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Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

theguardian.com

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Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#171

Post by AJ007 »

T-hawk wrote: post #35

It's arguable that queries like [southwest airlines] are even a search. The vast majority of instances are probably URL-illiterate users merely trying to get to Southwest Airlines' web site. (And Google must know rather precisely just how many.) For these users, search is really operating as a natural-language alternative to DNS so such a clickable banner will help them get there. More than just advertising, this rep…

Chrome (v30.0.1599.101 for future reference) -> new tab -> Google + search bar appears above the recent/most popular sites list. I click on the search bar under the Google logo and start typing.. and magically my text does not appear in the text form but rather in the URL field in the navigation bar.

What once may have been uneducated behavior is a behavior Google is training users to do.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#172

Post by eCa »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #91
mapgrep wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to know that the company that holds my email, appointments, two-factor-auth, credit card number, and search data has the reliability of a flaky college freshman. Also good to know that there will literally ALWAYS be people willing to minimize the broken promises of corporations (when they're not insisting that no corporation would ever be so stupid as to break a highly visible promise because the outcry would be…

> Hitler promised not to invade Czechoslovakia, Jeremy. Welcome to the real world!

I would hope that Google considers itself, at least a little bit, more moral than one of the top ten most evil persons of history.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#173

Post by pmelendez »

wnevets wrote: post #162
pmelendez wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the moment when Southwest airlines paid for it is an advertising piece indeed. And to remove any shadow of doubt if you can't see a similar image when you search for American Airlines or Jetblue then it is clear that Google is favouring results against other companies in the same industry.

My point is if I search for jetblue and I dont get the southwest image that's not a banner ad, at least not in the traditional sense. If fact if you search for southwest without being in this test group you'll see a southwest image on the right side. Is that a banner ad, if so these images are old news. Now if I were to search for plane tickets and get the southwest image, that's a banner ad.

Under that razor... if you search for southwest airlines and between the results you get a Adwords of Southwest, then that won't be an ad because is in the result page of the same thing I was searching?

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#174

Post by eCa »

golergka wrote: post #60
null_ptr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly would you call it then, if not a banner ad? It's a large, colorful, rectangular 5:1 panel that advertises a company. Cut the doublespeak.

It's not an ad because it's an organic search result, which is directly relevant to what I'm searching. It's essentially the same as Google Image search result, only better suited for this particular page and request.

> Google said that it won't be charging more for the banner ads - which take up large parts of the screen: "they are part of AdWords" [from the linked article]

"they are part of AdWords" -> Google considers them to be an an ad.

Ads doesn't, per definition, need to be irrelevant.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#175

Post by freehunter »

rafitorres wrote: post #167
freehunter wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only see the ad when I search directly for "Southwest Airlines". For example, search for "Southwest check in". Southwest Airlines is the number one result, but there's no ad on the page: https://www.google.com/#q=southwest+check+in

I see the ad if I search for just "southwest".

True.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#176

Post by reddit_clone »

jeffclark wrote: post #93
mapgrep wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to know that the company that holds my email, appointments, two-factor-auth, credit card number, and search data has the reliability of a flaky college freshman. Also good to know that there will literally ALWAYS be people willing to minimize the broken promises of corporations (when they're not insisting that no corporation would ever be so stupid as to break a highly visible promise because the outcry would be…

> Also good to know that there will literally ALWAYS be people willing to minimize the broken promises of corporations At some point, people realize that corporations exist to maximize profit and not necessarily for the good of the customer.

Those two don't have to be mutually exclusive you know..

Killing the goose is never maximizing profit.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#177

Post by fooqux »

socillion wrote: post #136
fooqux wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I search for MLK, I see his picture on the side. I don't see how getting a picture of Southwest Airlines when I search for "Southwest Airlines" is that big of a deal. Now, if I were to search for "airlines" and saw that huge banner up there, I'd call that an ad and I'd be right there, handing out pitchforks. This? This is just returning searching results in a (arguably) prettier way.

You're saying that whether or not it's advertising depends on the context of where the paid ad appears, which is an arbitrary and baseless distinction. If a company rents a billboard that's right outside their office, isn't that advertising? Sure, you could have looked at the front of the building to see their logo, but that doesn't change the fact that the billboard is advertising.

I disagree with your analogy. In your case, I would say the banner represents the giant logo over the door, just before you walk into the building.

In most ad-based marketing, you're typically not just randomly throwing your brand out there. Obviously, the expected ROI goes up when you can target the right demographic (saturday morning cartoons versus world news with Tom Brokaw). This is not that. This isn't a demographic-driven ad, based on search criteria like "airline travel" or "buy tickets from DEN to DTW". The person knew exactly what they were searching for. Hell, depending on your browser, typing that exact string in your address bar will take you directly to Southwest Airlines. Google just managed to convince companies to pay them for this, while at the same time presenting a prettier and more useful direct links within that box.

As an afterthought, the most-searched for term in our company web portal is "google". I would be extremely surprised if Google, themselves, don't have a ton of searches where they could simply append a ".com" to the search query and send them directly to where they wanted. I doubt my parents would even notice.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#178

Post by AJ007 »

netcan wrote: post #146
T-hawk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases, it just isn't clear what the right page is. Absolutely. Which is why Google isn't doing this across the board but for carefully selected cases. They'd do it for advertiser clients for whom Google's data demonstrates a vast preponderance of intent to just go to the company's web site by name. I'd bet quite a bit that [southwest airlines] queriers are looking for Southwest's own customer applications (pr…

Google is trialing it for a few carefully selected cases. But even in those cases: - It's not a 100% bet that searchers are looking for the company website. Some will still want stock prices or wikipedia or travel sites or whatnot. For these cases this is a banner funeling more traffic to the company website with a forceful "more pixels" approach. - If the company starts to hit the media for something (especially som…

I can't provide a detailed opinion of this case because I can't recreate what the Guardian screenshot shows, but the end result in this particular case is Southwest airline's cost of traffic is vastly inflated.

When this particular user searches "Southwest Airlines", the giant image pushes all of the other results below the fold. The likelihood of the user clicking on an organic listing is very small to zero.

While most major US corporations have been purchasing PPC ads for their own trademarks for many years, and sitelinks have existed in Adwords ads for a few ads allowing more navigation options, this particular screenshot shows much deeper results. What I see in that screenshot matches the organic listings for Southwest Airlines right now on Google, "Check in Online" etc. The "sponsored" label within this element makes me assume that Southwest is paying any of those clicks.

The marketing departments of these large corporations, being dependent on their own internal results to justify further budget increases and bonuses are easily pulled in to this traffic attribution trap. They will be able to say, bookings from Adwords PPC traffic increased X times, when these were bookings that they previously were getting for free.

Figure out may be its not a great idea in two years? Too late. Google will just show something else in your place. (Google's ITA software prohibition expires in 2016, which will effect a lot of travel sites and airlines but that is a different topic.)

Is Google within their rights to do this, in the US? More or less yes. However, these corporations are baking in billions of dollars in extra costs to themselves. If I buy a Facebook ad or a Superbowl ad I get new visibility. Should I have to pay Rand Mcnally for users who walk through the door of my Starbuck's franchise because they used the map to find my location? It doesn't sound so ludicrous if I used a smart phone app to find a local coffee shop.

There is another side to this, the user's side. How happy are users once they know that most of what they are clicking on with Google are paid advertisements? For most of Google's life ads were just supplemental, a little additional content that made the company boatloads of money. No, for certain terms all Google is is ads. Its wildly more profitable. When users have been trained for years to believe Google is offering them objectively ranked content it becomes even better because their brains believe that ad they just clicked on is actually an objectively chosen "best" answer. Is this sustainable in the long run?

I'm not 30 yet and I feel like an old fart. I don't like the NSA reading my email. I don't like Facebook logins following me around the web. I don't appreciate perpetual history of every thing I do. I never even created a LinkedIn account. I don't like the idea of my Google experience being a boatload of paid ads. And I have my own company with well over a million monthly US users..

I hope DuckDuckGo does really well.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#179

Post by AJ007 »

davidblueit wrote: post #87
T-hawk wrote: post #35

It's arguable that queries like [southwest airlines] are even a search. The vast majority of instances are probably URL-illiterate users merely trying to get to Southwest Airlines' web site. (And Google must know rather precisely just how many.) For these users, search is really operating as a natural-language alternative to DNS so such a clickable banner will help them get there. More than just advertising, this rep…

what about if someone searches for nissan? picture of a car or a picture of the dudes computer repair service at nissan.com? whoever pays the most, which is sad. i'm sure the same thing will happen with apple

Its been like this for many years; the bigger flag (to me) is that the massive picture pushes everything else below the fold and much off page 1.

Re: Google breaks 2005 promise never to show banner ads on search results

#180

Post by AJ007 »

danso wrote: post #3

So how much of the reluctance to use banner ads can be attributed to Mayer, or, the subsequent reneging to her leaving? The screenshot follows kind of the same look of Google+'s banner (er Facebook's), so since + is supposed to be the new thing, and it has space for gaudy banners, why not throw it on search too? Still, seems like a slightly regressive strategy...I thought the traditional Google Homepage was becoming…

Google has gotten much more aggressive amount monetizing their existing inventory. They have been rapidly iterating Adsense unit designs that were fixed for 6+ years.

Search engine optimizers (of which I'm not one) have been terrified as they've watched ads creep over the search results and new elements push organic listings lower and lower.

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