Category Archives: Online Advertising

Google has begun testing expandable ads, ads that expand in size when clicked on, on the Google content network. The ads will be limited to expanding to double the original size and can “include a streaming video or other content designed to engage users through an interactive experience.” In addition to limiting the size of expanded ads, ads will expand only after a user clicks on the ad, ads will be required to be able to be closed by the user at any time, and ads must comply with Google’s standard AdWords image ad policies. The ads are price on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, CPC ads will only accrue clicks when a user visits the advertisers landing page and not when a user clicks to expand the ad. According to a post on the Inside AdWords blog the test is currently limited to the U.S. advertiser who advertise through Google’s 3rd Party Ad Serving program and the test will be expanded, but no details were given.

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.

During the Google’s fourth quarter financial conference call, Google’s Senior Vice President for Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg disclosed that the number of search queries that had displayed universal search results tripled in 2008. Universal search displays image, video, new, blog, and book results integrated with the standard website results. Rosenberg also said that Google had made 350 “search quality improvements” in 2008, with the “biggest addition” being the substantial increased size of the index. He also stated that mobile search traffic went up “substantially” during the year and peaked at the end of December. Finally, he said that ad coverage, the amount of queries that display ads and the number of ads displayed for those queries, had reached the level that it had been in the beginning of 2008 after having dipped during the year.

Google has announced that AdWords has added new features to the local business ads that appear in Google Maps. The info window that is displayed when a listing is clicked now provides links to get directions, view a street view, and save the location to user’s My Maps. The option for the user to receive the business’s information on their phone on in an email will be added “shortly.” Advertisers will not be charge for users using these new features. Local business ads currently are available for businesses located in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, and Spain. In addition, Google will begin to provide reporting of user interaction with local business ads ” in a few weeks.”