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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.)"
Gee, who would've thunk it.
The ads on their own pages may work well, but AdSense is not without its problems.
Suck figs.
I remember, a day or two after Katrina, trying to track down a few friends who had fled New Orleans, and when reading my email thread in gmail I was offered a great deal on a travel package to the historic French quarter. :)
Gee, who would've thunk it.
Oh, wait this is Slashdot.
If a chair is thrown in a forest, and there are no witnesses, did Ballmer still do it?
... that the sharpest minds of our time are putting their talents into good use. :)
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Knowing what I want is ... ... knowing what I do ... knowing what I like ... knowing where I go ... what kind of person I am
... ... telling all this to someone for financial reasons.
... ?
relating Ads to it is
No sorry, this is not compliant with my personal privacy policy.
- just my opinion !
It figures that one of the most sophisticated AIs ever developed would find its use in advertising.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
Google has already created what it says is one of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence systems ever built - yeah, and all it does is figuring out how to sell more stuff. Well, congrats Google, you've built a supreme sales agent. Of-course when this system becomes self aware, it will undoubtadly understand that IQ level in humans is reversly proportionate to their willingness to buy junk and then it will start a war - war against the smarter people, while at the same time promoting genetic engineering and new breeding programs aimed at one thing, and one thing only: designing the best buyer. And then this Google thing will rule the world with an iron fist of text ads and a sweet discount program.
You can't handle the truth.
And not at just google. Here's a few great examples of placement I have seen:
- In an article about three boys being found in a trunk (a story a few months back, they were playing and got locked in) and how the father of one found them and fell to his knees, is a tower ad. on the right side about "get the perfect car" with a guy hunched down hugging the bumper of a car
- Google word ads. for "LED/LCD Digital Signage" on a forum "Sign in" page
- German car ads in a news story about a holocaust anniversary
My point is that while often great, automatic targeted ads. often seem completely off-base or even insensitive.
Great, now Slashdot's advertising advertisments.
Kayamon
Shouldn't this posting be titled: Smarter Google Ads Targets Stupid People Better.
7h3$3 4r3n'7 7h3 Ðr01Ð$ ¥0 4r3 £00|{1n9 f0r. M0v3 4£0n9. --OB1
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.
Do they allow the advertisers to reject clicks from certain countries, such as the Asian nations often known for invalid ad clicks? Or perhaps they have an option to allow the advertisers to select which countries the ads will be displayed in?
While it of course would be impossible to stop all such ads from being displayed or clicked in a certain country, it could help to cut down on the fraudulent and useless ad clicks. It would at the very least force such operations to go through a proxy in some other nation.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
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!
BTW, the funniest Adsense I saw was on the Hulk'in Lunar Eclipse page where ads were offering Lunar Real Estate for Sale - turns out some company sells "deeds" for land on the moon ... ;-)
Some of them are really funny.
;)
Ah, a reason not to use adblock on google ads; it's depriving me of a good laugh.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Yahoo costs about a third, but generates significantly less than a third the number of clicks.
In our 'where did you hear of our product' feedback from our customers, the split between google and yahoo is about 90% google, 10% yahoo. even if some percentage of people dont know the difference between yahoo and google, and even if some people just click on google because it's easy to do (the feedback switches between a type-in-your-answer and a drop down enable us to do quality of data checks, and the order of items in the drop-down, when presented, is constantly randomized).
Yahoo's miminum cost per click is an unreasonably high $10, while google's, if i understand it, has just come down in price.
All that said, the yahoo ads are still profitable for us. However, should that margin begin to thin, you can guess who is on the chopping block first. All the moreso if microsoft finally unveils a credible online ad program.
Incidentally: if you ever wanted to see an example of ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE UI design on the web, try google's overture service (or whatever the heck it's called now - i have the terms mixed up). it's not just "baseline bad", it's "textbook example of bad, bad". I use yahoo's web interface about every 3-4 weeks, and have to constantly read the instructions for basic operations, since it is never really quite clear what is going on. That's right - i have to re-read instructions that i read 3 weeks ago because the interface is really that lousy. I've never looked at a single instuction with Google.
Tell me again what value yahoo provides? For the life of me, I can't figure it out. They are what--a link index of out of date links? Free email? While I like that they send me clicks, I can not understand why they can generate such traffic to be a major internet site.
forge my referrer and user-agent
Is this possible with Internet Explorer?
Also, is it possible to turn off all third party cookies and third party popups and third party re-direction under Internet Explorer?
From a developer's point of view, Javascript forbids the introduction of third-party code [you can't load a ".js" file from a different DNS domain, even if that domain is "C:\" on your own hard drive], which is absolutely maddening when you are trying to debug something. You'd think the same rule would apply to cookies and pop-ups and re-direction.
Gullible enough to click the first link on the page after hitting "Search"? Yes.
Just because it's highlighted in a different color than the rest of the page doesn't exactly make it obvious to a novice user that it's advertising. The first link is the closest match, right?
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
Yeah, Google gives us a lot more hits, but most of them are from villages in India or China.
While I think he commented on the low-cost labour clicking ads perspective, the primary focus was on the vast, worldwide network of zombied PCs. These aren't limited to the developing world.
I've already given both my arms and legs (I type with my nose now), offered my first born son and my soul to read the NYTimes articles. What else could they possibly want?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
fsck! I forgot about that... not many 'average' users are smart enough, or industrious enough to check links.... like http://www.globalbank.com/login.asp@www.wegotu.fr/ login?newsucker=
I've had to instruct my family on such things.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Associative marketing is an interesting arena for development economics. Just searching ad content for the same keyword searching generic content is the biggest leap, and very cheap. After that, everything else is a little tweak, which costs progressively more for less efficiency gains. However, little marginal differences in efficiency can mean the difference between everyone using your search instead of your competitor's, which translates into huge market share differences.
--
make install -not war
is don't read any adverts or click on any sponsored links. If you follow that then IMHO, you will be safe from being deluged by Junk & totally superfulous information.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Actually this isn't as obvious a statement as it seems to be.
Overture - (now part of Yahoo and the ads on Yahoo search results) uses a different metric: how much the advertiser pays them - to place ads in a higher position and hence generate more clicks. There is a near-logarithmic curve that typically defines click-through rates by position of ad - regardless of content of ad. So more relevance does not really mean more clicks there.
Google earlier used a simpler metric - based on the Click Through Rate (CTR - a measure of the ad's relevance to consumers with 1% CTR meaning 1% of searchers who saw the ad felt it was relevant enough for them to click on). The earlier metric was CTR times what the advertiser paid (Cost Per Click) or CPC. In effect, Google rewarded the advertisers who paid them most money through the greatest value extracted from ads clicked.
Today it's more complex - and Google has weighted the algo towards advertisers who bid more instead of what the news item supposedly states - essentially a more "evil", Yahoo-like behaviour.
Plug: I help run Pinstorm http://www.pinstorm.com/ a firm where we do a lot of the nice math and creative stuff to help advertisers on Google and Yahoo not spend so much - but get much much:).
Mahesh
I do, when I'm shopping for something on the Internet. It's one of many good ways to find who's selling what. (I also use ResellerRatings.com, froogle, etc.)
If you search for the URL and then click it, the NY Times won't ask for any such information/limbs/children/souls (as of post time, anyway).
The catch: Knowing the URL (but there are sources for that).
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I do help run one of the larger Search engine marketing firms in the world http://www.pinstorm.com/ - we have offices in India and Singapore - and do a lot of work for clients around the world - including in India and China.
w window=1&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=ipod&btnG=Search&gl=u s
and here's what it generates in the UK http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&new window=1&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=ipod&btnG=Search&gl=u k As you can see - the editorial - or organic - results are the same - but the ads / sponsored links are entirely different.
w window=1&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=stock+broker&btnG=Sea rch&gl=in There is a way around it for those ad-clickers, of course - and that is to proxy through a US IP address - in which case, the visitor will be reported as a US visitor on your weblogs.
And this complaint comes up often here - and is not quite true.
First - Google only shows ads to viewers from a country you've picked for your ads to be shown in. Here's an example of what a search for "iPod" will generate in the US http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ne
So for an ad to be clicked on - the advertiser must ask for it to be shown in that country. i.e. You can't get Indian or Chinese clicks till you advertise there.
The sad truth is also that most advertisers are also silly enough to choose a "global" setting (check these ads appearing in India for US stock brokerages - when it is illegal for Indians to trade freely on US exchanges : http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ne
This is not to say the problem doesn't exist. It does - and it does so where these ad-clickers (not in villages, puhleeese!) in India or China or Eastern Europe are paid by US companies and given proxying software to click on their rivals ads. But most modern clickfraud tracking software (we have our own) can detect this easily.
There is something much harder to detect - impression frauding more than click frauding - where someone first removes their ad from a search term - and then does massive multiple searches on the same term - WITHOUT clicking on ads - hence decreasing the click-through rates of those competitive ads - and then places their own ads on the term to get a higher click-through and rank higher.
But there are ways to detect that too - and we do so.
If it's any consolation- most of the click fraud we detect for our American clients emanate from the US itself. Clickfrauders are equal-opportunity employers, I guess;)
Regards
Mahesh
Is the world really THAT gullible?
The story is about targeted advertising, and if you're searching on, say, "rugged 4wd" and you get ads from GM, then why would you not want to see if they have something that interests you?
In a way, getting targeted ads when you search on something can, at times, be more useful than the regular search hits. The sites they point at are more likely than not to have professional products and teams behind them, as well as stuff you can actually order there and then.
Disclaimer: I ignore ads, have disabled javascript, cookies and flash, and always force my own style sheet on everything.
sigs are hazardous to your health
Im still waiting for the naked ASCII chicks dancing over google ads. I'd click it (50-100% of course)
//WR
Man, I need to get out more...
Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know. - M. King Hubbert
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
The fact that you only see something like that once a week, actually shows how good the system is.
Oh well, what the hell...
The story is about targeted advertising, and if you're searching on, say, "rugged 4wd" and you get ads from GM, then why would you not want to see if they have something that interests you?
Because I own a Ford. Or a Toyota. Or an ATV. Or I am a kid writing a report. Or I wanted to see what owners of "rugged 4wd" vehicles had to say and I deliberately did not want to hear what a manufacturer has to say. Or because I was just bored. One of the least likely reasons for me to search for something is because "I want to buy one right now."
There seems to be two mechanisms on my web site:
a. Ordinary folks who got to my site by mistake and click on ads since they are really looking for something. Geeks who click ads since they are really relevant and they want to learn about a new product/solution.
b. Geeks who 'throw a site a click' in order to generate some compensation to the webmaster for providing useful information. This is like making a donation with someone else's money.
On my web site it is probably mostly b). I don't mind why people click, I need the money to maintain the site.
Oh well, what the hell...
Taken from http://appdomains.slashgisrs.org/article.pl?sid=05 /10/25/1419228
ClickZ article about Google using geo-targeted RSS ads. From the article: "I think there's a lot of potential in geo-targeting RSS feeds, given that the sky's the limit in the number of mobile devices it has the ability to show up on," Marshall said. "Even advertisers that may not understand it at first, I think when you explain it to them, they'd be excited.". See also our previous GeoRSS.org coverage.
Animoog.org
I never do. In my many, many years on the net I've only ever clicked once or twice on ads - and this is just to be sure, otherwise I'd say I never clicked on any. If I want to buy something I know where to find it, I don't need an ad to tell me about it. I have adblock on firefox because I *know* that I wouldn't miss a thing, I wouldn't buy a thing, I wouldn't click on an ad.
My friend said the same thing to me. Small world.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
But then, the same objections can be raised against 90% of the actual search hits you'd be getting from such a set of keywords. If your interest was more narrow, then you'd run a more specific search. Your hits, and your targeted ads, would likely grow all the more relevant.
But that is beside the point. The original question was why one would ever want to click on an ad. It is trivial to come up with an example of someone who would quite happy to do so, and my own example can, also trivially, be shown to do so in the face of your objection simply by changing "GM" in my text to "Ford" or "Toyota", or "4wd" to "ATV".
sigs are hazardous to your health
What's gullible about it? I mean, seriously - why so anti business? The internet doesn't run for free and someone has to pay the bills - that someone is business - business needs sales, ads drive sales. The fact that when I am buying cool stuff online, and using google to find it they offer me a selection of ads at the right... is actually very handy. Especially as google knows that I am in the UK, so the ads are pre-filtered down to only those companies that will sell to the UK - it saves me time and helps me find what I am looking for. Hating technology like this because someone makes money from it is just a warped worldview.
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.
I ran a blog for a year, and after six months was achieving very high traffic. However, the AdSense ads being served up to my market were so utterly irrelevant (and clicks so rare) they were compromising the quality of my blog content. I pulled AdSense, and went with a competitor.
The key problem was that AdSense places ads purely on the basis of word content, but NOT context. So, for example, if a web post mentioned the Bible or cars, I'd get ads for Christians or cars, neither of which my target audience was remotely interested in.
AdSense needs to allow users to specify the type of ads in serves up.
That one is kind of funny; one would think that the term "extension" wouldn't automatically invoke notions of hair and eyelashes. It may actually be an indication of a problem with the AI -- within the commercial world, it possibly is true that "extension" is most commonly used with hair and eyelashes even if that's quite false in general.
Clickthrough rate is an awful way to measure the success of an ad campaign. CTR doesn't do anything to help you understand how well your ads relate to sales or visitor action. A better way to do it is to use cost per conversion (sale or action). Measure how much it costs to get a sale and track it on a keyword by keyword basis. A high CPC indicates that fraud, bounces (one page view and done) or technical problems are killing your campaign.
BTW - thre are tools that can help cut down on click fraud substantially. One such tool that has been helpful is AdWatcher.
-- $G
Am I the only one who filters Google's ads? I have't seen a single ad in Google's search results or adsense anywhere in ages. Yeah, they're text, and unobtrusive, but it still doesn't change the fact I won't buy stuff from them.
Maybe not
Well, they do own several other direct revenue methods, like Google Earth Plus. And I suppose you could also claim that when they issue new stock, that's a direct sale. But by and large the majority of Google's income is advertising.
But they're certainly evaluating several different methods of making money. Google Video appears to be laying in wait for pay to view content. There's been rumors of Google replicating craigslist style content, although that appears to be more advertising. There was a suggestion that Google was intending to create something akin to paypal. That could bring in some money as well. I think that much of Google's market valuation comes from investors feeling confident that Google has what it takes to adapt and improve for a long time to come, more than any one specific revenue source.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Is it just me or does Eric Schmidt look like a cross between Neil Clark Warren from eharmony and Ralph Nader?
I rarely click on ads (unless I'm searching google for something I want to buy) so I thought no one would click on them. I put ads on my site, to see if they really worked. It turns out that about 1-2% of the visits actually yield a click, but most of those are people who check every time I post. On the other hand, my dad's site is near 5%.
Most of the ad clicks appear to be from casual visitors (e.g. off google or a comment like this)
Neither are high traffic sites, but some people do click the ads.
The secret life of Gary
My point is that the primary criterion for an ad does not show up in my search terms at all. One cannot calculate relevance for a search term that is not there. That criterion is that I am not wanting to buy anything. No one searches for "rugged 4wd, not for sale, not to purchase, please don't try to sell me anything, I HAVE NO MONEY, I don't want to buy your product, I just want to read about 4wd, please get out of my face".
And because that lack-of-desire-to-purchase criterion is not there, it is impossible to show me an ad relevant to my search. To re-word my point to hopefully clarify my position: no ad, no matter how laser-sharp targeted, is immediately relevant to me if I am not seeking to purchase.
So you're implying that this was done on purpose?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I don't click on ANY ads from google. go figure.
Calling it "one of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence systems ever built" is an extreme exaggeration.
Too bad almost all google's advertizing links are either frauds or get 0 on resellerratings.com. expresscameras.com, digitalsaver.com come to mind first. Search for laptops and you get hypersonic.com and other grey market importers which'll take your money 5 weeks before they give you a product.
The real story is they'll probably make enough money from these frauds to finally buy vasoftware/valinux/varesearch.com, hopefully before they change their name again. That'll be the ultimate takeover by formerly layed off employees.
The stupidity of the adverts is the responsibility of the advertiser, not Google... though Google does start to winnow the supremely stupid adverts - because they don't get many clicks. Adverts with few clicks will eventually get dropped by Google as being irrelevant to search users.
The system works by advertisers saying which words they want and any exclusion words. Only... most end users and a depressingly large number of agencies have no idea about using the exclusions. And Google makes it hard to identify the searches for which the advert was shown, but are irrelevant. Additionally Google will extend a search term if the advertiser has selected "broad match". Broad match is the default.. and it means that Google tries out similar search terms to see if anyone clicks. If users do click, then that search term is implicitly added. So the main problem in the "extensions" example is that the advertisers tell Google that they wanted the advert to appear whenever anyone used the word "extensions", but neglected to add "-file" or "-filename" or "-name".
Contrary to the impression given, Google does not offer behaviourally targetted adverts. Just search terms. Differences in adverts between two users usually comes down to geotargetting, and the complex effect of budgets.
Yes; I use Google and Yahoo to advertise for clients, and for our own stuff. IMO, it isn't an AI. It's a smarter system allowing more precision by advertisers, than Yahoo. Yahoo can't tell the difference between "car covers" and "car cover" (one is insurance and the other is a tarpaulin derivative) - Google can tell the difference and also see the difference between "covers car" and "cover car" (if it is meaningful) and may extend "car cover" under broad match to "auto cover", "car insurance" and "auto insurance".
I'm pretty sure that, with a team of programmers, I could replicate what Google AdWords does. Basically, user keys in search term, Google looks for adverts in the geoterritory that should appear against the search term, orders them by bid value (and click through rate), and finally checks that the advertisers budget permits another advert to be shown (by rate throttling if needed). If a user clicks, transfer to the advertiser supplied URL and rack up a fee for the advertiser.
No AI involved. Lots of fast web fronted databases, though.
Cheers, JeremyC.
--
Merjis: internet marketing by geeks : http://merjis.com/
....I have CustomizeGoogle extension.
And also Adblock extension.
They are used to weed out evil ads, including the ones from Google.
This article has nothing to do with me, and perhaps, the majority of people who has Firefox and the 2 extensions above.
You are assuming that all ads are aimed at making you directly buy something. This isn't necessarily the case - some ads might be there for spreading a message, or rallying people, or whatever.
And much of the point with having very clever AI behind this is to recognize, e.g., that you never buy anything from ads and so show you different ads in stead. If their system is sufficiently clever and they have gathered enough information about you, then this might be successful. If so, then you'd get ads that are relevant to you. Perhaps you'd get an ad for an online comics site, or news site. Or one for the upcoming Toyota owners' convention near you (even if your search didn't specify Toyota), etc.
Done right, the ad AI could become something like your own personal assistant who notifies you whenever something you might be interested in is happening.
sigs are hazardous to your health
Just because it's Google, you'll disregard anything that doubts a positive post about the company. Their use of statistical context learning is good, they do a good job, but I still fail to see how it can be called one of the most sophisticated AI applications on earth. I think any one of the computer vision projects, interactive dialog systems, NLP systems, game AIs, etc are easily more sophisticated. Is Google's work here sophisticated? Definitely. Is it really AI? Questionable.
I fail to see how contextual keyword matching, what AdSense is, and which has been done in other circles and for other purposes within NLP, approaches "the most sophisticated AI system". But no one will ever be able to convince you of that, it is Google after all!
It's the writer's job, and yours also, evidently, to convince the reader it is deserving of such an exaggeration.
I hope your internship works out for you. Of course Google has good solutions, but I don't think context and concept matching deserves such a tremendous title. I don't need to beat my chest, throw out textbook phrases or prove anything, you don't know about my education or what I do and honestly, it does even matter. Arguing over the internet is lame. My comment was simply that, understanding the techniques behind the adsense technology, it's very good at what it does no doubt, but i don't believe it's deserving of such exaggerations simply because it's Google. And as far as what you were saying about NLP, where do you think Google gets most of it's techniques it uses for context matching, the back end IR systems, etc? The field has a lot of work to do in many aspects, but it's not so easily dismissable.
Forgot the html tags, it was supposed to have paragraphs, sorry.
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I hope your internship works out for you.
Of course Google has good solutions, but I don't think context and concept matching deserves such a tremendous title. I don't need to beat my chest, throw out textbook phrases or prove anything, you don't know about my education or what I do and honestly, it does even matter. Arguing over the internet is lame. My comment was simply that, understanding the techniques behind the adsense technology, it's very good at what it does no doubt, but i don't believe it's deserving of such exaggerations simply because it's Google.
And as far as what you were saying about NLP, where do you think Google gets most of it's techniques it uses for context matching, the back end IR systems, etc? The field has a lot of work to do in many aspects, but it's not so easily dismissable.
You make a very good point. And I agree in principle that in a reasonable world carefully targeted advertising would be a great time saver. But the world is not a reasonable place. I am inundated by so much advertising, so many attempts to sell me something, each and every waking moment... I'm sick and tired of it all. I am a pretty aggressive user of ad blocking software on the net. It is just about the last bastion of control that I have left and I use it for all its worth for so long as I can.