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We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

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Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#111

Post by j_maffe »

stingraycharles wrote: post #10
karlkloss wrote: post #8

Does nobody talk abot the elephant in the room? Will the answers the AI gives also be influenced by Googles customers?

This is not an elephant in the room, this is so obvious and discussed all the time. What else is Google going to do, give up their one and only goose that lays the golden eggs? Regular search being replaced with AI search means regular search (with ads) being replaced with AI search (with ads). The benefit of AI search will be that it’s much better “integrated” in the answer, aka even harder to detect.

But wouldn't that break FCC rules?

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#112

Post by iso1631 »

nelblu wrote: post #15

> We’re introducing more helpful ads in AI Mode I always chuckle when ad companies say that. I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have been using adblockers forever so I would not know.I am honestly curious though, for those who don't use adblockers - what percentage of ads that you see are actually helpful?

If an advert was helpful I would be able to click the "show ads" button

I used to do this. I used to pay for adverts -- computer shopper was a magazine I traded real money for to get the adverts.

If ads aren't opt in, they aren't useful.

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#113

Post by xigoi »

j_maffe wrote: post #111
stingraycharles wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an elephant in the room, this is so obvious and discussed all the time. What else is Google going to do, give up their one and only goose that lays the golden eggs? Regular search being replaced with AI search means regular search (with ads) being replaced with AI search (with ads). The benefit of AI search will be that it’s much better “integrated” in the answer, aka even harder to detect.

But wouldn't that break FCC rules?

Since when does Google care about laws?

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#114

Post by dyauspitr »

DeathArrow wrote: post #85

At this point, why do we, the end users, need Google for? Sure, companies might need Google to display their ads or to use Google Cloud. But end users? GPT, or Claude or Grok do a better job searching.

For now. If tokens don’t get cheaper over time, Google’s edge might come from being able to provide cheaper/free access to a frontier LLM.

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#115

Post by pbasista »

lars_von_pidor wrote: post #79

The only reason Google is pushing this AI crap is so that they can shove ads right into people's throats without them being able to use ad blockers (it's easy to block a web script but virtually impossible to block the text itself), effectively doubling their profits overnight.

> but virtually impossible to block the text itself

Why do you believe so?

As long as there is a clear indication somewhere on the webpage (in the metadata or in the text itself) that a specific portion of a text is an ad, a browser extension will be able to block it.

And I assume that there are laws mandating that the ads must be clearly marked in order to be distinguishable from the genuine content.

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#116

Post by mattlondon »

nelblu wrote: post #15

> We’re introducing more helpful ads in AI Mode I always chuckle when ad companies say that. I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have been using adblockers forever so I would not know.I am honestly curious though, for those who don't use adblockers - what percentage of ads that you see are actually helpful?

I typically block ads as well, but more recently I changed some setting in the default Android newsfeed thing and some ads started to show through amongst the news items.

The ads there are usually fairly innocuous (i.e. not disruptive, not flashing auto play vids etc, they just look like another news item and you can just scroll past them like other news articles you're not interested in), but I have actually found them useful. I am wearing a T-shirt right now in fact that was advertised to me a week or two ago as "on sale" for £8 (eight) and which I clicked through and purchased. There have been one or two other examples of things there that actually have been useful or at least interesting to me right now. So they actually have been useful/helpful in that regard.

So I am a bit conflicted here. It is no cost to me to click on the ad, and I bought some things that I use but would probably have not got otherwise. Am I being manipulated to part with my money? I dunno. Would I have bought a £8 t-shirt anyway if I was just in a shop and saw it? Maybe. Was the ad actually quite well targeted and appropriate? In this case yes.

I think on balance I would say those news feed ads are acceptable to me. I have problems where it is totally irrelevant and disruptive. Hopefully the AI mode ones will be similar to the news feed ones. I would be pretty upset if the ad content was directly worded into the response.

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#117

Post by iso1631 »

baal80spam wrote: post #19
nelblu wrote: post #15

> We’re introducing more helpful ads in AI Mode I always chuckle when ad companies say that. I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have been using adblockers forever so I would not know.I am honestly curious though, for those who don't use adblockers - what percentage of ads that you see are actually helpful?

> I have never seen a helpful ad There, I fixed it!

I sought out the He Man trailer because I thought I'd be interested in it. I decided I was and will watch it at the cinema next month.

That was a helpful advert.

I also sought out the Supergirl trailer and decided I wouldn't bother seeing it. Again a helpful advert.

In both cases I chose the advert.

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#119

Post by b3ing »

Eventually no one will write reviews because ai will steal all the results and information and not give any credit or back links so they will have no choice but to lie and say product x is the best, if the company behind product x pays some money behind the scenes, no ad mention needed, the poorer companies will have to buy a cheaper ad to get mentioned along side the expensive higher ai-tainted recommendation

Re: We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

#120

Post by fsflover »

bayindirh wrote: post #56
reactordev wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why local AI is so important

It's already being trained on "public" (ethical or otherwise) data. So, it already has ingested that kind of "optimization" during pre-training and training. I don't think you can fine-tune your way out of it.

This is far from widespread at the moment, so it'll be possible to at least use the current cutting-edge models locally in the future.
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