Google Image Ads Are Here
Posted by Al Scillitani on August 13, 2009 – 8:18 amDoing some searches this morning I found something I personally have never seen, image ads and listings under “sponsored links” in Google. Not only am I seeing this listings from some broad terms, but
1. They always seemed to appear at the top right of the page pushing all of the other paid links down.
2. It didnt seem to matter if the company already had paid ads or not, you can have these image ads AND still have paid ads under the “sponsored links.”
3. The results pages are showing shopping results from Google Product Feed as well.
This can potentially mean, one company can be listed for ppc, naturally, in Google shopping, and in these image ads.
According to Chris Crums article http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/08/12/google-talks-future-of-search-advertising (thanks to Dan London for finding this) Google AdWords Business Product Management Director Nicholas Fox states, “The company is looking at matching information about your product or service and automatically building ads based on crawling your website.” Is this what he was talking about? That article was just posted yesterday?
Well, I gotta go figure all of this out and breakdown the algo’s.
Update: August 13, 2009 3pm ————————————————-
Here is more about the program from Google:
“The name for what you’re seeing is the AdWords Product Plusbox beta. This is a new feature being tested that allows AdWords advertisers to display multiple product offerings to potential customers with just one ad on Google.com. These products are being pulled from the advertiser’s Google Base feed. This beta is currently limited.”
Thank you “anonymous” for sending me this!
27 Responses to “Google Image Ads Are Here”
BTW, I can only see these in Chrome and Firefox. I haven’t seen them in IE.
By Kevin on Aug 13, 2009
Kevin, Funny thing is, I am seeing the exact opposite. I can only see them in IE?
I have my laptop set up with one additional monitor. I searched “golf shoes” on IE and in FF using the other monitor and it only shows on IE for me.
By Al Scillitani on Aug 13, 2009
Now that’s interesting….
By Kevin on Aug 13, 2009
Just double checked. My position is still true for my location. And in both instances, I am logged into a google account.
By Kevin on Aug 13, 2009
I noticed that a few months ago. I forget what terms i was searching for, but know that they were generic and 1-2 words in length.
Pretty interesting if they do stick with them. I know the Google Checkout icon does increase CTR on some products, this could be an extension of that.
By Dan London on Aug 13, 2009
I too noticed them a couple months ago. These listing seem different. Before there was a plus sign that would open up and show a couple products. This looks like products from the google base feed being listed in the sponsored section. I haven’t been able to replicate the image in the article. Could someone who has please expound on the difference in URLs of the image listings?
By Nate on Aug 13, 2009
[…] hat tip to Al Scillitani who noticed that Google has added images to paid search ads. This seems to be a test as I couldn’t personally duplicate […]
Sorry… forgot to say great post - can’t wait to read your next one!
By Google Tests Ads with Images in Sponsored Links | Media News: Internet Marketing & Online Advertisng on Aug 14, 2009
Thanks for sharing this, I haven’t seen a SERP like this yet. And I don’t like the sound of it- potential to double serve (in a way) having the #4 position basically turn into #7 and mixing “free” product listings with paid.
By Elizabeth on Aug 14, 2009