In an effort to “modernize” its advertising products, Google is retiring the text-only AdSense ad unit.
Google notified AdSense publishers about this change via email:
“We’re moving towards richer ad formats, phasing out text-only and display-only ad units to further improve user experience, and to fully reflect the pool of ads we have in the market.”
Google AdSense will automatically rename existing “Text ads only” and “Display ads only” to simply “Display ads.”
In addition to sunsetting text-only ads, Google announced several other changes to AdSense ads which are rolling out in the coming weeks.
Here’s a summary of everything that was announced in the email:
All ad units will be created Responsive by default, although publishers can still create custom-sized ad units if needed.
Publishers will not be able to create ad styles for new ad units. All new ad units will have Google-optimized text ad styling.
Google is removing the “If no ads available” option and will instead collapse the ad space or show a blank space.
Google is removing obsolete ad unit setting experiments. Any active ad unit experiments will stop in the coming weeks.
The experiments report in the Reports tab will also be removed.
Changing ad code type to synchronous in from the AdSense account settings won’t be available anymore.
Google notes that it has been investing heavily in understanding the best ways to increase user interest in ads.
Presumably, these changes are designed to make ads more appealing to users, which may then results in more clicks and earnings for AdSense publishers.
