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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.
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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
Start a happiness pandemic
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
Start a happiness pandemic
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.
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.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
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.