ONE post on another blog of mine that is seen over 20,000 views in the last 6 months alone.  I also have an ad related to the content of that post, but at first started with a banner ad.  Even though there was some conversions, I soon switched it over to a text link pointed to the offer landing page.  What did I see?  Almost instantly I saw more clicks, as well as, conversions for that text ad.  Most of the readers were on my site for less than ONE minute, but that didn’t matter.  They were on the site long enough to read the text ad and click through.

Conversions went up almost 60% from when the banner ad was in the same place, with the same impressions (+/-100).  I couldn’t believe it, but that didn’t matter.  The offer was making more money now than it was with a flashy banner, even though it blended in just fine with the content.

Have you replaced a banner ad with text links and seen the same results?