EDIT: Please note that Google has updated their program policies and the use of images may not longer be allowed - use at your own risk

In this post, I will explain how to enhance Google Adsense ads with custom images. You can also download my ready-made images for use on your own site! Let's begin with some background.

In my opinion, Adsense clickthrough rate (CTR) should be at least 4%, preferably more. At first, when you have very little traffic, you may get a high CTR up to 20%, because the traffic is likely to be highly targeted for your keywords. However, as your traffic increases, an increasing proportion of it will be less targeted, and the CTR will go down. This is when you'll need to take measures to keep that CTR as high as humanly possible. Some important considerations (in no particular order) :

- Keep your text rich in keywords that interest your visitors
- Place your ads so that they are noticed, but not obtrusive
- Experiment with different colors, either blend-in, or striking. I prefer the former
- Follow the performance of your ad units with Adsense Channels

Additionally, as you become more familiar with optimizing Adsense, you will start paying attention to the cost-per-click (CPC). Optimization of Google Adsense keywords is a two-phase process consisting of 1) determining the keywords that are relevant to your message and will provide a high CTR, and 2) determining which of those keywords have the highest advertiser bids and increasing the frequency of those keywords in your pages.

More of that later, but now we focus on increasing the clickthrough rate.

Custom images for Adsense

Why do you think sexy women appear in advertisements? That's right, because they draw the eye to the ad. In a page made up mostly of text, any image will do. Placing images next to your Adsense ads will draw the visitor's eye and increase the chance that they'll notice an interesting ad and click on it, thereby generating revenue for your web page. Google is actually in the process of adding automatically generated images to adsense, but while we wait for the product, let's go ahead and add a new ad unit and enhance it with some custom images.

First, I'm going to add a new unit at the end of each page (scroll all the way down to see the unit in action). Going to Google Adsense Setup, I choose the Large Rectangle and copy-paste the code to my index.php, archive.php and single.php in the Wordpress Theme Editor. Just paste it right above the line that says –end blogs– in index.php and archive.php, and for single.php paste it just below these lines:

—paste HERE—

Note that the code examples are specifically for the Ads Minded Wordpress Theme. If you are using some other theme, it may look different. You can always e-mail me with the code for your template and I'll make some suggestions.

Now, open an image editor and create four small square images sized 50×50 pixels. Use either your own images or public domain images - don't use copyrighted images. I browsed through photos I've taken in the past, and selected some cool-looking details. Crop some nice-looking areas from your travel photos, or photos of your computer equipment. Abstract images are also great for not having to worry about their relevance to the displayed ads.

Copy and paste a Large Rectange ad to your image editor, and use the editor to align your images with the displayed ads. In this example, I use an unit with four ads, but you can alter the procedure for use with 2-ad and 3-ad units, if those appear on your pages more regularly. I've found that the four-image enhancement works pretty well with 2- and 3-ad units, too.

Google Adsense terms state that a line is required between user-added images and the Google Ad unit. So, as you can see I've added a line. Like so:

Now, just add the code for a link to this image just above your large rectangle ad unit in the Wordpress Theme Editor. Here's an example:

Make sure you use the align="left" parameter.

That's it! See the bottom of this page and my other pages for the result. You are free to use my image unit for your own ads, if you add this link to the pages displaying my images:

To download my image for your own use, just right-click the image and select download. Mac users, just drag the image to your desktop.

Check back later, and I'll add more images for use with various Adsense unit sizes and types for you to download. In the next post,[edit: Later] I'll talk more about optimizing adsense and introduce you to a Worpress plugin that helps you make the most of Adsense blogging, as well as some tricks to further optimize your keywords for maximal profits.

And this one is for Large Rectangle, 2 ads on a unit: