I noticed my Google AdSense text-ads looked different today, specifically the 336×280 Big Box and 160×600 Wide Skyscraper ads on my of my websites.

The first text ad has a peach-like background color applied to it, see below (these are screen shots BTW):

For one of my website networks, I use a pretty basic color pallette: white background #fff, white border #fff, standard blue #00f link text, and grey #ccc for the URL. Yours may be different, as this pallette is what I’ve found works best in the last 15 months. (Always be testing!)

We’ve all seen Google test the background color in their text ads in SERP. Earlier this year I saw a pink background color, previously a peach-color (like the colour I noticed on my text-ad today coincidentally). The problem I have is they’re testing it without my permission or knowledge. I’m confident this color pallette for these particular websites is optimized pretty well and don’t think anything else would work as well. On the other hand, if Google’s testing ads, I’m sure they want to increase their CTR… your CTR, can’t complain about that.

Here’s what the 336×280 unit looked like with a CPM text ad:

(CPM text ads compete with regular text ads)

Have you noticed this as well on your ads? What are your thoughts? and have you noticed a drop in CTR? Having noticed this today, I have to tell you my CTR and earnings is down from what it should be on average at this time of the day.