JenSense

AdSense has decided to celebrate Chinese New Year, and the Year of the Dog, with a dog doodle in the AdSense ad units.

This image has been showing in a variety of different ad units, including leaderboards and large rectangles.

A member on Digital-Point spotted a different dog doodle in an ad unit.

(View the thread for the full size).

It is worth noting that this new themed ad unit does NOT override a publisher’s chosen styling of an ad unit, something that made many publishers opt out of themed ad units when the Christmas themed ad units overrode a publishers chosen settings by adding a coordinating (to the doodles) border to the ad unit… something publishers complained caused a reduction in CTR rate. It appears that Google took that feedback into account with these new Chinese New Year ad units. I suspect they will be watching to see how many publishers opt back into the themed ad units program.

I am unsure how long these ad units will be running for, but likely for not more than a few days, with Chinese New Year being celebrated on Sunday, January 29, 2006.