As part of Google’s continued expansion of advertising to it’s various search products they have now added text ads to search results pages on the Google News search. This follows the introduction of text and display ads to Google Image Search last year. The ads are currently displayed only in the United States. According to post on the Google News Blog, Google has in recent months “been experimenting with a variety of different formats, like overlay ads on embedded videos from partners like the AP” in Google News search.
Month: February 2009
Yahoo Adds Ad Scheduling and Demographic Targeting To Search Advertising
Yahoo today announced that they would be adding ad scheduling and demographic targeting to their search advertising service in March. With ad scheduling Yahoo will support varying bids based on what time of day and day of the week ads will run, which Google and Microsoft already support in their search advertising products. With demographic bidding Yahoo will support varying bids based on age and gender of searchers, which Microsoft already supports. In addition, Yahoo has added the option to show display advertising on the Yahoo Network targeted to users who performed searches on Yahoo for a given keyword.
Apple Releases Safari 4 Public Beta
Apple has released a public beta of Safari 4 for Mac OS X and Windows. The new version introduces HTML 5 support for offline technologies, support for advanced CSS Effects including reflections, gradients, and precision masks, and improved JavaScript performance. Apple claims that new version runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3, more than 3 times faster than Firefox 3, and up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7. They also claim that Safari 4 loads html web pages 3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and almost 3 times fasters than Firefox 3. Apples performance tests were run on 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 2GB of memory running Windows Vista.
Study Finds Increased U.S. Internet Use in Q4 2008
A study by the Nielsen Company found an increase in the use of and time of use of the Internet in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2008. The study found that 161,525,000 Americans 2 years and older used the Internet monthly, an increase of 3.3 percent from the fourth quarter 2007. The study also found that the average American 2 years or older spent 27:04 hours a month on the Internet, up 3.6 percent from fourth quarter of 2007. The amount of time spent on the Internet by age was: 5:19 hours for 2-11 years old, 11:27 hours for 12-17 years old, 13:00 hours for 18-24 years old, 28:15 hours for 25-34 years old, 38:40 hours for 35-44 years old, 37:06 hours for 45-54 years old, 33:39 hours for 55-64 years old, and 26:29 hours for 65 years and older. According to the study 31 percent of Internet use occurs concurrently with television viewing. Finally, the study found the average American watched 2:53 hours of online video. The figures were calculated using Nielsen’s Internet panels, which are measured electronically.
Yahoo Adds Image and Video to Ads in Search Results
Yahoo has started a new advertising service that displays image, video, and other ads formats to the paid listings on search results pages. The services supports displaying images and video, text input boxes for searching for specific products or finding a store location, additional text links to relevant page, and brand logos. The Rich Ads for Search service is currently only available by invitation. According to a New York Times article, Yahoo is charging a monthly fee for the service. Yahoo claims that small group of advertisers that tested the service in fourth quarter of 2008 “saw click-through rates rise by as much as 25 percent” and improved conversion rates.
Google Showing More Locations On Google Maps Searches
Google has begun displaying additional locations for local searches on Google Maps. Previously, only the ten locations listed in the results panel to the left of the map were displayed on the map. Now up to 1,000 locations can be displayed on the map, according to a post on the Google LatLong blog. The locations listed in the results panel are marked with the standard teardrop icon, while the rest of the locations are marked with a small circle.
Search Engines Announce New Tag To Reduce Duplicate Content Issues
Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have announced support for a new tag to help reduce duplicate content issues. One source of duplicate content is when the same web page can be accessed from multiple URLs. The new canonical link tag specifies what is the preferred URL for the webpage. While search engines will use this as strong hint, they will use algorithmic mechanisms to compare the URLs to deal with improper use or abuse of the tag. The URL must be on the same domain, but can be on a different subdomain and can use relative or absolute URLs. The tag should be in the following format: <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com” /> and should be placed in <head> section of the webpage. Google currently supports the tag, Yahoo says that it will implement support “over the coming months”, and Microsoft says that it will provide “full support in one of our upcoming releases.”
FTC Finalizes Self-Regulatory Principles for Behavioral Advertising
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has released a finalized report (PDF) on their self-regulatory principles of behavioral advertising. Behavioral advertising involves using information about consumers’ online activities in order to deliver tailored advertising. The guidelines, which were originally issued in December 2007, were revised based on 63 comments by approximately 87 stakeholders. The major change in the principles was to remove first party, “behavioral advertising by and at a single website”, and contextual advertising, “advertising based on a consumer’s current visit to a single web page or a single search query that involves no retention of data about the consumer’s online activities beyond that necessary for the immediate delivery of an ad or search result”, from the scope of the principles. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has released a finalized version of their self-regulatory principles of behavioral advertising. Behavioral advertising involves using information about consumers’ online activities in order to deliver tailored advertising. The guidelines, which were originally issued in December 2007, were revised based on 63 comments by approximately 87 stakeholders. The major change in the final version was to remove first party, “behavioral advertising by and at a single website”, and contextual advertising, “advertising based on a consumer’s current visit to a single web page or a single search query that involves no retention of data about the consumer’s online activities beyond that necessary for the immediate delivery of an ad or search result”, from the scope of the principles. The FTC’s self-regulatory principles are group under four central tenets: Transparency and Consumer Control; Reasonable Security, and Limited Data Retention, for Consumer Data; Affirmative Express Consent for Material Changes to Existing Privacy
Promises; and Affirmative Express Consent to (or Prohibition Against) Using Sensitive
Data for Behavioral Advertising.
In an interview with the New York Times, the acting director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection Eileen Harrington called on Internet companies to better explain how they collect and use data. She said that it is commonplace for them to place that “information in the midst of lengthy and hard-to-understand privacy policies” and that “We know advertisers can get their messages across when they want to. They darn better want to get this message across: ‘This is what we are collecting and this is how we are using it.'”
January U.S. Search Share Results
Nielsen Online today released its rankings of U.S. search share for January. Overall search increased 27.5 percent year over year to 9.5 billion searches. Google had year over year increase of 40.8 percent and received 62.8 percent of searches. Yahoo had a year over year increase of 8.7 percent and received 16.2 percent of searches. Microsoft had a year over year increase of 18.3 percent and received 11.2 percent of searches.
Study Finds Over Half of Users Use Multiple Search Engines
A new study by Forrester Research found that 55 percent of U.S. online adults use multiple search engines each week. 20 percent of users only used Google each week, 8 percent only used Yahoo, 3 percent only used AOL, 2 percent only used their ISP’s search engine, 1 percent only used MSN, and 1 percent only used Ask.com. The study also found that 69 percent of users used Google each week, 50 percent used Yahoo, and 14 percent used MSN. Finally, the study found 30 percent of users identified Yahoo as their home page, 23 percent identified Google, and 7 percent identified MSN. The study was based on a survey of over 4,800 individuals.