How AOL Convinced Google To Loosen Up A Bit On Ads
from the money,-money,-money,-money dept
For years and years, it was part of Google lore how the text ads they showed made much more sense than image ads. The text ads loaded quickly, and fit better with the fact that people were searching for information. It began to seem like image ads were "evil" in the world of Google. A year and a half ago, the company decided image ads were okay to sell for other sites, but that the search results would remain purely text. That's why it caught a lot of attention when rumors started flying that part of the Google-AOL deal was that AOL could place image ads on search results. However, as with anything, it pays to wait for the details. Apparently, while AOL did force this move, it was something Google was already planning to do at some point. It also sounds like the early experiments will be fairly limited. While (on top of the $1 billion Google is handing over) Google is giving AOL $300 million worth of free ads, AOL will still need to bid competitively on those ads -- and, at least early on, it sounds like the image ads will still be quite understated. More traditional banners might be shown on Google's image search or the Froogle shopping search -- since those are already image heavy. While it may get a lot of people talking, it's unlikely that too many people will actually care that much. For those who really do get upset about this, they'll quickly block out the ads using an adblock tool or some sort of ad-free proxy of Google. At this point, it's not like people have a better ad-free place to go anyway.
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Re: ,,,
http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/2004/10/googles-image-ads-success.html
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Re: ,,,
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Time for a new upstart ..
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It's business...
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No Subject Given
Now, the only reason I continue using Google is that there was no reason to change. Those other search engines didn't offer anything better than Google.
But they can, now.
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The Give-Away May Generate The Billion
From what I have observed of the Google bidding process, the $300MM in free advertising to AOL may generate a nice multiple of that in additional revenue. AOL may bid hard-n-heavy with this "free money." As AOL outbids others for keywords, the bidding tide will raise all boats.
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Re: The Give-Away May Generate The Billion
"...the bidding tide will raise all boats?"
What a moronic comment.
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Re: The Give-Away May Generate The Billion
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If AOL bids higher, then everyone else will bid higher.
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