Over the past year, we switched our newsletter templates to serve text advertising in many of our newsletter ad slots. After testing extensively, we determined that text ads provide better value to our advertisers in many cases. Click rates and conversion are higher overall for many offers.

Here are a couple of thoughts on why this might be:

“Banner Blindness” is quite possibly more of a problem in daily newsletters than even on websites. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness for more on this.) By the time a reader has determined that a text ad is indeed an ad, they have already started reading it, and may be receptive to the offer in the ad.

Copy sells much better than pretty pictures. Correction: good copy sells better than pretty pictures. A powerful headline, well-stated, relevant benefits, and a compelling call to action always have and still do sell product.

Copy can be customized to our readers. Banners are often developed to serve a multitude of audiences, and tend to be more homogenous as a result.

For quite some time, many of our regular sponsors have reported better results in our text newsletter inventory. If you are accustomed to running banners, we suggest you consider testing text.