Did The “Ads By Google” Vanish In An Attempt To Cash In?

Let’s face it, bid prices in Google’s once bargain-basement content network continue to go up. And with marketers getting more aggressive in using cloaking and non-targeted bid phrases this is only going to increase. Content is the new search and the cat is firmly out of the bag. In a strong economy a drift toward higher bid prices keeps the Google stock high as well. But with the ad industry going through the same slump as the rest of the general economy even the Google monopoly has to turn the knobs a little bit to keep the money flowing in. This probably shocks the people that like to think of Google as the “do no evil” company out there trying to protect the user experience of the vast unwashed masses of internet surfers.

Yeah right, and Barak Obama sent all those tweets and emails personally because he cares. Um.. no and not exactly.

None of this is surprising or necessarily wrong. Some would argue it is a little hypocritical and that may be, but Google is a commercial entity first and foremost and despite all the “do no evil” propoganda they have one main priority – increase shareholder value. That’s “make money and increase profits” to those of you in the balcony…

So it’s not surprising when we see Google buying up DoubleClick and other ad outlets. It’s not surprising when they seemingly change their position on allowing gambling/casino traffic. And it’s not surprising when they decide to get a little more aggressive and “hide” the little fact that they are running ads.

It’s been known for a while that the standard 468×60 text ad banner does always carry the “ads by Google” attribution. Adsense players for years used this with the usual blending of ads and “content” (and I use that term loosely) to increase CTR. But with the Adsense boom long behind us it is rarer to hear about and see examples that extend into Google’s other formats like image ads.

In November, Google started using the DoubleClick network more and more to serve Adwords in the content network. Now, a few months later we’re starting to see traditional media ads – image ads and banners – without the “ads by Google” attribution.

Is this really a big deal? Yep. CTR will definitely increase with image ads that look like text ads and that blend in with the font and style of the site. That should translate into better conversion for the Adwords advertiser and higher payouts for the Adsense publisher since they won’t be smart priced.

Happy clients on the advertiser and publisher side should mean more $$$’s back to the Googleplex. So while Google would have us believe that their users live in an ivory tower and do not like the gutteral debasement of “advertising”… and that Google, being the keeper and defender of Quality with a capital ‘q’ will always have the surfers best interests in mind… it’s nice to see that big G may be moving the levers yet again and opening up a nice opportunity for us with something as simple as not saying “ads by Google”.