Clever ASCII AdWords Ads Vanish From Google

A German car rental agency took a novel approach with its AdWords campaign, one that likely got their campaign, at minimum, dropped from AdWords.

Though text ads appearing alongside Google’s search results do not bring images with them, German rental firm Sixt.de found a novel way of getting around that problem.

A post at MindValley Labs blog noted the use of ASCII art by Sixt.de as a way of setting its ads off against the competition.

The tweak appeared when searching Google’s German site for ‘mietwagen’. Ad designers used the available text space for the AdWords spot to make pictures of cars out of common ASCII characters.

Compared to the usual selection of plaintext ads showing up next to Google search, the cheeky zooming vehicle ads stood out nicely.

Unfortunately, this ad campaign appears to have run its course, likely due to a Google takedown. AdWords content policy does not exclude the use of ASCII art in its assortment of banned practices, however.