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Google's Smart Advertising Leads to More Clicks
The New York Times has a story discussing the sophisticated technique that allows for the spot-on advertisements Google serves up on pages across the internet. From the article: "Hidden behind its simple white pages, Google has already created what it says is one of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence systems ever built. In a fraction of a second, it can evaluate millions of variables about its users and advertisers, correlate them with its potential database of billions of ads and deliver the message to which each user is most likely to respond. Because of this technology, users click ads 50 percent to 100 percent more often on Google than they do on Yahoo, Mr. Noto estimates, and that is a powerful driver of Google's growth and profits. 'Because the ads are more relevant," he said, "they create a better return for advertisers, which causes them to spend more money, which gives Google better margins.' (Yahoo is working on its own technology to narrow that gap.)"
... that the sharpest minds of our time are putting their talents into good use. :)
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
They sure do generate a lot of clicks. Last time I checked the logs of my friends website, they were all coming from his rival. He had trouble getting any responses due to his rival wiping out his daily budget. When pointed out to Google, they claimed they had detected 'abnormal' clicks and not charged them. They refused to say whether my friend had been charged for the list of fraudulent clicks painstakingly extracted from the logs (they were easy to identify). Not only that, but the rivals clicked committed the fraud from the same computers and IPs that they used to log into their AdWords account. Google refused to take any action, or even suspend their AdWords account, despite overwhelming proof and contrary to all the claims they make on their website and they make via email. My friend stopped advertising on Google in disgust, as has everyone else he has dealings with.
You can understand why the computer did that in each case. They all make perfect sense.
The problem is that the ads run by keyword, so when you have a story about Microsoft software being unreliable, you get an add selling you... that Microsoft software (I've seen this before).
What they need is a way to tell the computer the context so it knows if a story is "good" or "bad". That way, when you have a story about VW cars blowing up randomly (fake example, obviously) instead of trying to sell you a VW car with the ads, you'd get a Ford ad instead.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I never click ads ... so they can make it a million times more effective, only the people who actually click on ads are affected. If it pays for all the free stuff on the internet, that's fine with me!
That would involve either a person at google reading the article, and coding it appropriately, or the person who posted the article coding it appropriately.
The first one is too labor intensive...They'd have to employ hundreds or thousands of people.
The second one is too suceptable to fraud...If we could trust the content originators to code correctly, anyone would be able to write a super effective search engine, but spammers and rank inflators will always be trying to game the system.
What we really need is a way for the computer to be able to figure it out itself when it scans the page, with a couple of people vetting a percentage of it's choices. You could probably do it with loaded word heuristics...eg having the word "Holocaust" trump the word "German" when it comes to targeted ads, so a page with 2 holocaust references, and 10 german references would spawn ads for Schindler's List director's cuts, and holocaust histories.
Still an interesting problem. If we could get the computer to figure out what was REALLY appropriate, Google would be almost too good. You'd put in a search and get back one result every time.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The value Yahoo provides is that you can just buy your way to the top. If you sell socks and you want to pay $1/click to get the top search result for transmission fluid, go right ahead. Google won't allow you to do that. On Google you can bid as much as you like but your irrelevant ad will never be shown. Yahoo on the other hand will happily take your money. Hence, Yahoo is for spammers.
I'm searching for a mattress right now, and I enter the terms "pillowtop", "eurotop", etc. I want to learn what those things are.
Google returns both search and ad links. The ad links are legitimately useful, especially if I plan on ordering online.
I mean, if I'm searching for a mattress, wouldn't I *want* ads?
I like that Google can provide both.
GPL Deconstructed
Hence, Yahoo is for spammers
I'm not sure how you reach that conclusion. In fact, I've found the experience is quite the opposite. Because Yahoo uses humans to review ads before posting them, it tends to be very hard to spam. With Google it's much easier. Sure, you'll quickly get weighted down, but in the short term you get your ad out there, and you can always resubmit it under a different keyword later.
sigs are a waste of space
Important comment. My gal is a massage therapist, and I've been tweaking her site for 3 years. (On our first date I was like, ok you can give me your ftp address, username and password and I will take it from here.) I also set her up with a Google Adword campaign. Over the last year several of her competitors in the area have joined in the Adword frey since it is so effective to generate business. We have also been paying more and more for Adwords lately ...
Seems that her competitors are clicking on her AdWord links to up her cost. Then I started clicking on HER competitors links to show THEM who they are messing with. (I got in trouble from my gal - she said it was bad Karma). And then the war begins, clicks flying everywhere...
One night, I met one of her main competitors at a party who admitted to this evil click practice - he was drunk off his arce ad told me at great length in great detail how he tuned his site to be at the top of google for our search category. 2 months later my gal was on top (and the evil clicks have only increased)....
It really is a war out there - and to the winner goes the spoils! The massage therapist with the smartest geek boyfriend wins!
Horns are really just a broken halo.
Do I have this right that Google's constantly augmenting stack in the Accounts Receivable department is only the vigs from their ad dealing? And from that, Google's worth is > $100b?
Badass, Google, badass.