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Google Businesses The Internet The Almighty Buck

Google To Release AdWords API 92

Posted by Hemos from the what-will-become-of-this dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Good Morning Silicon Valley reports that Google is planning to release an API for AdWords. Apparently, the company secretly brought 1,800 marketing and sales people to San Francisco last week to debrief them on the initiative."
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Google To Release AdWords API More

Google To Release AdWords API

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  • About Time? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:03AM (#11454462)
    Adwords has always seemed a bit rudimentary in the way it has worked in looked. The jscript page include to the way it is displayed. Even nicely layed out sites that rely on it, it has always felt out of place. Why not sooner?

    • Re:About Time? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by chris09876 ( 643289 )
      There are still issues though - the API is only for advertisers (not for publishers). ...it's always bothered me how they don't provide an ssl version of the javascript code. If you want to use their ads on an ssl'd page, your users get a popup message telling them that not all elements are secured.

      • Re:About Time? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Everleet ( 785889 )
        If you want to use their ads on an ssl'd page, your users get a popup message telling them that not all elements are secured.

        As well they should. I'm certainly not going to trust a page that lets outsiders place [annoying] content into my "secure" session.

    • They are ads. They have to stick out.

  • Scoop - real links. (Score:5, Informative)

    by RobertTaylor ( 444958 ) <roberttaylor1234.gmail@com> on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:04AM (#11454465) Homepage Journal
    The links to the full article are here [siliconvalleywatcher.com] and here [siliconvalleywatcher.com] .

    The link in the story is to an overview paragraph.

  • Secret? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bramez ( 190835 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:04AM (#11454466)
    the company secretly brought 1,800 marketing and sales people to San Francisco
    Sure, if you want to keep a secret, invite 1,800 marketing and sales people!

  • Bad decision (Score:1, Funny)

    by DOS-5 ( 852324 )
    I'm a little put off about how every single link in the article is pratically hidden.. The color used for the links is so close to black it's hard to tell and they're not underlined (unless you hover over them.) I'm seriously disappointed in their inability to overload me with information quickly.

  • Key part of the article (Score:5, Informative)

    by SuperJason ( 726019 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:06AM (#11454473) Homepage
    Be sure you notice this line: The Google API is only available to advertisers and not to online publishers carrying Google ads.
    • so whats the point...?

      making the ads 'in time', advertising according to your inventory? or advertising according to your spending habits?

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Um... what part of the article makes you believe that the API is going to allow anyone to manipulate the Google search results? I read it that it's going to allow advertisers to manipulate the placement, content, etc. of their ads, and I believe that you need to degauss your tinfoil hat.

  • DE-brief? (Score:4, Informative)

    by tjic ( 530860 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:06AM (#11454479) Homepage
    to "brief" means to tell someone something.

    to "debrief" means to ask THEM for details.

    I sincerely doubt that Google brought 1,500 marketroids out to harvest intelligence from them.

  • For advertisers only (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lachlan76 ( 770870 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:06AM (#11454480)
    Although it may seem like it is about a clent-side API for displaying ads outside of web pages, from what the article says, it appears that it is so that advertisers can modify their ad campaign when necessary.

    I'm just glad I won't have Google ads in every app I download.
  • This is fine with me. I'm guessing that advertisers will be willing to pay more because they can provide more targeted links. This works out great for the AdSense users. Optimizing the advertising means optimizing business.

  • API (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Bloke in a box ( 781163 )
    There's an interesting discussion over at webmasterworld [webmasterworld.com] about this.

    It's certainly going to make peoples lifes as publishers a damn sight easier.

    Quote from eWhisper: The API is currently in beta release, and is being tested by a handful of companies.

    Google is choosing who to use as beta testers as much by what they can learn (Google does need to check on security issues, wanted features, etc), as by company spend.

    The fact that the API is suppose to be released this year is no secret, and has be

  • Apparently, the company secretly brought 1,800 marketing and sales people to San Francisco last week to debrief them on the initiative.

    You mean brief them don't you. Debriefing is more like an interrogation or an extraction of information which we all know it is impossible to get any usefull data from a marketeer.
  • $(SUBJ) or is it me? I mean - when I had 1, 2, or even 3 relevant ads per search results page there was a remote chance that I'd check them out. Now - once I counted (IIRC) 16(!) ads per page very few of them if any were relevant. Plus they show tons of competing ads. I say that they are doing serious dis-service to their clients here. And BTW - no, I won't fucking buy Minolta Dimage Z2. What the ... is that shit?
    • ... something to add. Immediately after posting the above tirade I went to google and searched for my name just for kicks. Imagine this:

      Cyril Sale
      New & used Cyril. aff
      Check out the deals now!
      www.eBay.com

      Thank you very much, Google! : )
      • yep ebay and amazon and few others are now guilty of looking for keywords that are completely irrelevant to what you're searching for, but just want you to get onto their site.

        This probably works for some people, but usually the link you click leads to something irrelevant, so really ebay et al are wasting their money doing this tactic.
    • yes, I won't touch adwords (I only see them on Google's site, everyone else uses easily adblockable */google/box?* inframes). they seem far too much like keyword spam to trust, especially the likes of kelkoo and dealtime that come up for everything, then link to a useless price-comparison site.

      until Google offers the option to filter price-comparison (3rd party) sites, I won't touch their ads with a 10-foot bargepole (yes, you can run linux on bargepoles).
    • AdWords used to be good. A few times I've clicked on them because I've been looking for a product and they've contained links to places that sell said product. More recently, they've been filled up with `check out cheap prices on $1' ads for sites that don't even sell $1 (whatever it happens to be). I am tempted to click on these ads a few dozen times every time I see them to drive up the cost for the advertisers.
      • I think part of the problem is that for popular words, there are quite a few "junk" ads that will show up. For less popular/more specialized terms - terms where you may get 5-6 ads per page - it actually works quite well. :) Some of my lowest CPC ad words are my best performing ad words because they are so specific/focused.
    • Well, if you use Firefox, you could install the AdBlock extension to solve problems with images, JavaScripts, inline frames, and imbeds. You can even block entire pages!

  • adword abuse (Score:3, Informative)

    by jrschulz ( 684749 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:24AM (#11454570) Homepage
    In other news, The Register [theregister.co.uk] shows how stupid google's adword system is abused.
    • Not only that, IT STILL SHOWS UP! I just searched and still had an ad come in on the right side in Google.
      • > IT STILL SHOWS UP! Really? I tried google.de and google.com/intl/en, but none of them showed any sponsored links at all.
        • I just tried a search using Google.com (from the USA) and found an ad that only read "Find it for sale," not "Find African Slaves for sale." I clicked it and was directed to a page not unlike this one [ebay.com], a search for "African Slaves" on eBay.
    • I wrote a script that pulled random words from /usr/dict/words. One of those words was "fevergum." I looked it up in the dictionary to see what it meant but found no entries. I turned to Google, which promises sexy fevergum singles [google.com] and "about 350" copies of /usr/dict/words.

      Try searching on some of the other clever non-words in /usr/dict/words, and you'll find that adwords is surprisingly popular among the cat /usr/dict/words | whatever crowd.
    • Yes, it's a really stupid system. I bet you made billions more $$$ with your system.
      • Yes, it's a really stupid system. I bet you made billions more $$$ with your system.
        If you take a close look at my posting, you will realize I didn't call the adword system stupid, but how it is abused. J.
        • The Register [theregister.co.uk] shows how stupid google's adword system is abused
          You tell me how to parse this sentence. Maybe you mean stupidly. That would mean that it acts as a modifier to "is abused" rather than "google". But that's not what you wrote. Maybe if you learn some grammar it would help. That's what grammar is for - making communication more reliable.

    • Re:adword abuse (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Spy Hunter ( 317220 )
      Really Google ought to implement a user complaint system for AdWords. At first Google ads had a very high signal-to-noise ratio, but that ratio has now dropped to the point where Google ads are no better than the rest of the tripe that passes for advertising on the web these days. I used to look at Google ads as a source of useful information; but as a result of the declining quality the attention I pay to Google ads has gone down to about the same as other web ads (i.e. basically none). IMHO Google shou
    • Anybody is free to buy whatever adwords you want. If somebody wants to buy the adwords "African Slaves", and Google doesn't object, then what's the issue ?

      Of course there's false advertising if the advertiser doesn't actually offer African Slaves, but that's another issue altogether.

      I find the recent judgement where CompanyX can buy an adword which is CompanyY's (their competitor) trademark far more an abuse - but as Pepsi can slap Coca-Cola silly in their commercials, I take it this is not an issue in, a

  • What about the publishers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by frostman ( 302143 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:25AM (#11454576) Homepage Journal
    Google seems once again to be catering to the advertisers and ignoring the publishers.


    The API will allow advertisers to self-administer the delivery, the timing and the price they will pay for their text ads.


    Having used AdSense on the content publishing side, I've seen its glaring weaknesses as well as its strengths.

    If you look in the webmaster and SEO forums you'll find lots of great suggestions for how to make the system work better from the publisher's point of view.

    I just hope Google pays some attention to that and includes the other half of their revenue model in either this API or a forthcoming one.

    I particularly want some level of keyword override when AdSense gets the context wrong, and the ability to get standards-compliant, valid XHTML out of the ad machine.
    • Google is OK... but it's payouts aren't the best and the ads are often off topic. Some of the smaller, independent networks really have some neat ideas out there - and they get clicks and have better payouts. Some can handle big traffic others cant. If you are publishing billions of impressions, the the big guys are it.

      There's adbrite (www.adbrite.com) who does onsite ads on a lot of blogs and consumer sites, indyclicks (www.indyclicks.com)that focuses on running ads in a single US state (Indiana) and impr
    • "I particularly want some level of keyword override when AdSense gets the context wrong"

      This is akin to

      "I particularly want some level of keyword override when AdSense grabs the ad for a competitor"

      I think you can see why advertisers wouldn't want this to happen.
    • The problem with keyword override is that people will choose the more expensive keywords in order to make more money, despite the keyword being less related to the actual context. This is bad news for the advertisers, who are the ones providing the money that makes the business work.
  • After reading this today:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/24/ebay_afric an_slaves/ [theregister.co.uk]

    Looks like they could do with improving the advertising.

  • If you ask me (Score:4, Interesting)

    by value_added ( 719364 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @08:41AM (#11454670)

    I think Google and the folks that showed up stand to do well.

    Only one in six users of internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements, a new survey finds.

    Article here. [wired.com]

  • My predictions (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 )
    The API will be aimed at reducing ad-sense-fraud. Giving people the option to opt-out of bad performing sites. In addition the webmasters will be able to maximise thier effectiveness in good advertising, to climb up the earnings ranks quicker.

    Google is clever!

  • Rather an API for webmasters (Score:4, Insightful)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @10:08AM (#11455436) Homepage
    AdSense has a flaw that it can't serve ads behind a password, since the spider can't scan password protected sites.

    I'd like to see an API webmasters can implement that would be able to feed the spider safe data (as deemed by the webApp developer) so it can serve ads behind passwords.

    Create a PHP, Perl, Java class that can easily be used to feed keywords, and text to google so it can generate relevent ads, in a secure way.

    There's millions of pageviews behind online services that could use adsense.

    Adsense is pretty profitable for a webmaster, so this ability could help defray costs of some online services.
  • Apparently, the company secretly brought 1,800 marketing and sales people to San Francisco last week to debrief them on the initiative.

    Dammit. Why San Francisco? All the suicide bombers are in IRAQ!

    Think, people! Think!

  • Does the mean we can expect a whole slew of software for managing and optimizing ads. Perhaps a open source version with some cool, controversial & effective algorithms for bidding and placing ads? Maybe even a real time tool that "looks" for deals/opportunities?

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