What Should Be Really Obvious Display Advertising Mistakes to Avoid

I was catching up on some Google Reader reading this morning when I saw the following two AdSense ads in the footer of a very heavily subscribed RSS feed from a well-known metablogging blog:

(click on the image for full-sized version)

Now out of these two ads, which would you be more likely to click on? The good, professional-looking ad on the right-hand side, or the one on the left which is pixelated, was clearly made in MS Paint (I didn’t add those red arrows, they were already there!) and has a huge, glaring misspelling!

Running display ads in your PPC campaigns in addition to the traditional text ads is always a good idea — there’s often less competition on a keyword with display ads than there is with text ads and the CTR of display ads can be higher, too — but if you’re going to take the time to test display ads, make sure and take the extra twenty seconds to spell check your ad. And if you’re serious about making money from PPC (or online in general), find a way to acquire a copy of Photoshop and an at least remedial understanding of the program (or shell out the couple bucks it takes to hire someone who can make a killer ad for you).

Otherwise, if you end up running ads like the guy on the left has done, you’re just pissing your money away!