There are several Adsense formats which you can use and Adsense images are one of them. These are Adsense ads which show pictures and not text. I’ve tested these on several of my websites and…

They’ve failed pretty bad. Once I changed the images back to text such as Adsense leaderboard, the CTR (click thru rate) increased noticeably

I’ve tested this with different websites and with different places. I’ve come to the conclusion that they look too much like banners and people ignore them.

Another reason is that it proves once and for all that text works better than pictures. I remember John Reese tested that having a graphical header actually lowers the number of sales compared to a web sales pages with no graphic header

I suspected the result would be the same for Adsense but I had to test it. The results prove I was right. I’ll be interested to hear of anyone who has different results. As always, test things on your own website. You may be able to come out with a combination that works. Test, test and test