Recently, Google introduced a new design for the textual AdSense ads. Consisting of icons (favicons) and arrows, these ads are rich and better in appearance than the previous design formats we’ve seen before. Only the text (or hybrid text) ads makes use of the new design styles, the image & rich media ads remain intact of it.

This new look of ads might or might not be working good for different sites – as it depends on three things overall: engagement, positioning and styling of the website.

Old & new: AdSense ad layout comparison

As most of the AdSense publishers may already know, the previous layout of text ads didn’t make use of fancy arrows or favicons. The below image shows how it used to appear:

The Old design of AdSense text ads

The new ads, rich in design, look like below:

New AdSense text ad design

In the beginning of this ad redesign from Google, the ads were showing up with square arrows and favicons periodically. As of now, I can see the rounded arrows with a more elegant design. A thumbnail image is also shown sometimes in the ad body.

In case if you think this new styling of ads is not working for you, you may turn it off. How? We’ll see step-by-step in the rest of this post.

Removing the new design icons, arrows from ads

With this latest design introduction, Google gives you a choice to show ads without these rich assets too. In order to turn off the new styling of the ads served on your website, follow the simple steps mentioned below:

1. Navigate to the Allow & block ads in your Google AdSense account dashboard.

2. Move to the Ad serving tab there.

3. Look for Enhanced text ads in Text ads option. Turn it off. (see the below screenshot)

Turning off AdSense enhanced text ads

That’s it. From now, ads on your site will be shown without the new design elements, i.e. without arrows, icons etc.