Slashdot Mirror
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. :)
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
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 ... ;-)
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.
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
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
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 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.
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