Google's product listing ads are now available in mobile Google Image Search. They're placed above the list of image search results and look much like the shopping ads from web search. Google also shows a colorful list of related keywords you can add to your query: brands, colors, categories and more.


"Whether they're looking for a new sofa or the perfect pair of earrings, people who search and shop on their smartphones at least once a week say that product images are the shopping feature they turn to most. And it turns out, the top questions Google Images users ask us are 'What's the price of this?’ and ‘Where can I buy it?'. That's why we are introducing Shopping ads on image search," informs Google.


Here's the "shop on Google" section from web search.

Google has recently updated ad settings pages, which have a new design and more information about your options. You can still disable ads based on your interests from both Google sites and third-party sites. When you do that, you'll still see ads, but they "will not be based on data Google has associated with your Google Account, and so may be less relevant".

Until now, Google's ad settings page had 2 sections for interest-based ads on Google sites and non-Google sites. Google changed this: there are now separate pages for signed-in ads and signed-out ads. When you are signed in to a Google account, Google can use data associated with your account: Google search history, YouTube history, Google+ profile, manually added interests and more.



The section for signed-out ads has 2 separate settings for "ads based on your interests on websites beyond google.com" and "Google Search Ads based on your interests". Google uses your previous searches and browsing history to improve search ads, but you can disable this feature. AdSense ads also use your browsing history and anonymous demographic details to improve ads. Signed-out ads rely on cookies tied to anonymous data.


"You can control the ads that are delivered to you based on anonymous information by editing these settings. These ads will more likely be useful and relevant to you and your Google services, such as search," informs Google.



Google's help center has more information. "To opt out of all of Google’s interest-based ads on your browser, you'll need to opt out in 3 places: once when you're signed in to Google products, once when you're signed out, and once for ads on the Display Network ('websites beyond google.com'). The reason for the different opt-outs is that Google uses different information to target ads, depending on how you're interacting with Google and whether you're signed in with your Google account."

{ Thanks, Herin Maru. }

It looks like Google started to show warnings if you use AdBlock or AdBlock Plus, the most popular ad blockers (they have more than 50 million users). A reader from Brazil noticed this message: "Oh no, it seems like you are blocking Google's ads. These ads pay for Google products that people use every day. It's easy to deactivate ad blocking just for Google. And it won't change your ad blocking settings or other settings".

The message links to a filter that includes a long list of exceptions like "@@||www.google.com^$document" and "@@||maps.google.com^$document".


Here's a screenshot of the Google whitelist filter (it actually includes more domains):


This is pretty weird, considering that the ads were not blocked, as you can see in the screenshot. Google ads are not blocked by default in AdBlock Plus, since they're considered "acceptable ads". Some sites have speculated that Google paid AdBlock Plus to whitelist its ads, but that's not very clear.

Google Discovery also reported about this back in May, so it looks like the experiment is limited to Google Brazil, at least for now.

{ Thanks, Marcos Alexandre. }

Remember Gmail's ads that look like regular mail and are also displayed in the promotions tab? Google disabled many of the features that were available for regular messages, so you couldn't mark them as unread, flag them as spam, label them or add them to Google Tasks. The fake messages were only available in the web interface, so you couldn't find them if you used other email clients.

Now you can convert the fake messages to regular messages: just star the ads and they are saved to your inbox as messages received from [email protected]. "New! Starring Ads. Starred ads will be saved to your Promotions inbox," informs Gmail. While the messages are added to the Promotions tab, you'll also see them in the Primary tab because all the starred inbox messages are added to the Primary tab by default. You can unstar the messages, delete them, archive them (just don't send a reply).


This screenshot allows you to see both the ad and the message created from the ad after starring it. The ad is removed after a few seconds, so you don't get duplicates.


Here's the ad:


... and the message created by Google:


All the sponsored promotions that are available for your account can be found at: https://mail.google.com/mail/#pinbox.

Back in 2010, Google launched a feature that allowed local businesses to add yellow markers to the map and promote their websites. Tags were actually ads that were placed inside local search results. It was a weird way to mix organic search results with ads and this feature was discontinued in 2011.

Now Google tests a similar feature for web search results. Instead of adding links and markers, advertisers can add huge banners above their search listings, but only for navigational searches. "The banners allow brands to take over the ad space on branded search queries and essentially present a branded search results experience," reports Search Engine Land. "The team at Synrgy has learned from a source at Google that the brand image experiment is live with about 30 advertisers, including Crate & Barrel and Virgin America. The test is showing for less than 5 percent of search queries," mentions Barry Schwartz. Basically, instead of displaying ads for competitors, Google shows a huge banner for the top search result.


"We're currently running a very limited, US-only test, in which advertisers can include an image as part of the search ads that show in response to certain branded queries. Advertisers have long been able to add informative visual elements to their search ads, with features like Media Ads, Product Listing Ads and Image Extensions," explained Google.

Well, that's not exactly true. The images are added to the search results, not to the search ads. Even though the top search result and the corresponding sitelinks are grouped with the image ad and the entire section is labeled "sponsored", this is actually the top search result.

The truth is that Google has continually added features from the organic search results to the search ads and Google has also started to mix search results with ads. For example, Google Shopping results are now ads, since companies need to pay to be included in the list of results. Booking links from flights search and hotel search are sponsored links.






For some searches, Google shows so many ads that you have to scroll to find some actual search results. Here's a screenshot of a Google search page for [tablet]: I highlighted the only organic result you can see without scrolling down. The Chrome window was resized to 1063x890, so there's enough vertical space. Most laptops sold today have lower resolutions: most likely, 1366x768.

Gmail's personalized ads are nothing new. Back in 2011, Google announced that Gmail would no longer show just ads related to the message you're currently reading, but also ads related to topics you're interested in. "For example, if you've recently read a lot of messages about cameras, maybe you'd like to see an offer from your local camera shop."

I've recently noticed some Gmail sidebar ads slightly different than the experimental format from 2011. You could hide the ad by clicking the "x" icon and even check other ads by clicking the "more promotions" link. The "sponsored promotions" page actually has a permalink: https://mail.google.com/mail/#pinbox (first spotted a few months ago). If you don't see any promotion, opt in here.



The ads look like regular emails, although features like "reply" or "mark as spam" aren't available. "It's a new type of ad you can save to your inbox or forward on. If you dismiss this ad, you won't see it again." Ads have permalinks like: https://mail.google.com/mail/#ad/76002.

I've previously reported about Gmail's experiments with image ads and personalized ads, but it seems that these tests are two pieces from a puzzle: a new ad-matching system for Gmail.

New York Times reports that the new algorithms try to find better ads. "Alex Gawley, Google's senior product manager overseeing Gmail, (...) said Gmail's revamped ad-matching system, now in limited tests, analyzes context as well as the content of an individual message. It looks at what he calls 'signals in your inbox,' like whether you open messages with particular keywords and don't open those with other keywords."

Gmail will also include static image ads. "For example, an e-mailed offer for a ski package showing a skier on the slopes could be accompanied by an ad on the right side of the screen, showing a competing offer, replete with another skier coming down another slope. Mr. Gawley said the image used in the ad would be static, not animated, and would be used only in cases where the e-mail message itself showed images."

Gmail's new ads will still be related to your messages, but Google will add other signals that will make the ads an extension of your inbox. Just like Google shows small images ads next to images search results and uses your preferences to personalize ads, Gmail's contextual ads will improve using more data.

As long as the ads are relevant, moderately useful and they aren't distracting, Google is still on the right track. It might take a while to get used to the image ads, but the ad displayed below the messages and the list of messages will be the most obnoxious. "Gmail presents a single text ad when you look at an inbox view and haven't selected a particular message," according to the New York Times.

Gmail will soon start to personalize ads based on your preferences.

For example, if you've recently read a lot of messages about cameras, maybe you'd like to see an offer from your local camera shop. On the other hand, if you've reported these messages as spam, or marked them 'not important' you might not want to see that offer. Soon, some of you will start seeing fewer ads overall, and focused on subjects we hope will be important to you, at the right time.

Unlike Google Search, you can disable personalized ads from Gmail's settings page. Just make sure that this option is not checked: "Show more useful ads by using importance signals from across my messages".

"Only a few users will notice the change to begin with, but as we improve it we'll roll it out more widely. As always, ads in Gmail are fully automated - no humans read your messages - and no messages or personally identifiable information about you is shared with advertisers. We've already cut down the number of ads shown per Gmail user by more than a third, and we hope these signals will enable us to continue to show fewer, better ads in Gmail," explains Google.

Google also tests a new ad format that includes offers and coupons for your local area, which might be related to Google Offers, a service that will compete with Groupon.

Greg Sterling spotted image ads in Gmail and this seems to be a controversial Gmail experiment. A Google spokesperson said that Google "recently started experimenting with image ads on messages with heavy image content." Greg confirmed that the image ads aren't displayed next text-only messages and they sometimes appear next to HTML messages that include a lot of images, especially newsletters.



Gmail's image ads are contextually targeted, but it's unlikely that users will tolerate them well. After all, one of Gmail's selling points was that it only used relevant text ads. Here's Google's answer from 2005 to the question "What makes Gmail different?": "There are other differences in the way Gmail provides access to your email. For example, Gmail automatically groups an email and the replies to it as a conversation. That means you always see a message in its proper context. And there are no pop-ups or banner ads in Gmail, just relevant text ads and links to related pages". Google's explanation continues: "[Gmail ads] are small and unobtrusive. They don't fill half your screen and we don't make you read them just to get to your inbox. Ads are never inserted into the body text of either incoming or outgoing Gmail messages and you won't see any pop-ups or untargeted banner ads in Gmail."

It's interesting to see that a Gmail page about privacy explains that "showing relevant advertising offers more value to users than displaying random pop-ups or untargeted banner ads". The key words are "random" and "untargeted".

{ Thanks, Greg. }

Google tests a new ad block below messages. It's not available to everyone, so Google probably tests its effectiveness.

Jordon, a Gmail user who spotted the new ad format, thinks it's "a bit more direct than other GMail ads", while Daniel Spiewak finds it annoying. It's certainly more noticeable than the ads from the right sidebar and you might accidentally click it when you try to reply to a message.



{ Thanks, Websonic, Jordon and Vasu. }

The Wall Street Journal got hold of a confidential Google document from 2008 about interest-based advertising, a feature that was released last year. In addition of providing ads that match the content of a page, Google wants to improve ad quality by creating user profiles based on the sites you've visited.

Selling ads is Google's big money-maker, but the online-ad business is broadening away from Google's sweet spot, selling ads tied to the search-engine terms people use. Instead, advertisers want to target people based on more specific personal information such as hobbies, income, illnesses or circles of friends. (...) Few online companies have the potential to know as much about its users as Google. (...) Significantly, however, Google doesn't mix the separate pots of personal data. For instance, it doesn't use data gleaned from a person's Gmail account to target ads to that person elsewhere online.

Google's internal document suggests that this might change. Google could use data from properties like Gmail, Orkut and even search queries to improve ad targeting. Here's an extract from the document:

Over time, as the value of audience targeting is proven and the market reaction to these practices is realized, we will discuss the use of Search data. Google Search is the BEST source of user interests found on the Internet and would represent an immediate market differentiator with which no other player could compete. Search could be used to populate user interests. It can also be used to create new surround-search targeting options in which relevant display ads (or text ads) could be delivered on [Google Content Network] to a user within 15-60 minutes of a given search, whereby the timeliness of the ad would presumably increase its relevancy to the user.

It's important to note that the author of the memo is Aitan Weinberg, a former DoubleClick executive who is now a senior Google product manager for interest-based advertising. WSJ says that Google's executives were against using cookies to track people online, but the DoubleClick acquisition changed their perspective.

For the first time, Google had the ability to deliver ads targeted to individual people's computers. But just because it had the ability, Google didn't start using it. There was still too much internal resistance. (...) Tensions erupted during a meeting with about a dozen executives at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters about 18 months ago when Messrs. Page and Brin shouted at each other over how aggressively Google should move into targeting, according to a person who had knowledge of the meeting. (...) Mr. Brin was more reluctant than Mr. Page, this person said. Eventually, he acquiesced and plans for Google to sell ads targeted to people's interests went ahead.

Despite the internal resistance, it's tempting to cross-correlate data about users. Showing contextual ads in Gmail seemed creepy at first, but the ads turned out to be quite useful.

{ via Google Blogoscoped }

Google revealed an important secret: the revenue shares for two AdSense services. Until now, publishers didn't know the percentage of the revenue that is paid by Google.

"AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of our AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide. This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense for content ads that appear on your sites. (...) We pay our AdSense for search partners a 51% revenue share, worldwide, for the search ads that appear through their implementations."

It's interesting to note that the revenue share for AdSense for content has never changed since the service was launched, back in 2003.

Sevices like Google Search, AdWords and AdSense are usually treated as black boxes, since Google rarely reveals specific information about its algorithms.

Google AdSense's help center still says that "each AdSense publisher receives a percentage of the cost an advertiser pays for user clicks or impressions on their ad. This percentage is referred to as the revenue share. Google does not disclose the revenue share for AdSense."

Google's financial results for the first quarter of this year, show that only 30% of Google's total revenue is from partner sites and the traffic acquisition cost (TAC) is 26% of the revenue. "The majority of TAC is related to amounts ultimately paid to our AdSense partners, which totaled $1.45 billion in the first quarter of 2010." Google's partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense, of $2.04 billion. Obviously, 1.45/2.04~=0.71, which is very close to the AdSense for Content revenue share.

Google Maps has a new feature for business owners in the US: "for just $25 per month, businesses in select cities can make their listings stand out on Google.com and Google Maps with Tags". Google allows businesses to add yellow markers on the map and to promote their websites.

The new Google Maps ads don't influence ranking, but they make some of the results more visible. "Tags do not affect the rank of search results; they simply add more information when a particular user is searching," explains Google.



Until now, Google Maps ads were clearly separated from the organic search results, just like the ads from Google's web search results pages. For only $25 a month, local businesses can now customize their snippets and add a distinctive marker on the map. This features makes the distinction from search results and ads blurrier.

Google doesn't allow publishers to pay for advanced features like customizing snippets, adding rich snippets, showing thumbnails or favicons next to search results. "Google doesn't accept payment to crawl a site more frequently, and we keep the search side of our business separate from our revenue-generating AdWords service," mentions an article from Google's help center for webmasters.

In other related news, Google Local Business Center is now known as Google Places and businesses from US, Japan and Australia can apply for a Google photo shoot. "Google's photographers are specially trained to take great photos of building interiors, dealing with some of the challenges such as low lighting and tight spaces. The photographers are also trained to take panoramic pictures using fisheye and wide angle lenses that should translate into great looking pictures of your business."

Search Engine Roundtable spotted a new flavor of Google AdSense ads: featured ads. The ads include a yellow star similar to the one used for bookmarks in Google Toolbar, Firefox and Google Chrome.


According to the description from "Google in your Language", the message is used for "an ad that is determined to be particularly likely to be useful or relevant for a user".


I wonder if the new feature is related to Google's interest-based ads, which "associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. [Google] may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads."

{ The first screenshot is licensed as Creative Commons. }

Google acquired AdMob, a mobile ad company well-known for its innovative solutions to monetize iPhone apps and iPhone-optimized web sites. "AdMob is the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace, offering solutions for discovery, branding and monetization on the mobile web."

"Publishers and developers are increasingly searching for ways to make more money from their content in the rapidly evolving online mobile space. Google is working hard to provide those means of monetization so that mobile content can grow as quickly as we'd all like it to. AdMob accelerates this process for us with their talent and technology," explains Google. "Google currently makes a very small amount from mobile ads relative to our overall revenue, but the prospects for this space are excellent."

In the past year, Google has launched many feature that improved mobile ads: a new search ad format for iPhone and Android phones, ads for mobile apps, better AdSense ads for smartphones.

"Despite the tremendous growth in mobile usage and the substantial investment by many businesses in the space, the mobile web is still in its early stages. We believe that great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem. That's what has us excited about this deal," mentions a Google blog post.

Google paid $750 million for AdMob, the third biggest Google acquisition after DoubleClick ($3.1 billion) and YouTube ($1.65 billion).

Barry Schwartz mentioned last week that Google tests a new position for search ads. The ads stay closer to the organic results and they're no longer next to the scrollbar. The experiment was probably successful and the change should be visible to everyone.



Google also started to show related searches below the ads and the suggestions are commercially-oriented. It's a good way to show more relevant ads and to determine the user's intention.

Some of the ads display product listings from Google Base and Google shows a thumbnail next to the list of products.


Update. Daniel Dulitz, from Google, has an interesting comment: "It would be easy to just increase revenue. What is hard is to make ads appropriately visible when you want to see them without being in your face when you don't want to see them. People are smart -- users ignore banner ads because they've proven useless over time -- so if you just make ads more visible, without regard to their utility, it's doubly self-defeating. Very tricky business."

Google Suggest has been recently updated to include top search results and search buttons, but the most surprising additions are sponsored links. Here's how Google explains why you'll sometimes see ads below the suggestions:

"Similar to the navigational suggestions, sometimes we detect that the most relevant completion for what you're typing is an ad. When an ad is shown, we mark it with the text "Sponsored Link" and a colored background, as on the results page."


The updated Google Suggest will have an interesting side-effect: you'll see the search results pages less often. Google saves you a few clicks by suggesting search results directly from the homepage, much like Google Chrome's omnibox, but monetizing the suggestions seems out of place. The ads draw attention from the list of suggestions, they're unnecessarily large and they clutter the interface.

Hopefully, Google won't show sponsored links in the list of suggestions very often and Google will focus on adding useful suggestions like: unit conversions, results from Google Calculator, facts etc.

Side notes:
* I don't see the ads in Google Suggest, so maybe the feature hasn't been publicly launched yet.
* Is this the first time when Google shows third-party ads on the homepage?

The integration between Google Analytics and Google AdSense is a significant upgrade for AdSense's limited reports. Until now, AdSense didn't offer reports for individual pages and users had to manually create custom channels to track the performance for up to 200 pages.

The AdSense section from Google Analytics includes a lot of new information: the list of pages that bring the most important revenue, the most profitable referrers and you can find even more by creating custom segments.

Here are some things I was able to find from the reports:

* 63% of this month's revenue was from visitors who use IE, even if only 38.42% of the visits were from Internet Explorer users.


* 6.18% of the revenue was from Mac users, even if 10.24% of the visits were from Mac users.


* the visitors that come from Google Search click on the ads less than those that come from Yahoo Search and Live Search.


* new visitors are more likely to click on ads than returning visitors.


Google Analytics blog has more details about the integration and the way you can link your AdSense account with Google Analytics.

"PSAs are non-profit organization ads that are served to pages when targeted ads are unavailable, or when Google is unable to gather content from the page. Publishers do not receive earnings for clicks made on PSAs," mentions a page from Google AdSense's help center.

I noticed a Google ad from a Romanian site that promoted Google search. The ad linked to the Google search results for a historical question regarding the Romanian Independence War, but it was labeled as "Public Service Ad". Since when is Google a non-profit organization?


It's not the first time when Google uses public service ads to promote its own services. Last year, Google promoted a special page about the US elections using public service ads.

According to Wikipedia, "public service advertising is the use of commercial advertising techniques for non-commercial purposes. (...) Such advertising is generally produced and distributed on a cooperative basis by governmental agencies or nonprofit organizations acting in concert with private advertising and mass media companies. In most cases, the nonprofit provides the programming that is to be advertised, while the participating advertising agency and media companies provide creative services, media planning, and dissemination services on a pro bono basis."

{ Thanks, Philipp. }

Google started to display text ads above the search results from Picasa Web Albums. In the recent months, Google turned to the services that weren't yet monetized to improve its financial performances: Google Image Search, Google News, Google Finance and now Picasa Web Albums.


"We've been testing different advertising formats for years (some have been more successful than others), and over the next few months, you'll see us continuing to experiment with new ads in new places. (...) Whenever we make changes like these, we carefully evaluate users' reactions to ensure we're holding true to our basic principles: that ads by Google should always be relevant and useful. Of course, these experiments benefit Google because they generate revenue from new sources — but by ensuring that we show the right ads at the right time to the right people, we'll add value for users too," explained Google in November.

Now that the revenues from advertising grow much slower than in the past, Google will probably launch more paid services like the App Engine or Google Apps Premier Edition. Even Google Checkout, a service that has been subsidized by Google for years, will use the same processing fees as PayPal from May.