Here’s more evidence that Google is really cranking up efforts to milk the AdWords cash cow for all its worth this quarter: “institutionalized” ad blending.

We’re writing to let you know about a coming change to the appearance of your Google ads. Your ads currently display the default Google color palette, Seaside (formerly known as Mother Earth). In the near future, we plan to update the default palette to Open Air, a new palette containing the same set of colors, but without the blue border. We’ve found that many publishers prefer the cleaner look of this palette and have also seen that a blended color palette performs better for them — attracting user interest while still maintaining the distinction between ads and content with the ‘Ads by Google’ label.

We all know blended ads get clicked more, mostly by accident IMHO. So if Google wanted to go all out, then why are pages on mom and pop sites disappearing in the index? Other than this tiny blunder, all signs should point to a merry second quarter earnings review :)

Via Problogger.