Google Upgrades AdSense

An anonymous reader writes "According to a story in the New York Times, Google will now "give advertisers more control over where their ads are shown, how they pay for them and what they look like." Author John Battelle claims "The core philosophy of Google's advertising business is that these ads are actually valuable and useful to users: look for Chevy trucks and get Chevy truck ads. Now we are in another place. It's more about branding and more about advertising other things than what you are looking for, and, cynically, it may be about being a public company that needs revenue growth."" The other thing that other submitters noted was that AdSense would also be accepting graphical advertising as well; but for display on partner sites.

Comments

It's okay

[shreevatsa]

Many of you might not like targeted ads ("privacy issues"), but face it --- Google's and Gmail's ads are far less annoying than the random irrelevant banners that, say, Yahoo puts up.

Graphics and....ANIMATION?

[Anonymous Coward]

For Internet users, the most visible change will be an expanded use of ads with graphics and animation on many of the Web sites for which Google sells advertising, rather than the short text ads that have been Google's hallmark.

Looks like Adblock's going to be getting a new entry pretty soon.

Cynically?

[ScentCone]

cynically, it may be about being a public company that needs revenue growth

Everyone raves about, say, Google Maps. I do too. But is it "cynical" for them to move around enough money to actually pay for all that great stuff? Come on, folks, we can't have it both ways. There's nothing "evil" about growing the company. And all of you Google stock holders had better come clean now if your preference is that the stock stays low!

Re:Cynically?

[NDPTAL85]

Google is making so much money because of its keen business sense and superior technology, not their "Do no evil" clause. Brin and Sergey were smart enough to understand the incredible real world immaturity of the geek community and how literally they take almost anything. I mean look at your own post. Referring to "the ends justify the means"? We're talking about an internet search engine company here, not an industrial waste disposal company. No one is going to die if Google does something controversial. The founders knew they could establish instant and long lasting street cred by claiming to aim to "Do no evil". Deep down inside however they know they'll do whatever it takes to grow their business, geek cred be damned.

Graphical Google Ads

[Ford Prefect]

The other thing that other submitters noted was that AdSense would also be accepting graphical advertising as well; but for display on partner sites.

I've seen graphical Google ads for a while - I think they were followed by bits of text saying something like 'What do you think of these? We're testing them' or similar.

Of course, I can't for the life of me remember where I saw them - anyone else seen these adverts, or was I imagining them?

I do remember that they were relatively small and non-Flash - and much smaller than the whopping big Google AdSense advert at the top of Slashdot as I type this... ;-)

Not again?

[miffo.swe]

I cant count how many times we have read that Google is tunring evil. Is it some kind of projection on the part of some people, they seem to WANT google to be evil somehow. I just dont understand why.

Re:Placement

[m50d]

Since they became evil. More seriously, a few months. I'm watching them and getting ready to jump ship as soon as they drop the blue background (make no mistake, they will do it).

Re:I couldn't agree more.

[xtracto]

[quote]
I would think these webmasters would have the sense not to put that sort of material on sites that presumably only children would be interested in.
[/quote]

I think you are wrong, yesterday I started to download an Emulator and ROMS from the NES (Nintendo ) to play with my girlfriend, I am 23 and the NES was THE console to play when I was a kid so today I am doing my PhD abroad and of course I do not have my NES with me (nor I plan to do it because of the time) but with the NES Emulators I can play with my girlfriend over the Internet some old time classic games.

What I want to show is that, like me (23 yr. old) I am sure there are other people who more or less are in my position and as you can see we are not so "young" and I guess at our age, we are quite interested in the topics of those "questionable banners".

As for me? I do not get ROMs from the WWW now, I use P2P software (like emule or bittorrent) to ge them.

Do you know what do I recommend you? Firefox + adblock, and then you can download an AdBlock fiter file son the banners will be gone and you dont have to worry about your child's privacy =o).

Re:Of course I did.

[Saeger]

I expect my children not to use their internet privileges to look at pornography. I think most any parent would agree.

Only hypocritical parents who think of their children as little innocent angels who will somehow be corrupted, would agree. If your kid is "caught" actively (vs accidently) surfing porn sites, then TALK WITH HIM/HER to let 'em know it's perfectly natural to want to look at boobies, but that the younger they are the stupider they are and so they shouldn't consider doing any of it themselves until they're older.

Punishing them only forces them to learn how to go around your back and cover their tracks. And they will.

Re:Of course I did.

[brainburger]

Of course I confronted him. I expect my children not to use their internet privileges to look at pornography.

You are missing the point, just because an ad from a porno site appears on the logs does not mean your progeny has been looking at porno. Given that even very good adblockers don't filter everything (or require lots of knowledge to use), it isn't the average surfer's fault if they get porny ads. Such is the nastiness of unregulated advertising.
Asking him to not use sites that have those ads is pointless as they could pop up on any site which deals in R0mz
(Incidentally, most of the emulator roms out there are for abandonware, so pretty much free of moral quandries about Intellectual Property).

As you run a home network with logging, why not block the domains that are bothering you? (just the ad domains, not the sites your son is learning from).

Re:You are the reason the internet is going downhi

[dangitman]

Here are the facts. Serving pages costs money. Creating content costs money. People are utterly untrustworthy when it comes to free donation of cash, even for a resource they might use everyday. The reason why you enjoy the Internet free at the point of use (ignoring the initial outlay for equipment) ie. page serving, is because ADVERTISERS PAY GOOD MONEY TO SUPPORT IT.

Here are the facts. You are about to suffer from a heart-attack or psychosis if you don't chill out a bit and look after your health. You are damaging yourself by taking things too seriously, and by having an overly bitter outlook on life.

Please consult your health professional, or at least take up yoga or Tai Chi or something, for your own sake.

Re:Ads should be distinguishable from non-ads

[cyngus]

I think that Google's old method of embedding text ads in search result pages was a little bit underhanded. While they were off in another column of the screen, they looked just like regular search results.

For a long time, I didn't even notice the ads on the right side. Further, how could you think these are regular search results? The format of the "ad column" is totally different from the search results.

Re:Ads should be distinguishable from non-ads

[BabyPanther]

I think that Google's old method of embedding text ads in search result pages was a little bit underhanded. While they were off in another column of the screen, they looked just like regular search results.

What? You couldn't tell the difference? Are you really reading Slashdot?

Adding graphics to the advertisements seems to be a logical way of extending the power of advertising while at the same time minimizing the confusion of users.

No, no, no. How about more intelligent ads? How about understanding the context of what the user is looking for and placing appropriate ads? A previous poster mentioned that they were discussing milk allergies and that they would obviously want soy or other products, but because the search engine wasn't intelligent enough, it put milk products up.

How about timing the user's interest. Why bother the user at all until they are at the point of actually wanting to do research. So, during the first three e-mails with their friend, do not put up any ad. On the fourth e-mail put up a tastefully worded ad about soy products. Wouldn't this at least convey the impression of Google trying to understand the conversation before putting ads on the e-mail?

How about something of value within the ad. I'm not talking about FREE this or that, but rather *gasp* intelligent ads that talk about their product. How about just banning the word "FREE" from all ads and make them come up with something more useful -- like "trial pack" or "we will give you something to get hooked on our product in order to bash the competition into the ground."

How about introducing some sort of user rating system or ad review service that rated ads based on usefulness to the reader? Sure, this would be difficult to pull off, but Google can do anything, right?

There are plenty of ways to make advertising more effective without resorting to flashy crap. Yes, it is more difficult. Flashy crap pays for itself more quickly and supports graphic artists, which lord knows don't get paid enough, but that's another story.

Re:I'd rather my child be an innocent little angel

[maxpublic]

The point is that pornography is degrading and turns good kids into creeps.

An empirical study published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal backing up this claim would be of interest.

Hint: Readers Digest doesn't quite make the grade.

Max

Re:I'd rather my child be an innocent little angel

[shayne321]

will never, ever tell my son that it is okay for him to watch pornography. It promotes a disgusting view of sex and women that I don't want my son to be exposed to. He will grow up with proper guidance where sex is concerned and that is more than enough.

Please, you are sticking your head in the sand.. Your son will be exposed to porno (and cigarettes, and alcohol, and gambling, and probably drugs) whether you want him to be or not. If you have taught your son to think for himself and supported him to the point that he considers himself his own person he will make the right decisions when exposed to these things.. If you shelter him and pretend this stuff doesn't exist you don't know what will happen when he finds all of this cool stuff his family never told him about.

Growing up I was exposed to porn at an early age (10 or 11) through BBSes, however I never turned in to a "sneaky pervert". I had many homosexual friends that I met through BBSes, but never had a homosexual experience or desire to be homosexual. In high school most of my friends were pot heads, but I never smoked pot. I liked hanging around them but I decided for myself I had no desire to smoke a drug to make me lazy, stupid, and hungry.. I can do that on my own.

I'm not telling you or anyone how to raise your kid, just pointing out an alternate viewpoint that you can take or leave. I've had many friends growing up that were sheltered, and watched them all go wild and end up in jail, on drugs, or in rehab when they turned 18.