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.

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!