Google Mulling Video Ads In Search Results

Bombula writes to let us know that Google is "finally succumbing to the power of the almighty dollar" and getting ready to implement image and video ads in sponsored searches.

Comments

Not "evil"

[gbulmash]

Finally "succumbing to the power of the almighty dollar"??? They gave in to Mammon quite a while ago.

Google displays video ads within a few different AdSense units. I've regularly seen video ads filling 336x280 ad spaces. Putting video ads in search results requires no technical advances. It's more a matter of laying out the search results to achieve the best balance of ad screenspace and content screenspace. So far, Google has done that pretty well with text ads in their search results.

If there's any news in this, it's watching the semantic argument that should result. People love to quote Google's tenet of "do no evil" and accuse Google of violating it wheneverGoogle opens up a new avenue for earning money. But it's not necessarily evil. It's just something they disagree with. And it's interesting, from a sociological perspective, to see how people can regard the opposing party viewpoint, in what are essentially minor disagreements, as "evil".

- Greg

Re:Not "evil"

[Gnostic Ronin]

I'll agree with you. Absolutely not a good move. I don't want to see little movies playing all over my computer screen when I search for something. And judging by other adverts online, not only will they be large, but obnoxious. They'll loop every 30 seconds. All I want is to get the links I'm looking for without being hounded by obnoxious ads.

Re:Not "evil"

[Lumpy]

Incredibly bad move. Every privoxy proxy I help maintain (20 of them, 15 at businesses with 15 -100 employees) allows google ad's. the second a customer reports a video or photo ad they get added to the privoxy global block on all customers.

I gave google a free pass because of the text ad's and the minimal bandwidth they consume. Video and image ad's are not allowed as they consumer too much bandwidth and go away.

Google, guess what? you are about to permanently lose several hundred pairs of eyes ever seeing your adverts. Hope it's worth it.

and you will lose more daily as I add installations. All it takes is a single demo to a customer and they want it installed.

Re:Not "evil"

[bladesjester]

If all good comes from God, and God is omnipotent, then nothing that happens in God's realm can be evil

This is a logical fallacy based on the mistaken assumption that because one has the power to do something, one must do it.

Being omnipotent means that you *can* do anything; not that you *will* do anything. It is completely logical for an omnipotent being to allow something outside itself to exist which also causes things that the omnipotent being itself would not do.

Re:Not "evil"

[blahplusplus]

"True, but isn't this a case of shooting the messenger? ie, the evil thing is not the ad itself but the company who put it there.."

Actually ad's have the "Evil artifact" effect, but they are really more like say environmental pollution, once you put an add up it's like adding smog to the air. While the company is technically responsible for the "smog" it doesn't make the smog itself any less a health hazard.

Now you might think I'm "splitting hairs" or "being anal" (and if I did not qualify my statement you'd have a point) but if we think about it, we are impressionable at certain times depending on our mood and repeated exposure. Hitler was correct in that: "The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."

We pick culture and attitudes up by osmosis just as much in other areas of our life as we do consciously.

We see this everday, and ads are a ubiquitous force.

Re:Awesome!

[gbulmash]

Now we can be notified about special offers and promotions that are disturbingly close to what we actually want!

This may be tongue-in-cheek, but it's disturbingly accurate too. Part of their AdWords algorithm is to start incrementally raising the price on cost-per-click ads that aren't performing well. And they break this down by keyword. So if your ad is getting a really poor clickthrough from a certain keyword, they'll make you pay more and more for the keyword until you either drop it or improve your ad's clickthrough rate.

While that business method optimizes/maximizes CPM for Google, it also means that people who just bid on 500 loosely related keywords are going to gradually whittle that down to just those keywords that are are actually performing in terms of CPC and conversion. It stands to reason that if an ad is generating more clicks and more conversions for a specific keyword, that ad is more appropriate for it. In a way, it's almost Darwinian. Ads die off in keywords where they don't succeed and flourish in ones where they do.

- Greg

Ironic

[edwardpickman]

They both figured out how to speed up searches and slow down the speed for search pages to load. I guess that's what passes for progress these days, two steps forward and two steps backward.

Google sends tiananmen square down a memory hole.

[MacDork]

That's evil. The rest is icing on the cake.

Re:Cool for them...

[d3ac0n]

I use Ask.com myself. The search results are just as good, and the additional search tools like the page preview and optional search terms bar make my searching much more efficient. Oh, and it has a much cleaner and more attractive interface than Google's.

Re:Cool for them...

[regular_gonzalez]

ask.com has made significant advances since the time it was askjeeves.com.
They are using Teoma's algorithm. In a few head-to-head comparisons I've done with Google, the results differed slightly but were about equally accurate and useful.

Re:Not "evil", just slanted.

[VGPowerlord]

No, disrupting my web browsing is evil, no matter whom the source is.

I consider all of the following disruptive:
1. In Your Face animated ads (subtle ones are OK)
2. Anything that makes sounds.
3. Flash Ads. I especially hate the Intel "follow the cursor" ads.
4. Ads that pop up when my mouse moves over a word. Chances are if your site does that, I put it on my personal blacklist.

Re:Not "evil", just slanted.

[VGPowerlord]

Oops, I forgot to list the one that may actually be relevant in this case.
5. Any search result that looks like a normal search result, but is in reality a paid search result.

you will not be distracted by ads on Google

[dulitz]

I'm the product manager responsible for the way ads look on Google. You will not be distracted by image ads or video ads on Google search results pages. Period.

Just because other companies use image ads and video ads with the _purpose_ of distracting users doesn't mean Google will do that. Images and videos can be useful and entertaining, if you see them when you want to see them. It's taken us a long time to figure out how to do it right.

BTW, how many _years_ do we have to be in business before people learn Google isn't motivated by short-term greed? Yes, we want to make money. We want to make money 10 years from now. The only way to do that is to build great products that people want. I think we've done a pretty good job of that so far, and we're not planning to stop.

Re:you will not be distracted by ads on Google

[5pp000]

Don't forget the story about the early days of Google when the developers would occasionally receive a mysterious email message containing only a number. I've forgotten the exact number, alas, but it was always the same -- 31, let's suppose. Eventually they figured out that whenever they put more than 31 words on the Google home page, they would get a message with this number 31. I don't know if the sender was ever identified, but at least at the time, Google evidently took the message to heart.

I hope this story is still part of the company culture.

All that said, your post is reassuring. I hope you really mean the part about "if you see them when you want to see them".

Re:Can't be as bad as Slashdot

[quantaman]

who take money from Microsoft and play anti-Linux FUD on the front page. I actually enjoys those ads, I mean how often is it that Microsoft sponsors its own bashing!! (well other than funding vista of course...)

Re:Not "evil", just slanted.

[watchingeyes]

If you consider something that "disrupts" you to be "evil" than you sure have a fucked up sense of morality. I tend to reserve evil for things like, you know....murder, torture, rape, oppression. Interrupting you, or even myself, for a few seconds is pretty far down on my "evil" list. Annoying, sure. Evil? Give me a fucking break.

Evil has become the new Web 2.0...a completely meaningless word that is used at the most inappropriate times.

Fine but...

[EddyPearson]

Thats all well and good, we've all got to earn a living. However, I hope they give the option to turn off video ads and replace them with images/text. Otherwise you'll see a big migration toward Yahoo from the dial-up users (and no, a lot of the world still uses dial-up, look at the 3rd world countries)

So you don't mind if American corps make a profit

[MacDork]

at the expense of the rights of people?

It's OK to be importing an unprecedented amount of Chinese goods and exploit the cheap labor for every other aspect of the western economy, but Google is evil because they set up a satellite search service that institutes the required Chinese national policies?

Strawman argument. You brought up cheap Chinese goods and labor, not I. I am in no way defending the exploitation of the chinese worker.

Since the suppression of information is happening regardless of Google's presence, that should clarify that the root of the suppression is not due to U.S. companies agreeing to Chinese government demands, but is the Chinese government itself.

Fact: Google actively filters information on behalf of the Chinese government. The great firewall of China was built with American technology. Google is a part of that.

Frankly, it's also better for U.S. interests to have a "bubble" of Google servers that have a set of blacklisted/censored material for the time being, instead of watching Google lose out entirely in the fastest growing economy to the Chinese domestic engines (e.g. Baidu)

If you'll refer back to the link I posted, you'll see that at least a few members of the US Congress do not believe Google's behavior is in the best interest of the US. Chris Smith went so far as to propose a law to make Google's actions there illegal here. (Of course, his hypocritical solution allows for the filtering of content in the United States to continue, yet would make filtering the exact same material in China illegal.)

In game theory, it seems you would consider the situation a deadlock. I would consider it a prisoner dilemma. I believe human rights are more valuable than money. You must consider money to be more important than human rights. The mods seem to agree with you. Perhaps you and the mods would like to sell your rights... or is it only the rights of other people that you consider to be less important than money?

These politicians who (while it was a popular subject) wanted to crucify Google don't have any qualms about continuing to support China by importing their cheap goods and exploiting the cheap labor costs.

You can thank almighty capitalism for that. Chinese currency manipulation is largely to blame for the "cheap" goods and labor. What follows that is inevitable in a free market. Spineless politicians are more deserving of blame in regards to "one way" free trade with China. In effect, China is exploiting loopholes in a debt based global economy in an attempt to dominate said global economy.