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Google Testing Banner Ads On Select Search Results
cagraham writes "Google promised in 2005 to never "ever" put banner ads on their search results, but that appears to be changing. The company confirmed to SearchEngineLand that it is running a "small experiment" involving large-scale banners on searches for Southwest Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, and Crate&Barrel, among others. The ads are being shown in less than 5% of searches, and only in the US, for now. Interestingly enough, the Google exec who wrote the no banner ads promise was Marissa Mayer, now CEO of Yahoo."
On the upside, banner ads will be pretty easy to target to make never appear with plugins.
..don't panic
It's not evil to have a banner ad. Right, shareholders?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Could we fix this? What if nobody bought stuff from the companies that advertised on the banners? I can dream, can't I...
and start being evil, or at least really really annoying.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Go ahead, add the banner ads.
I already block google analytics at my firewall. I'll just block these with something.
Google just seems to constantly get worse over time.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The linked article has a follow-on FAQ that you can click over to. That answers the question.
It's protection money. If Southwest Airlines buys the ad, Google won't put other advertising up. If they don't, any other advertiser is welcome to pay Google money to put up a text ad above the search result.
To be sure you dont visit Expidia or Orbitz or some such. At least that's what I assume the reasoning is.
Still that banner is hugely obnoxious looking (IMHO). This is a bad move by Google.
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
I thought Google had at least 10 more good years before the corporate culture take over completely.
"Dear Human Products,
Google will be placing large, targeted ads across your search results.
Thank you for your personal information.
Do Know Evil,
Google
Trolling is a art,
Google's business has always been ads. I really don't see how static banner ads are any more evil than text ads, especially when they're just running them on search results. The only way it's really any worse is that it's mildly more distracting and takes up a trivially larger amount of bandwidth. There are other competitors who don't do this if it bothers you, or you can just Adblock them. I'd be more concerned with the targeting they're probably doing over this because that's something that's arguably evil. Now if they started allowing Flash ads or ads with movement, that would bother me, sure.
I'd rather have banner ads than have 3 or 4 ads at the top that are almost indistinguishable from the search results.
On the subject of aggressive advertising...
It feels like YouTube ads have become much more common and obnoxious in the past few years. Has anyone else noticed this? I used to be content to click on a YouTube link but now each time I do a cost-benefit calculation -- is it really worth sitting through 30secs of irritating car ads or whatever just to see this little funny clip of two kittens and a tortoise? (or other material :) ).
Usually for me, the answer is now "no".
I was just in a google hangout using it as a video conference. During that conference call a particular service was mentioned. I had never heard of the service before, haven't searched for it, and yet mysteriously I'm seeing ads for it pop up all over the place undoubtedly served up by Google.
Makes me wonder....
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I'm the author of Ad Limiter, which blocks most ads in search results from Google and Bing. By default, it lets just one ad display, the best one based on our site legitimacy ratings.
So this is something else to identify, rate and block.
(I'm surprised that Google is getting into banners. Targeted search ads are much more valuable than banners. Banner ad click-through rates are so low as to barely be measurable.)
https://duckduckgo.com/
See how their ads work here: https://dukgo.com/help/en_US/company/advertising-and-affiliates
(To summarize, they are usually fine - usually 0-1 clearly marked sponsored results per page)
For many people, they simply don't understand the difference between putting a website address in the address bar and in Google's search. This leads to competitors buying ad space on the search results, hoping you'll also check out their brand.
This is a major problem with non-technical users trying to find the phone number for technical support and finding shady service companies pushing yearlong contracts. Try any AV brand + support or phone, and you'll see many other companies offering "Support for X" and making a killing.
"Could we fix this? "
Yes, start install adblock plus on every single computer within your reach. Only you can stop web advertising.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Please add a feature to let me change the background of all AD's on google so they are obvious to older people.
Now that's an interesting idea. We dim out lower-rated search results slightly, but it's so subtle visually that few people notice. We certainly could do something to make it easier to identify ads.
Ads ain't evil, they just really annoy me. And Google should know this. What is top plugin for their own browser? What is the main reason people root android? Right, ad blockers. They should know people HATE ads. Hate them with a passion that causes them to foam at the mouth at the slightest exposure.
And frankly the ad-blockers I have installed work well enough. So far the battle between advertisers and humanity is going fully in favor of humanity.
Until recently google seemed to accept that a portion of their users had the skills and desire to block all ads and let them get away with in exchange for market share. They were not going to be able to push ads on these people but at least they used their services, enabling them to grow as a company and then sell ads to those that don't mind them. (Just as slashdot allows contributors to hide ads).
That changed, ad blockers are banned from the android store. So I use firefox mobile and install a plugin for that browser and don't run programs that use ads. And waiting for a moment to root my new phone.
They are not going to push ads on me but I am perfectly happy to instruct everyone around me how to block them. Fight me google and you will find millions of nerds telling all their friends how to block them. You want to fight us? We made you what you are, we can kill you just as easily as we killed altavista. Reduce you as Yahoo has been reduced. Do you want to join the ranks of AOL?
Then keep your ads to those that don't mind them.
You would think that a company that offers their own phone to offer customers a clean phone without vendor or phone company malware would understand this. It seems sales has overtaken google as well.
Look at what happened to other companies were the sales guy was not killed when he utters the words "I got an idea". Your making billions google, be happy with it. Because there is no way in hell I am going to watch your ads. Ever. I and countless other rage filled nerds will see you dead and buried first. We did it before and unlike MS, we can do it again.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Now someone else can come along and replace Google, they have a great pitch. "No banner ads!"