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Google Businesses The Internet The Almighty Buck

Google Upgrades AdSense 185

Posted by Hemos from the some-controversy-to-be-had dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to a story in the New York Times, Google will now "give advertisers more control over where their ads are shown, how they pay for them and what they look like." Author John Battelle claims "The core philosophy of Google's advertising business is that these ads are actually valuable and useful to users: look for Chevy trucks and get Chevy truck ads. Now we are in another place. It's more about branding and more about advertising other things than what you are looking for, and, cynically, it may be about being a public company that needs revenue growth."" The other thing that other submitters noted was that AdSense would also be accepting graphical advertising as well; but for display on partner sites.
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Google Upgrades AdSense More

Google Upgrades AdSense

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  • Non-registration links (Score:5, Informative)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) * on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:07AM (#12335257) Homepage Journal

    Some registration free links:

    Unfortunately, I don't see anything about this on Google's press release page [google.com] yet.

    --
    Conversions of Currency Rates of Exchange [ostermiller.org]

    • Re:Non-registration links (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Great, thanks! But BTW, the second link (Mercury News) is really a registration site.

    • Re:Non-registration links (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tehshen ( 794722 ) <tehshen@gmail.com> on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:19AM (#12335327)
      (From your first link): In addition to text-based ads, Google's site targeting will include another ad format option, animated image ads. This is an enhancement to the image ads option they launched last year.

      I thought people liked Google's ads because they were simple, unobtrusive, and fit in with your website. Now we're getting animated image ads (although I can't imagine "If this is flashing you're a winner!" ads being done by Google, although it could happen now) and by the looks of things (see the main article) the look is chosen for you, even if it doesn't fit in with the rest of the site. I don't know what Google are aiming to do here, but it doesn't look too kind to the end-user.

      • Re:Non-registration links (Score:5, Interesting)

        by DeadSea ( 69598 ) * on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:24AM (#12335362) Homepage Journal

        If you have a site that uses adwords you have the choice of having text ads, image ads, or a mix. I gather that Google is still planning to give sites the choice about what they display.

        I just hope they serve the images from a different domain than the javascript used to generate the text ads. Otherwise it won't be easy for most people to block the images without blocking the text.

        --
        Colored syntax highlighting libraries for Java [ostermiller.org]

        • Re:Non-registration links (Score:5, Interesting)

          by tehshen ( 794722 ) <tehshen@gmail.com> on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:31AM (#12335408)
          Although many of the people who use AdSense know enough about people to know not to turn the image ads on, there are a few people who will think it is "better", or think they will get more clicks if they use the images, or whatever; I don't want *any* annoying ads there and I am just annoyed that Google is allowing those people to do this.

          And the google ads are in an iframe, so if that is blocked the images won't be shown with it, thankfully.
          • Apparently, according to the article (you read it, right?) the ads are selected to maximize revenue, not just on the ads that pay most per click. This means that if an ad is not clicked much, because it is, say, annoying, then it won't actually come up as much...

  • It's okay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shreevatsa ( 845645 ) <<shreevatsa.slashdot> <at> <gmail.com>> on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:07AM (#12335259)
    Many of you might not like targeted ads ("privacy issues"), but face it --- Google's and Gmail's ads are far less annoying than the random irrelevant banners that, say, Yahoo puts up.

    • Re:It's okay (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:14AM (#12335292) Journal
      I have no problem with that. They just need to improve a little. A good example would be an e-mail to a friend where for 2-3 e-mails we were talking about a milk allergy we both have. Now to me the most logical advert for that is "Lactose free" things. But instead I got loas of adds going "try our super fantastical milk drink you can't drink yay!".

      I don't mind targeted ads because if google really want to read my e-mail I can't stop them.I'd rather a script which doesn't remember them check through them quickly then some guy who was just hired off the street.
      • > I don't mind targeted ads because if google really want to read my e-mail I
        > can't stop them

        I don't know about that - have you considered using encryption? Perhaps someone out there can knock up a Firefox extension which rot-13s whatever is in a browser's textbox, or is highlighted - this work work on the receiving end too.

        • Re:It's okay (Score:4, Funny)

          by nospmiS remoH ( 714998 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @10:01AM (#12335986) Journal
          I can see it now:

          Me: Hi Mom, its me. I'm calling because I need you to set up your email to allow me to send you encrypted messages.
          Mom: Ooookay. Er, what?
          Me: Well, GMail snoops on all our messages to put targeted ads next to our email.
          Mom: And?
          Me: That's bad. All I need is for you to install this Firefox extension that will rot-13s anything we send.
          Mom: So GMail is bad? I didn't know. I think I should just go back to my hotmail account.
          Me: No, Mom, hotmail is really bad.
          Mom: Well, I'll just stop using email then.
          Me: No, Mom, wait...It is just a Firefox extension.
          Mom: Right, no more email. Goodbye.

      • What really makes Adsense great isn't just that the ads are targetted but that they are much more efficient than untargetted banner ads. Even a low-traffic website (maybe 3,000 pageviews a month) can easily pay for its domain registration and web hosting if the webmaster is using adsense. There is a good reason why free webshosting isn't as big of a deal as it used to be.

    • Oh no it isn't (Score:3, Informative)

      by CdBee ( 742846 )
      Adblock googlesyndication.com - no banners for me under any circumstances !
      • Great! Then you won't count as an impression for my Adsense campaigns. And you definitely won't accidentally become a clickthrough. Which saves me money. So my ads can get through to actual customers who want my products.

        I don't personally have any ads...but we help our clients run an Adwords campaign. You can measure the success of these ads in conversions - interested parties that become a sale (or, in their case, a sales lead). If you don't intend to click on an ad, that's fine. Personally, I never clic
    • I think Google ads are great. They're not too intrusive and they serve out relevant content, unlike many of the banner ad services out there.

      As a tech savvy parent, I know only too well how some ad services work. For example, in the course of looking over the logs on my home network's main server, I found that somehow my son had been receiving some very questionable banner ads through some of the sites he frequents. When I confronted him about it, he said he had been downloading "r0mz," which are basically
      • [quote]
        I would think these webmasters would have the sense not to put that sort of material on sites that presumably only children would be interested in.
        [/quote]

        I think you are wrong, yesterday I started to download an Emulator and ROMS from the NES (Nintendo ) to play with my girlfriend, I am 23 and the NES was THE console to play when I was a kid so today I am doing my PhD abroad and of course I do not have my NES with me (nor I plan to do it because of the time) but with the NES Emulators I can play w
    • No they are not _far_ less annoying. Actually - they are annoying as hell (I'm talking about "partner" sites) because Firefox' back button lags on IFrames reloading noticeably. And, of course, it takes only several small steps from mono-styled short text messages at the screen side to a honking flash embedded in the middle of the page. First step..., or I'd say second since we already have up to 16 ads per search page, so this step is done.

      BTW, while we are at it, would you like to buy a brand new DiMAGE

    • Offensive Contextual Ads (Score:5, Funny)

      by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:31AM (#12335407)
      What about ads that most will find offensive?

      Search for negroes on Google.com and see what ads show up on the right hand side.

      • Re:Offensive Contextual Ads (Score:5, Funny)

        by DoorFrame ( 22108 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:34AM (#12335438) Homepage
        Negroes Sale
        New & used Negroes. aff
        Check out the deals now!
        www.eBay.com [ebay.com]

        I don't think it's offensive, I think eBay just used a dictionary file to buy up every word it could think of. I admit, however, that could be seen in a bad light. In all fairness though, you don't get any bad ads if you search for slave, slaves, or the n-word, so I'm going to give Google the benefit of the doubt.

      • What about ads that most will find offensive?
        Search for negroes on Google.com and see what ads show up on the right hand side.

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

      • Many people wonder why Ebay would have even used "negros" as a keyword, because many people associate the term with racism, but negro was actually a politically correct term in the 50s, and as such there are many collectors items on ebay that are called "negro" this and that. A good example are items from the negro league of baseball. But it really looks like ebay just bought up the spanish words for colors. Negro is "black" in spanish, you can test this by searching for "rojo" which brings:

        # Rojo on e
      • I don't see any ads. I'm not being a smartass, they're not blocked or anything. When I search for other things I see ads. I'm guessing they changed something in the 6 or so hours since you posted this.
    • Oh, yeah. After training AdBlock once or twice, I haven't seen a banner ad on Slashdot.

      I forgot they even had them.
    • What I'd like to see is placement of ads in my GMail. It's free so I wont' complain, but I'd rather the ads were at the bottom of my message than on the right hand side. I've seen some gmail users have that feature (or bug??) but I'd really like the option to set it in either place.

      Personally, if the ads were on the bottom, it looks nicer and I'm actually more interested in looking at what they have to say. I don't mind targeted ads based on automatic scanning (will they "learn" and generate even smarter o

    • Many of you might not like targeted ads ("privacy issues"), but face it --- Google's and Gmail's ads are far less annoying than the random irrelevant banners that, say, Yahoo puts up.

      I've never minded targeted ads. It's the method of targeting ads that I've had a problem with. If you're taking a guess at my interest based on content, fine. Show me ads for AquaWeaver Magazine when I search for "underwater basket weaving" or reading an article on it. As far as I can tell, linking content to an ad has n

  • Graphics and....ANIMATION? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:11AM (#12335278)
    For Internet users, the most visible change will be an expanded use of ads with graphics and animation on many of the Web sites for which Google sells advertising, rather than the short text ads that have been Google's hallmark.

    Looks like Adblock's going to be getting a new entry pretty soon.
  • I've noticed that as of late some searches will return a sponsered link at the top of the page above the results (as opposed to the standard list of sponsered links off to the right of the page).

    The first few times I mistook the sponsered link for the top result, although it is labeled as such and has a light blue background (although on my monitor at least the blue is almost indistinguishible from the white background).

    How long have they been doing this?

    This doesn't happen for all searches either, just

    • Re:Placement (Score:2, Insightful)

      by m50d ( 797211 )
      Since they became evil. More seriously, a few months. I'm watching them and getting ready to jump ship as soon as they drop the blue background (make no mistake, they will do it).

    • Re:Placement (Score:2, Informative)

      by pete_m78 ( 777512 )
      How long have they been doing this?
      Since at least 2002 - at first advertisers needed to spend at least US$5000 a month to get up there. Nowadays normal Adwords can get to that position - provided the ads are fairly popular (i.e. they get clicked on a lot.)

  • Cynically? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:15AM (#12335300)
    cynically, it may be about being a public company that needs revenue growth

    Everyone raves about, say, Google Maps. I do too. But is it "cynical" for them to move around enough money to actually pay for all that great stuff? Come on, folks, we can't have it both ways. There's nothing "evil" about growing the company. And all of you Google stock holders had better come clean now if your preference is that the stock stays low!
    • But is it "cynical" for them to move around enough money to actually pay for all that great stuff? Come on, folks, we can't have it both ways.

      You should tell the Google founders that. It has been their frequent claim that they can have massive success because of their philosophy, that they can do well by doing good. So far, they've lived up to that, and become billionaires in the bargain.

      There's nothing "evil" about growing the company. And all of you Google stock holders had better come clean now if yo

      • Re:Cynically? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by NDPTAL85 ( 260093 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @09:32AM (#12335791)
        Google is making so much money because of its keen business sense and superior technology, not their "Do no evil" clause. Brin and Sergey were smart enough to understand the incredible real world immaturity of the geek community and how literally they take almost anything. I mean look at your own post. Referring to "the ends justify the means"? We're talking about an internet search engine company here, not an industrial waste disposal company. No one is going to die if Google does something controversial. The founders knew they could establish instant and long lasting street cred by claiming to aim to "Do no evil". Deep down inside however they know they'll do whatever it takes to grow their business, geek cred be damned.
        • Google is making so much money because of its keen business sense [...]

          That's a bold assertion, but you give no data to back it up. And there's plenty of evidence on the other side. Take their UI, especially the way they handled ads. At the time, they were considered insane: all the search engines were moving the other way. It could be that they're two CS PhDs just happened to have business sense better than everybody else in the valley put together. But it's more likely that they were being honest: they
      • Sorry, I should have been more plainspoken, even given the pretty obvious context. When I say we "can't have it both ways," I meant that can't have: 1) Successful companies like Google spending a fortune to develop and deliver (free to end users!) fantastic things like their mapping systems, and equally fantastic things like their stock in your portfolio. As well as: 2) A native dislike of all things "corporate" and the reflexive use of the word "cynical" whenever the words "growth" or "profit" have to a
    • Firstly, Google is making vast amounts of money, over $300 million (or $400 if you back out stock options) while increasing the size of their work force by 15%. So, they have no problem paying for all this cool stuff as it is.

      On the topic of this move being evil, I don't think it is. At the end of the day, it is the third-party sites that decide to display the image ads, not Google. They provide a way for you to make more money (I assume image ads are significantly more costly) if you want. You trade m

  • Graphical Google Ads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:15AM (#12335302) Homepage
    The other thing that other submitters noted was that AdSense would also be accepting graphical advertising as well; but for display on partner sites.

    I've seen graphical Google ads for a while - I think they were followed by bits of text saying something like 'What do you think of these? We're testing them' or similar.

    Of course, I can't for the life of me remember where I saw them - anyone else seen these adverts, or was I imagining them?

    I do remember that they were relatively small and non-Flash - and much smaller than the whopping big Google AdSense advert at the top of Slashdot as I type this... ;-)
    • The graphical ads have been out of beta and running live for many months now. In my Adsense settings I can select whether I want a particular ad block to allow graphical ads or not. That meaning that the ad block will still display text ads unless adsense thinks they have a particularly relevant graphical ad to put in it on occasion, in which case they will.

      They're still quite rare though. Whether that's because I'm not a targeted demographic, or not going to targeted sites, or because there simply aren't
  • ...just one calorie, not evil enough.
  • There was an update to the Google Inc. AdWords Program Terms on April 19th. I can't figure out what changes happened that would reflect this article.
  • when I was reading this thread, there was a "Google adsense" banner at the top, just kind of funny I thought.

  • Not again? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by miffo.swe ( 547642 ) <daniel@hedblom.gmail@com> on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:22AM (#12335347) Homepage Journal
    I cant count how many times we have read that Google is tunring evil. Is it some kind of projection on the part of some people, they seem to WANT google to be evil somehow. I just dont understand why.
    • When someone stands up and declares, "I will never be evil!" you shouldn't be surprised when people start looking for the irony of them being evil.

      People love irony.

      I believe that Google is generally good but even I have a hard time believing that Google is not evil when I read this one. [com.com]

      • Re:Not surprising. (Score:3, Informative)

        by ajs ( 35943 )

        US Copyright law requires Google to defend their copyright or lose it. There is nothing evil about doing what you are required to do in order to defend your brand name.

        For those unaware, here's the timeline:

        2000
        the domain, Froogles.com was purchased
        2002
        Froogles.com goes live, followed by Google bringing up Froogle.com, seemingly in response, and filing for trademark protection for Froogle.com
        2003
        Froogles.com files for trademark protection and attempts to block Google's trademark on Froogle.com
        200

      • Like people, all companies have some amounts of good and bad in them. It's not some binary zero/one value - it's shades of gray. Also like people, some companies are mostly good but occasionally bad, and others are mostly bad but occasionally good. We judge people on the sum of their actions, not individual actions.

        It's true though that saying your company's motto is "do no evil" is just asking for extra scrutiny. OTOH, it's a clever marketing move in an industry whose collective image has been VERY much t

    • Because everyone in the IT industry has been screwed over in the butt time and again by a certain other major IT company and their unethical practices. Now whenever any other IT company looks poised to grow (e.g. Google, Apple), people immediately get jittery because they think every CEO in this industry must have the same lack of ethics, and so they think uh-oh, we're going to have to bend over again if we let this company get big.

      Meanwhile 'that other company' continues to rip everyone off. But people ca

  • Misleading Summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by michaelhood ( 667393 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:23AM (#12335355)
    This is quite possibly the worst summary I've ever seen.
    Fallacies:

    1. This affects AdWords advertisers whose ads are *published* on the AdSense network. Not AdSense publishers. At all.

    2. Image creatives have been an option in our AdWords accounts for at least 6 months. You see them on some AdSense publishers already, you just don't know it.

    The real news here is the following:
    1. Google is *bringing back* (they had it years ago) cost-per-impression advertising. However, this comes with improvements. I won't spam, see references. (R1)

    2. Google is going to finally allow AdWords advertisers to decide what content network sites their ads are published on. (R1) Now we can decide NOT to place our ads on shady sites and fall victim to click fraud.

    On the real news item #1, this is of huge interest because Google is allowing some "creepage" back to the CPM (cost-per-mil impressions) model. This seems to indicate that they're finally recognizing that click fraud is a *huge* problem. To the tune of it being estimated 15-20% clicks in competitive CPC (cost-per-click) markets on Google might be fraudulent. (R2)

    References: (R1) [searchenginelowdown.com] (R2) [webpronews.com]

    • Yeah (Score:2)

      by Apotsy ( 84148 )
      They often choose the most sensationalist write-ups around here, pehaps because Slashdot's owner is also "a public company that needs revenue growth".

  • how to get rid of ads? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by diegocgteleline.es ( 653730 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:24AM (#12335361)
    I use /etc/hosts to filter ad sites, but I wonder if it's the "best way" of doing it. I have some docens of lines on that file like this:

    0.0.0.1 doubleclick.net ad.doubleclick.net ads.mcafee.com 247.vo.llnw.net
    0.0.0.1 doubleclick.com m.doubleclick.net m2.doubleclick.net ad.au.doubleclick.net
    0.0.0.1 ads.web.aol.com ads.web.de ads.web21.com adserv.newcentury.net
    0.0.0.1 adservant.guj.de adservant.mediapoint.de adserver-espnet.sportszone.com
    0.0.0.1 advert.heise.de banners.internetextra.com bannerswap.com customad.cnn.com
    0.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com

    which will make browsers fail when they try to show you ads. The list is longer (get it [terra.es] if you're curious)

    But this seems a bit "hacky". Is there a better way to do this, is there some project which keeps track of such ad sites, or even ip ranges and allows you to block them easily?

    • Re:how to get rid of ads? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I use the following script to automatically update my DNS server each night - keeps the ads away for me :-)

      #!/bin/bash
      cd /etc/blockedHosts

      # rotate lists
      for (( mm = 2; mm >= 0; mm-- )); do
      (( nn = mm + 1 ))
      /bin/mv adBlock.txt.$mm adBlock.txt.$nn
      done
      /bin/mv adBlock.txt adBlock.txt.0

      # fetch new bogon list
      if /usr/bin/wget "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?host format=bindconfig&showintro=0&startdate%5Bday%5D=& startdate%5Bmonth%5D=&startdate%5By
      ear%5D=&mimet ype=p

    • http://www.gozer.org/mozilla/ad_blocking

      Assuming you are using a Mozilla based browser, you can kiss pretty much all adverts goodbye.
  • http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum110/4-1-10.htm
    and http://publisher.yahoo.com/

  • To block or not to block? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonj@NoSPaM.gmail.com> on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:26AM (#12335376) Homepage Journal
    Google will not allow the increasingly popular formats that include video, sound and interactive elements. And it has restrictions on the animation, to keep ads from repeating endlessly or flashing in a particularly distracting manner.

    Hmm. Dunno yet. I'm not unilaterally against all advertising, just irritating advertising. I may not block these ads. We'll see soon, I suppose.
  • "AdSense would also be accepting graphical advertising as well"

    Are we seeing an AdSense ad graphic on top of the page because, uh.. this is an article on AdSense ad graphics? :-)
  • The moment Google adds graphical and Flash ads is the moment I will no longer see them.
  • Sorry, I must be in the wrong decade. Around here everyone just turns ads off. I haven't seen an ad on google, slashdot, or any other site in months, and not one before that in years. And I have never seen an ad in gmail.
  • Graphical ads have been around for a while -- everyone with a Google AdSense account knows that. The only new thing is that there's now *animation* as well.
  • I consider more ads that you dont want to be a downgrade.

  • AdWords, not AdSense (Score:4, Informative)

    by freitasm ( 444970 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @08:58AM (#12335575) Homepage
    The OP is using AdSense when in fact should be AdWords. Advertsisers use AdWords, publishers use AdSense.
  • I say, Google, go for it. use graphical ads. Use intelitxt ads on other people's websites. It will be easier (especially on my conscience) to Adblock google ads. Tom's Hardware Guide loads about 10% faster and scrolls much more smoothly after blocking the intelitxt ads and the floating navigation bar.

    But back to Google. AdSense is has some major problems associated with it. I'm not even talking about the click fraud that's been getting discussion lately. I'm talking about keyword fraud (buying AdSe

  • "Google will abandon rules that require advertisements to be directly relevant to the pages on which they appear; it will now place a motor oil ad on a wine site if the refiner outbids the cheesemonger."
    • Who, exactly, does this "upgrade" benefit ... aside from Google? Don't get me wrong ... I think they're great ... but why go in this direction? It's not like the company is hurting financially.

    • Every publicly owned company has an *obligation* to its shareholders to maximize profits. Not hurting financially or making what is usually considered "enough" money doesn't cut it. In fact, it is illegal for a public company to not maximize profit.

      This is my understanding of why good companies go bad when they go public. I could be wrong.

  • I will adblock them. Even if they are just on partner sites.
  • I doubt anybody goes to great lengths to try and block text-based google adsense boxes (not sure if it's even possible, since they don't bother me.)

    But should they introduce graphical ads...
  • It would be nice if Google Adwords worked as well as its search engine. It would also be nice if broad keywords actually worked full stop. Searching for "Foo Bar" will trigger ads with the keywords "Foo Bar", but won't trigger with "Bar Foo" or "Foo in Bar" or "Foo Bar UK".

    It would also be nice if the keywords weren't mysteriously put 'on hold' and disabled for no apparent reason. Considering Google makes its money from adwords, why is it so badly programmed?

  • You mean like this? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Monday April 25, 2005 @12:56PM (#12337962)
    give advertisers more control over where their ads are shown, how they pay for them and what they look like.
    <font size="+6" color="#FF0000"><blink> {insert advertisement here} </blink></font>
  • It was only a matter of time.

    YSL.

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