Looks like Google’s getting knocked off their high horse and needs money.

I think Google is doing this for good reason, though, as it is obvious that CTR will go up somewhat from ad blending (although this is not the case for every site!). I would MUCH rather see Google’s contextual engine decipher the website’s colors and have an “auto-blend colors” option for those of us who want to generate blended ads. Even better, I would love for AdSense to have a “no color” option for backgrounds and borders — allowing the text to be placed over whatever color (or background) is behind it.

I highly doubt Google is having income issues. Their traffic is up to historical levels, they’re doing a great job of weeding junk out of their search engine. I think they are more likely starting to provide newbies with a better starting point rather than allowing them to make mistakes only to learn later once they find great sites like this one and the DP forums.

Anyone who has done the testing knows that the border needed to go, the color of the links needs to become #000080. The background needs to be white and the non-link text black. Those who test also know that the large ad unit run above the fold centered left-to-right does best.

Google must know these results too. Why have they taken so long just to set one of their defaults to the most productive format? Why haven’t they done the same with the other factors?

-James Brausch