How Text Ads Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web

securitas writes "In Sunday's New York Times, Randall Stross writes about How Google Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web and how it is largely responsible for the demise of the odious pop-under ad. From the article: "Without intending to do so, the company set in motion multilateral disarmament by telling its first advertisers in 2000: text only, please. No banner ads, no images, no animation.... Google introduced these ads at the very moment when X10 ads were strewn like chewed gum on every square of sidewalk. X10's pop-unders were accepted at mainstream sites run by companies including Microsoft, Yahoo and The New York Times." Remember that "in mid-2001, X10's company Web site was the fourth-most visited" on the Web. Thank you, Google." I'd actually argue that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made as much of a difference, if not even more.

Comments

Pop-up ads are coming back

[davidwr]

Lately thanks to animation-plugins and other technologies, I've seen a rash of annoying pop-up and "peel-back" ads. Anything that covers existing content without me explicly asking it to do so is by definition annoying.

I'm waiting for someone who has the skill to update Firefox so plugins cannot overwrite areas of the screen already used by text and graphics. Either that or put in white space for the part of the screen the ad will eventually take over, so the ad doesn't obscure the real content.

Google doing banners too

[jaiyen]

Interestingly, if you're an Adsense publisher nowadays there's a lot more options for banners and graphical ads for what used to be a text only scheme. The banners seem to get a reasonable CTR too.

I think what killed the old style banner ad was not so much text ads, but the fact that the Google text ads were well targeted compared to the moronic "hit the monkey!!" banner ads. I know many ad publishers also became annoyed at the banner ads which seem specifically designed to get a low click-through rate, thereby getting maximum branding exposure for the advertiser at minimum cost. I reckon any ad publisher is forever grateful to Google for revolutionising this system.

Re:I think pop-up blocking browsers helped too

[robnauta]

Definitely. Pop-ups and po-unders are annoying, but stoppable.
However, something which is much more annoying are those banner ads that use flash to make the ad creep out of the 400x80 banner and fill the whole browser window with a large animation for 10 seconds.

I couldn't use text ads

[MindStalker]

I remember in the early days of the bot com boom I worked at a startup where we would host websites for free in exchange for the right to add unobtrusive text advertisements. Strangly while many people were interested in having us host their sites, NO advertisers would make a deal with us. They insisted on banner or popup ads only.

Re:X10 ad museum

[lucabrasi999]

Hey, sex sells. If you check the x10 site today, you see a bunch photos that are very similar to your link.

but check some stats

[tehwebguy]

I'd actually argue that while the text ads had something to do with it, the massive growth in pop-up/under blockers made as much of a difference, if not even more.

but i'm pretty that annoying ads, even tricky pop-under ones, never had the kind of click % that google ads to.

Re:The Google-fication of the facts

[TheRealMindChild]

I bought an X10 camera only days before I got my first pop-under ad from them. It was cheap, and what their camera was, it was exactally what I wanted. Too bad no one ever told me that the wireless camera REQUIRES AN AC ADAPTER FOR POWER. What a joke. And the quality was worse than the snaps I get on my $2.99 320x240 digital camera, with poor reception to boot.

Re:I think pop-up blocking browsers helped too

[rizzo420]

some of those have a skip link so you go to view the ad and then you click the skip link right away and you're at the store... i actually like those rather than news sites that don't allow you to view unless you either pay for a username or you have to sign up for a free username...

X10 not a bad company IMHO

[tomcres]

I actually bought my TiVo Series2 from them. They were selling a 140-hour for what the 80-hour cost elsewhere. I have to admit that their aggressive advertising turned me off to even considering buying from them, regardless of price... but in the end, I'm glad I overcame my prejudice and did business with them. There was a problem with my card and their customer service was very quick to let me know, and was very courteous and understanding about the situation.

However, I did let them know that their ads tend to be very obnoxious and intrusive and they almost lost me as a potential customer because of it (they asked how I'd heard of X10-- who hasn't heard of X10 that's used a web browser??!). It's a shame when good companies alienate potential customers in that way. And it wasn't even one of their ads that got me, anyway. It was PriceGrabber or MSN Shopping or something like that. They happened to have the best price. My purchase was actually in spite of their ads, not because of them.

Everyone can earn money

[vivekg]

Another reason is Google ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site, it makes more sense to visitor to click on it. I do not think so before Google any one offered ads where any one could sign in to Adsense and earn money. So it is like small publisher grows with money and google makes more money.

But hold on Google Adsens offers Onsite Advertiser option too i.e. If some one likes your site they might able to advertises it via Google Adwords program. It is an extension of Google site targeting that makes it easier for advertisers to bid on *any* site.

Re:The Google-fication of the facts

[Pxtl]

Hmm.... that does make me wonder.

Google sells non-popup ads, and provides users with a blocker for popup ads. Personally, I can understand the valid, intelligent reasons for doing both - both giving consumers what they want.... but put together, it looks pretty damn evil.

Re:The Google-fication of the facts

[EggyToast]

I'm sure you've noticed that TONS of the newer pop-ups use graphics to look like a regular Windows window, so there's 2 x's to click. I'm sure plenty of people see one and click it, and are instead taken to the company's website.

Of course, it just makes it really funny when viewed under OS X or a Linux browser, where the windows look entirely different (OS X especially, since usually the red "close" button is sticking out on the left side of the browser, since they figure "hey, let's stick out a bit but not where the close button is!" Whoops!)

Re:Adblock

[meringuoid]

And for those that might bleat "without advertising, many sites would fail" I say Good. Let those sites fail.

Actually, you don't really have to care.

You're in a Prisoner's Dilemma situation with everyone else visiting those sites. You may choose to block, or not to block.

If you block, and everyone else blocks, you don't get bothered by ads, and the site soon fails. Bad.
If you don't block, and everyone else blocks, you get bothered by ads, and the site STILL fails. Awful.
If you don't block, and nobody else blocks, you get bothered by ads, and the site survives. Good.
If you block, and nobody else blocks, you don't get bothered by ads, and the site survives. Great!

Now, since Everyone Else will make their own choices, and you cannot significantly influence them in that choice, you might as well please yourself. You may therefore block ads with a clear conscience.

FasterFox Blocks Some Ads

[TheZorch]

FasterFox, a network optimization extension for FireFox not only improves the performance of the browser but also helps block some ads. Its can block adds that use Macromedia popups which are designed to bypass standard pupup blockers.

Don't know if this stops X10's ads or not but you can try it.

Re:The Google-fication of the facts

[ergo98]

Very true, but Google had a hand in that, as well. The Google toolbar, with popup blocking, was popular before browsers like Firefox that have integrated popup blocking were part of the mainstream.

Google's toolbar rose at the same time as Firefox did (along with a lot of other third party toolbars. Lots of pop-up blocking toolbars preceded Google in the IE space, for instance): Google doesn't need to be thanked for implementing something so obvious, and they were far from first.

Of course for the people in the know, before the browser clients started implementing this functionality it was the norm to use local proxies that blocked popups, unwanted scripts and cookies, etc. I can't even remember the name of it now, but I used one for about a year.

This is all so ridiculous anyways - for people who haven't noticed, Google has already "evolved" from text ads, to full-graphic banners. It's only a matter of time before they're animated (they probably already are), and who knows from there. Google's ascent was largely to the connected geek crowd, and they differentiated themselves from Excite! and Yahoo by having a tremendously lightweight interface - that's what got them attention. Slowly they introduced text ads, and as we've seen they've grown from there. There is nothing special or benevolent about Google's technique: It was simply their way of getting where they are, and it worked beautifully.

Re:Not just Google

[erice]

Google didn't want them because 1) they slurp bandwidth and B) they can't be tracked for content and $) because they don't fit the Google "no evil" culture.

Sort of. When Google started, it was a graduate research project. At that time, the commercial search engines were inudated with graphical ads and were quite slow because of it. Google didn't have any ads and, as largely because of that, was much more responsive. A lot of people really liked that. Google remained ad free long after it became a company, largely, I think, to avoid annoying their users. Revenue came from "private" applications, not from the Internet search engine. Eventually, Google wanted to gain revenue directly from Internet search. Banner ads would lose them users in the short run and valuable PR in the long run. Text ads were an ingenious and, non-obivious solution. Would advertizers get results? Would users still be annoyed? The rest is history.