Google: Search Engine or Ad broker?

May 13, 2004

I agree with Matt from Infoworld. Serving ads on the Google search engine is different then serving ads on websites. It is a different user experience.

With all the hype over contextual advertising and Google establishing itself as the poster child, what does this mean? If contextual advertising has proven so successful, why is Google now adding banners and images? Aren't banners so 90's? I thought text replaced banners?

Banners were suffering from low CTR. Along came contextual advertising to save the day. Why are we going backwards? And why isn't Goolgle putting them on their own site. They are pushing them off to the publisher's websites only (as of 4/13/04). Is this because Google knows they will not be as effective? Or is it because they don't want the banners to clutter their prestine looking website?

Adsense is starting to look like Value Click. Value Click is an ad broker who bought a search engine. Google is a search engine looking more like a an ad broker

To quote Matt, "...this is very smart and very aggressive." I think?

Posted on May 13, 2004 8:33 AM
Permalink | TrackBack (1)