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Google Businesses The Internet The Almighty Buck

Google Mulling Video Ads In Search Results 269

Posted by kdawson from the are-we-evil-yet dept.
Bombula writes to let us know that Google is "finally succumbing to the power of the almighty dollar" and getting ready to implement image and video ads in sponsored searches.
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Google Mulling Video Ads In Search Results More

Google Mulling Video Ads In Search Results

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  • Not "evil" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous@ya h o o .com> on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:31PM (#20532999) Homepage Journal
    Finally "succumbing to the power of the almighty dollar"??? They gave in to Mammon [wikipedia.org] quite a while ago.

    Google displays video ads within a few different AdSense units. I've regularly seen video ads filling 336x280 ad spaces. Putting video ads in search results requires no technical advances. It's more a matter of laying out the search results to achieve the best balance of ad screenspace and content screenspace. So far, Google has done that pretty well with text ads in their search results.

    If there's any news in this, it's watching the semantic argument that should result. People love to quote Google's tenet of "do no evil" and accuse Google of violating it wheneverGoogle opens up a new avenue for earning money. But it's not necessarily evil. It's just something they disagree with. And it's interesting, from a sociological perspective, to see how people can regard the opposing party viewpoint, in what are essentially minor disagreements, as "evil".

    - Greg

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 2.7182 ( 819680 )
      Can you be evil, but not do evil ?
    • That's evil. [com.com] The rest is icing on the cake.

      • Re:Google sends tiananmen square down a memory hol (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Thorrablot ( 590170 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @10:05PM (#20533593)

        That's evil. [com.com] The rest is icing on the cake.

        It's OK to be importing an unprecedented amount of Chinese goods and exploit the cheap labor for every other aspect of the western economy, but Google is evil because they set up a satellite search service that institutes the required Chinese national policies?

        Since the suppression [wikipedia.org] of information is happening regardless of Google's presence, that should clarify that the root of the suppression is not due to U.S. companies agreeing to Chinese government demands, but is the Chinese government itself.

        Frankly, it's also better for U.S. interests to have a "bubble" of Google servers that have a set of blacklisted/censored material for the time being, instead of watching Google lose out entirely in the fastest growing economy to the Chinese domestic engines (e.g. Baidu)

        These politicians who (while it was a popular subject) wanted to crucify Google don't have any qualms about continuing to support China by importing their cheap goods and exploiting the cheap labor costs.

        Hypocrits.

    • Re:Not "evil" (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gnostic Ronin ( 980129 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:47PM (#20533107)
      I'll agree with you. Absolutely not a good move. I don't want to see little movies playing all over my computer screen when I search for something. And judging by other adverts online, not only will they be large, but obnoxious. They'll loop every 30 seconds. All I want is to get the links I'm looking for without being hounded by obnoxious ads.

      • Use Opera (Score:3, Informative)

        by l33t gambler ( 739436 )
        Use Opera and add an "enable plug-ins" and "enable GIF/SVG animation" buttons at a convinient spot. I can't really understand why websites use flash or gif animaitons in their articles or news, it makes everything look very messy and unprofessional. Feels like a Tabloid magazine with TV-shop running in the background.

      • Re:Not "evil" (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NickCatal ( 865805 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @09:06PM (#20533227)
        If they are anything like the adsense ones they won't be too intrusive at all...

        Google isn't filled with idiots who think that they can just put an ad box on the side of their results and not loose respect (and market share)

        Personally, I like the sponsored results... I find that a lot of the time the sponsored results are more what I am looking for than the search results. I probably cost those advertisers a fortune by checking out every single one of the ads until I find one I like, but still...

        I found my latest printer cartridge via adsense... the store I bought it from had a listing on the top and they were also the most competitive in the way of price... so they got my money thanks to an adsense ad. Of course, now I get emails every week from the store about printer cartridges... bah... stupid "opt-in-by-default" system
        • Exactly. I find that the ads tend to be more precise than the organic results a lot of the time. The only time they're not is when the ad is misleading, but then I don't care because I just cost the advertiser some money with no intention of spending a dime on them due to their own actions.

        • Of course, now I get emails every week from the store about printer cartridges... bah... stupid "opt-in-by-default" system
          If it is the same store as the one I used (but no longer), you will get SPAM from multiple, unrelated sources due to buying from this inkjet cartridge seller. I know that the cartridge seller has leaked my email address, because I used a unique address in my signup.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )
          I have found absense to be a pain as by far the majority of the time when it comes to doing searches I am not looking to buy something, and I defy any marketdroid to try to prove that the majority of times that people use search engines they are looking to buy something. Overall when it comes to the quality of companies using adsense I have found them to be at the low end of the quality and service spectrum, in line with the budget advertising venue, and I have never bought off an adsense advertiser and I h

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ajs ( 35943 )

        Absolutely not a good move. I don't want to see
        Then - now, try to stay with me, here - you are not the correct target audience for said ads. Oh well. Advertisers will quickly find that sites which are frequented most often be people who share your tastes aren't the right place for video ads, and they will use the text ads that I use (see links in my sig) on my own site because I know my target audience.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 )
        Incredibly bad move. Every privoxy proxy I help maintain (20 of them, 15 at businesses with 15 -100 employees) allows google ad's. the second a customer reports a video or photo ad they get added to the privoxy global block on all customers.

        I gave google a free pass because of the text ad's and the minimal bandwidth they consume. Video and image ad's are not allowed as they consumer too much bandwidth and go away.

        Google, guess what? you are about to permanently lose several hundred pairs of eyes ever see
      • Personally I don't see what the fuss is about.

        Google text ads are unobstrusive and being text, they are difficult to remove. Who would want to anyway, I don't read them or click on them.

        Video adds may or may not be unobstrusive depending on the placement. But, video ads are _not_ difficult to remove and it's already possible. So if you don't like them, remove them.

    • I'll believe this when I see it.

      Google's search results don't have any ads right now. Why would they jump straight away to extra annoying video ads?

      • Money does grow on trees! I knew it! Here I thought the $15B Google was raking in every year was from paid search listings.... guess I was wrong?

        Seriously though, you either have an adblocker on and forgot about it, your blind, or you're on crack. Which is it? Google has had ads on their search pages for over half a decade now. How the hell do you think they can afford to keep the site running?

        • Wow! [slashdot.org] So you didn't read the comments, just guessing you didn't RTFA, either?

          Gees, make one bad google joke, and every google fan-tard on /. points out the flaws.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by clarkkent09 ( 1104833 )
      If there's any news in this, it's watching the semantic argument that should result. People love to quote Google's tenet of "do no evil" and accuse Google of violating it wheneverGoogle opens up a new avenue for earning money. But it's not necessarily evil. It's just something they disagree with. And it's interesting, from a sociological perspective, to see how people can regard the opposing party viewpoint, in what are essentially minor disagreements, as "evil".

      You can blame google for that. From Googl
    • Google, not its critics is the one who insisted on presenting themselves as perfect angels by using a strong, simple-minded slogan like "do no evil". As far as I'm concerned they painted a giant target on their back, and deserve all the blasting they get about their hypocrisy.

  • Cool for them... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ect5150 ( 700619 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:34PM (#20533017) Journal
    Cool for them, now can someone recommend me my new search engine?

    • Re:Cool for them... (Score:5, Funny)

      by langelgjm ( 860756 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:42PM (#20533059) Journal
      Google recommends AltaVista: Do "I'm feeling lucky" for "search engine".

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by martinX ( 672498 )
        Freaky. It's almost as if this thing that is aware of so much in the world has no self awareness. Or someone screwed up the coding.
    • Agreed, one of the reasons I go to places like Google, slashdot etc is that it is (was?) a generally clean simple uncluttered layout.

      Such is life.
    • Why change for the content when you can change the content [adblockplus.org].

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by d3ac0n ( 715594 )
      I use Ask.com myself. The search results are just as good, and the additional search tools like the page preview and optional search terms bar make my searching much more efficient. Oh, and it has a much cleaner and more attractive interface than Google's.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by regular_gonzalez ( 926606 )
      ask.com [ask.com] has made significant advances since the time it was askjeeves.com.
      They are using Teoma's [wikipedia.org] algorithm. In a few head-to-head comparisons I've done with Google, the results differed slightly but were about equally accurate and useful.
      • Depends what you're looking for. Google's index is refreshed amazingly quickly. It can sometimes take a month for a page to make it into Ask, with the same page making it into Google within a day. I actually used Ask for a few months, and then switched back to Google for that reason.
      • The best search engine for a given individual is the one that returns the most desirable results when searching for one's own name.
    • Well considering that this is posted on a site with notoriously incorrect summaries and headlines on a daily basis, and the headline and summary don't say that this is actually happening, and even if it does happen it will most likely be like their video ads on third party sites (they only play after you actually click the play button), don't you think you're overreacting just a tad?
    • IMHO, there is only one search engine that poses competition, and is (in any way) better than Google, and that is http://www.clusty.com/ [clusty.com]

      If you search for a diverse subject, or a key word that is used many different ways, for many different things, Google just becomes a mess of irrelevent links, and trial-and-error GUESSING what other key words you need to use in conjunction with what you want to find is rather difficult, time consuming, etc.. Clusty actually provides a list on the left of categories.

      IMHO,

  • Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)

    by brxndxn ( 461473 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:35PM (#20533019)
    Now we can be notified about special offers and promotions that are disturbingly close to what we actually want!

    • Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous@ya h o o .com> on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:43PM (#20533077) Homepage Journal
      Now we can be notified about special offers and promotions that are disturbingly close to what we actually want!

      This may be tongue-in-cheek, but it's disturbingly accurate too. Part of their AdWords algorithm is to start incrementally raising the price on cost-per-click ads that aren't performing well. And they break this down by keyword. So if your ad is getting a really poor clickthrough from a certain keyword, they'll make you pay more and more for the keyword until you either drop it or improve your ad's clickthrough rate.

      While that business method optimizes/maximizes CPM for Google, it also means that people who just bid on 500 loosely related keywords are going to gradually whittle that down to just those keywords that are are actually performing in terms of CPC and conversion. It stands to reason that if an ad is generating more clicks and more conversions for a specific keyword, that ad is more appropriate for it. In a way, it's almost Darwinian. Ads die off in keywords where they don't succeed and flourish in ones where they do.

      - Greg

      • Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)

        by d3ac0n ( 715594 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @09:04PM (#20533207)

        In a way, it's almost Darwinian. Ads die off in keywords where they don't succeed and flourish in ones where they do.


        Headlines in 5 years: Google Execs charged with child endangerment because "ads now display nothing but porn"
    • I'd hate to see the video ad for a misspell of "My brother's ex with a goat".
      • Why in God's name would you search for such a thing in the first place? Unless your caution is simply the gender of the person with the goat...

        Of course, you could just mean 'with' as in 'next to', not as in 'getting with'. But this is the interweb, so I doubt it. :P

  • Linux users might be doomed...! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:39PM (#20533045)
    I am afraid Linux users might be doomed if Google goes through with this development. You see, most distros will not install Adobe's flash player by default...and even when it's installed, it chokes on web videos because it is not that up-to-date. Sometimes, it's because of conflicts within the Linux product itself.

    On a personal front, I will be pissed if I have to watch a video just because I searched for my favorite item.

    • Re:Linux users might be doomed...! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by elyk ( 970302 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:51PM (#20533131) Homepage
      If they do implement video ads in their search results, they will probably do it in the same way as the adsense units do, where it doesn't play until you click on it. So its unlikely that you will be forced to watch a video. However, this is still a huge step for google, because it would be the first time that they have had any sort of graphical ads in their search result. This was hinted at as a possibility when they bought 5% of aol, and they denied it then, but I wonder if that influence has finally broken through. Of course, this could all be hype and nothing come of it. All I have to say is that if google does do this, they had better move really carefully, or risk alienating a lot of users.

    • You see, most distros will not install Adobe's flash player by default...

      that's only a problem if you don't know how to install anything in which case you have bigger problems.

      and even when it's installed, it chokes on web videos because it is not that up-to-date. Sometimes, it's because of conflicts within the Linux product itself.

      not once have I ever had flash crash anything on Linux- I have however, seen it on Windows. And even in the case that it ever did fail it would have absolutely nothing to do

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by ross.w ( 87751 )
      So you get a little jigsaw puzzle piece instead of an ad? Did you really want the ad?

  • A more accurate title (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Digital Vomit ( 891734 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:42PM (#20533057) Homepage Journal

    Here's a more accurate title for this topic:

    Google Mulling Over Giving Up Its #1 Search Engine Spot

    Seriously: video ads? WTH?!

  • oh well (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:45PM (#20533091)
    If they put flash ads in, the only result will be another result in my adblocks blacklist.
    text adverts are fine - they are unobtrusive most of the time ( apart from those linky popup-ads which i dont think google do ). Image ads are reasonable if static. animated ads are a no-no and video ads you can just forget about.

  • Ironic (Score:4, Interesting)

    by edwardpickman ( 965122 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:45PM (#20533097)
    They both figured out how to speed up searches and slow down the speed for search pages to load. I guess that's what passes for progress these days, two steps forward and two steps backward.

  • The almighty dollar (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Technician ( 215283 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:55PM (#20533145)
    Google is "finally succumbing to the power of the almighty dollar"

    The dollar is quite the temptress and very deceitful. Following the money has led many to the path of destruction. The record companies have tried to collude and through artificial scarcity kept CD prices way above reasonable. Sales have fallen as a result of completion even though i Pod sales skyrocket.

    Google has command of the advertising market. If they follow the temptress and try to follow the money, then Google will become just another search engine.

    It would be sad to see Google become another ad-laden site with no special attraction to the users. Is Google stupid enough to ditch tons of eyeballs to get a slightly higher price per ad?

    Others are ditching the overburdening pages and imitating Google's success. Most of these pages now don't load their page with banner advertisements anymore and for good reason. They lost major market share to Google because of it. They have modeled Google.

    http://www.altavista.com/ [altavista.com]
    http://www.dogpile.com/ [dogpile.com]
    http://www.live.com/?searchonly=true&mkt=en-US [live.com]
    http://search.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com]
    http://www.hotbot.com/ [hotbot.com]

    If Google gets tempted by the money, they may find themselves quickly in the company of almost dead search engines that they stomped. They know how the other search engines dropped to obscurity. Why are they even interested in putting on that well known way to the bottom of the search engines.

    • Re:The almighty dollar (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kelz ( 611260 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:58PM (#20533163)
      Well my only suggestion would be to save the rant until after you've seen how they implement it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      Want to kill a company? I'll give you a simple way.

      go public and issue a IPO.

      Boom the second you are a publically traded company, progress, innovations and right and wrong are not important, profits, cash flow and quarterly performance are king.

      best way to kill a company. it put's the bean counters in finance in charge. and everyone knows that bean counters never do the right thing.
  • That I have google ads blocked as of now.

    Sure, their text ads were the least evil of all ads. Too bad it didn't last.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JanneM ( 7445 )
      Exactly. Never had a problem displaying adsense ads. They don't move and distract me from reading the page content. I regularly add any moving or big graphical ads to my blocklist though; the first adsense ad that annoys me will have me block google ads as well.

  • What do you mean finally??!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kiwioddBall ( 646813 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @08:59PM (#20533171)
    Google are a listed company - their main purpose is to succumb to the power of the mighty dollar - I'm pretty darn sure that the shareholders weren't under the impression that they were donating to a charity!

    There is some impression that having better than average PR -ie writing intelligent blog entries / Apples Steve Jobs writing smart open letters means that they are genuine and open and not out to make lots of $$$ - this isn't the case!
    • I, for one, am getting really sick of this attitude, and I think it's ultimately responsible for the failings of capitalism. Google's main purpose may be, as you say, to generate revenue, but if they adopt certain publicly stated principles that may affect their ability to do so (e.g. "Do no evil"), the shareholders are investing fully aware that Google is not willing to engage in certain behaviours simply to make money. I, for one, applaud companies that adhere to a well defined code of ethics in spite of

  • I don't care (Score:2, Informative)

    by RichPowers ( 998637 )
    As long as AdBlock shields my eyes from such crap. Honestly, does any out there like video ads? For the past several years, people have been doing everything in their power to skip or fastforward through video ads...

  • Adblock time (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From TFA:

    "You could think of a local butcher. Maybe a 10-word text ad explaining that local butcher's business probably is not going to be enticing and get the user to click on the ad. But if you could have a video of the butcher explaining his business and showing all this fresh meat...then maybe the user would get much more value out of that. And the advertiser would also get more value as well."

    I haven't blocked google's ads yet. I will block any flash ads.

    Web pages are static content, like newspapers.

    • I fully agree with what the parent said. Flash Ads are evil.

      Right now, I still don't have Google Ads blocked because I don't mind text ads, or even unobtrusive banner ads.

      Flash is an entirely different story, as it starts sucking up CPU cycles.

      I don't remember whom The Register [theregister.com] uses for their ad network, but I blocked them explicitly because of those annoying Intel ads with the dogs/cougars/whatever looking at the mouse cursor as it moves around the screen because:
      1. It's distracting.
      2. It actually slowed

  • Can't be as bad as Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Sunday September 09, 2007 @09:21PM (#20533337) Homepage Journal
    who take money from Microsoft and play anti-Linux FUD on the front page.

    Thing is, most Slashdot users don't even see it.. thanks Adblock.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by quantaman ( 517394 )

      who take money from Microsoft and play anti-Linux FUD on the front page.
      I actually enjoys those ads, I mean how often is it that Microsoft sponsors its own bashing!! (well other than funding vista of course...)

  • Does that mean you will soon be seeing TV commercials at the top of Google search results page?


    Not me, I have Flash disabled unless I'm expecting to see/use it, so unless Google moves the entire search result system to Flash I'm not going to see anything, that is if they use Flash to display the video as I expect.
  • ... like the damned interweb isn't slow enough already. I thought the point of broadband was to have more interwebs faster, not to have the same interwebs at the same speed. Guess I was wrong.

    Give this crap a few more years and video ad penetration and prevalence will be even worse than it is on television. At least TV doesn't run their ads embedded in the content.* And the comic books I read have the decency to run the ads in the back or not at all (I pointedly do not buy anything that runs ads inline
  • I hate being involuntarily subjected to video, e.g., in the dentist's office, the airport, and the supermarket. The good news is that when it comes to ads on web sites, the power is ultimately mine. When a lot of sites started using animated GIFs, which I found distracting and annoying, it motivated me to start using adblock. When I came across a site that used those incredibly annoying adbrite ads, that motivated me to add adbrite to my adblock ads (http://*.adbrite.com/* is the pattern that works). If goo
  • annoying flashing crap is why i stopped using yahoo. google can kiss my traffic byebye if they think i'll put up with the same. there's 100's of other engines ready to take up the slack, trust me.
  • When they start doing that is when I start using Adblock on Google as well. Up to now I've excluded Google as I felt the ads were unobtrusive. Once they cross over, I'm nixing all of them.
  • Remember... the search part is ancillary to it's actual economic function. I'd start calling it what it actually is: Google! The Ad Delivery Engine!
  • Google's text ads were the one argument that made any sense against using Adblock. If all ads are obtrusive, there's no reason to not block all of them.

  • you will not be distracted by ads on Google (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dulitz ( 33352 ) on Sunday September 09, 2007 @10:43PM (#20533901)
    I'm the product manager responsible for the way ads look on Google. You will not be distracted by image ads or video ads on Google search results pages. Period.

    Just because other companies use image ads and video ads with the _purpose_ of distracting users doesn't mean Google will do that. Images and videos can be useful and entertaining, if you see them when you want to see them. It's taken us a long time to figure out how to do it right.

    BTW, how many _years_ do we have to be in business before people learn Google isn't motivated by short-term greed? Yes, we want to make money. We want to make money 10 years from now. The only way to do that is to build great products that people want. I think we've done a pretty good job of that so far, and we're not planning to stop.

    • Re:you will not be distracted by ads on Google (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 5pp000 ( 873881 ) on Monday September 10, 2007 @12:00AM (#20534483)

      Don't forget the story about the early days of Google when the developers would occasionally receive a mysterious email message containing only a number. I've forgotten the exact number, alas, but it was always the same -- 31, let's suppose. Eventually they figured out that whenever they put more than 31 words on the Google home page, they would get a message with this number 31. I don't know if the sender was ever identified, but at least at the time, Google evidently took the message to heart.

      I hope this story is still part of the company culture.

      All that said, your post is reassuring. I hope you really mean the part about "if you see them when you want to see them".

    • Do you go home at night and bang hookers on piles of $100 bills?

  • One more reason why I have the Flashblock plugin installed in Firefox.
  • I'm burntout with all those image ads, and yet google ads have never bothered me. Google may be alienating the surfers with that plan.

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