Google Deliberately Sells Fewer Ads - And May Have Gone Too Far -- Journal 6 - July 20, 2008

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/google-deliberately-sells-fewer-ads-and-may-have-gone-too-far/index.html?ref=technology

The popular search engine, Google.com, is selling fewer ads. Not because it has to, but because it chooses to do so. Google would rather focus on placing quality ads online, rather than the quantity of ads displayed. They would rather display what users want to see than false or misleading ads.

Google makes no predictions about its sales and profits, so they do not have to answer questions about whether or not they ‘missed the mark’. Although they do not predict these, Google also claims they may have taken it a little bit too far. They do not want to end up with no ads, so they confess it was not the ideal strategy.

In 2005, Google saw the value of advertising on the web. In 2004 alone, advertisers in the United States spent $140 billion. Of that number, $8.4 billion went into online advertising. Google began testing non-search related ads for its outside partners. These ads would have to be related neither to the content of the publishing web site, nor would it have to be text-based. It could be graphics and/or animations that attracted these viewers to the web sites in the ads.

I find it interesting that only three years ago, Google and Yahoo were in close competition to gain advertisers for their web sites, and now, Google is eliminating some of them. Google must be aware of who they eliminate though. As they have switched from a cost-per-click form of payment, Google now takes the highest bidders for advertisers. That is, they now accept ads from the highest payer regardless of ad content.

Personally, I like the idea of quality over quantity. I would much rather see legitimate ads that may be of some use, rather than false information that congests the screen. If Google spent more time researching which ads users actually clicked on or read, they could potentially hone in on what consumers wanted. In turn, they could eliminate the space taken by useless ads. By doing so, they remain favorable in the consumers’ eyes, valuable in the advertisers’ eyes, and Google profits, nonetheless.

Reference: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=161502592