Google rolls out new ad service to extend its reach beyond search sites
Google is extending the reach of its year-old AdWords marketing program to deliver its customers’ ads to sites that are not related to Google’s search results. With the AdWords program, retailers and other marketers contract with Google to place on results pages small ads for products relevant to the search term. Under its new program, the same ads will appear on other sites where the content is relevant to the advertiser.
Google, which does business with 100,000 advertisers, says advertisers will not have to do anything to participate in the new program. If their ads are relevant to the content that a user is viewing on a site with which Google has an agreement to deliver ads, the ad will appear automatically. The ad program is based on pay per click so there is no cost to the retailer or other marketer unless a consumer takes some action.
The AdWords program has been highly successful, says Susan Wojcicki, director of product management for Google. But even though Google delivers 200 million search results a day, there is still a limited inventory of results pages on which to display ads. “Advertisers are always telling us they want more, but we have no control over how many times people come to Google to search on a term,” she says. “This gives our advertisers more reach by going to other sites.” Google also delivers search results to AOL, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo Japan and other portals and search sites.
Google uses the same technology it uses to search the web to determine the content of a page and then deliver relevant ads. “Because of search, we look at pages all the time and figure out what they’re about,” Wojcicki says. “That’s what we’re good at.”
Google will not say how many web site operators it has deals with to provide ads, but has identified the Knight Ridder group of newspapers and HowStuffWorks.com as customers. “It’s been hard for publishers to monetize their sites,” Wojcicki says. “Lots of publishers have been looking for new sources of revenue. This is an interesting way to extend our 100,000 advertisers to those sites.”
AdWords advertisers get five times the click-through rates on AdWords ads that they get on traditional banner ads and Google expects its new program to produce similar results. Wojcicki says the ads will appear on the site where ads would normally appear. They will not be pop-up or pop-under ads and will not obscure content.
Back...
