Friday, January 23, 2009

AdWords

AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue ($16.4 billion in 2007)[1]. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.

Google's AdWords division is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan[2], the company's third-largest facility behind its Mountain View, California, headquarters and New York City office.[3]

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[edit] Pay-Per-Click advertisements (PPC)

Advertisers specify the words that should trigger their ads and the maximum amount they are willing to pay per click. When a user searches Google's search engine on www.google.com or the relevant local/national google server (e.g. www.google.fr for France), ads (also known as creatives by Google) for relevant words are shown as "sponsored links" on the right side of the screen, and sometimes above the main search results.

The ordering of the paid listings depends on other advertisers' bids (PPC) and the "quality score" of all ads shown for a given search. The quality score is calculated by historical click-through rates, relevance of an advertiser's ad text and keywords, an advertiser's account history, and other relevance factors as determined by Google. The quality score is also used by Google to set the minimum bids for an advertiser's keywords[1]. The minimum bid takes into consideration the quality of the landing page as well, which includes the relevancy and originality of content, navigability, and transparency into the nature of the business [2]. Though Google has released a list of full guidelines for sites [3], the precise formula and meaning of relevance and its definition is in part secret to Google and the parameters used can change dynamically.

The auction mechanism that determines the order of the ads has been called a "generalized second price" auction. It is similar to the Vickrey auction, but is not equivalent to the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism and hence truth telling is not an optimal strategy.

[edit] Placement targeted advertisements (formerly Site-Targeted Advertisements)

In 2003 Google introduced site-targeted advertising. Using the AdWords control panel, advertisers can enter keywords, domain names, topics, and demographic targeting preferences, and Google places the ads on what they see as relevant sites within their content network. If domain names are targeted, Google also provides a list of related sites for placement. Advertisers may bid on a cost per impression (CPM) or cost per click (CPC) basis for site targeting [4].

With placement targeting, it is possible for an ad to take up the entire ad block rather than have the ad block split into 1 to 4 ads, resulting in higher visibility for the advertiser.

The minimum CPM bid for placement targeted campaigns is 25 cents. There is no minimum CPC bid, however.

[edit] AdWords distribution

All AdWords ads are eligible to be shown on www.google.com. Advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on Google's partner networks. The "search network" includes AOL search, Ask.com, and Netscape. Like www.google.com, these search engines show AdWords ads in response to user searches.

The "content network" shows AdWords ads on sites that are not search engines. These content network sites are those that use AdSense, the other side of the Google advertising model. AdSense is used by website owners who wish to make money by displaying ads on their websites. Click through rates on the content network are typically much lower than those on the search network and are therefore ignored when calculating an advertiser's quality score.

Google automatically determines the subject of pages and displays relevant ads based on the advertisers' keyword lists. AdSense publishers may select channels to help direct Google's ad placements on their pages, to better track performance of their ad units. There are many different types of ads you can run across Google's network, including text ads, image ads (banner ads), local business ads, mobile text ads, and in-page video ads.

Google AdWords' main competitors are Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.

[edit] AdWords account management

To help clients with the complexity of building and managing AdWords accounts search engine marketing agencies and consultants offer account management as a business service. This has allowed organizations without advertising expertise to reach a global, online audience. Google has started the Google Advertising Professionals program to certify agencies and consultants who have met specific qualifications and passed an exam.[4]. Google also provides account management software, called AdWords Editor.

Another useful feature is the My Client Centre available to Google Professionals (even if not yet passed the exam or budget parameters) whereby a Google professional has access and a dashboard summary of several accounts and can move between those accounts without logging in to each account.

[edit] Click-to-Call

Google Click-to-Call is a service provided by Google which allows users to call advertisers from Google search results pages. Users enter their phone number, Google calls them back and connects to the advertiser. Calling charges are paid by Google. It was discontinued in 2007.[5]

[edit] History

The AdWords product was launched in 2000.[6] At first advertisers would pay a monthly amount, and Google would set up and manage their campaign. To accommodate small businesses and those who wanted to manage their own campaigns, Google soon introduced the AdWords self-service portal. Starting in 2005 Google provided a campaign management service called Jumpstart [7] to assist advertisers in setting up their campaigns. However, this service is no longer available, so companies needing assistance must hire a third-party service provider.

In 2005, Google launched the Google Advertising Professional (GAP) Program to certify individuals and companies who have completed AdWords training and passed an exam. Due to the complexity of AdWords and the amount of money at stake, some advertisers hire a consultant to manage their campaigns.

[edit] Legal context

AdWords has generated lawsuits in the area of trademark law and click fraud. In 2006, Google settled a click fraud lawsuit for US$90 million. [8]

Overture Services, Inc. sued Google for patent infringement in April 2002 in relation to the AdWords service. Following Yahoo!'s acquisition of Overture, the suit was settled in 2004 with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license under the patent. [9]

[edit] Technology

The AdWords system was initially implemented on top of the MySQL database engine. After the system had been launched, management decided to use a commercial database (Oracle) instead. As is typical of applications simultaneously written and tuned for one database, and ported to another, the system became much slower, so eventually it was returned to MySQL. [10]

[edit] Policy and restrictions

As of April 2008 Google AdWords no longer allows for the display URL to deviate from that of the destination URL. Prior to its introduction, Google paid advertisements could feature different landing page URLs to that of what was being displayed on the search network. Google expounds that the policy change stems from both user and advertiser feedback. The concern prompting the restriction change is believed to be the premise on which users clicked advertisements. Users were in some cases, being misled and further targeted by AdWords advertisers.[11]

[edit] Allowed keywords

Google has also come under fire for allowing AdWords advertisers to bid on trademarked keywords. In 2004, Google started allowing advertisers to bid on a wide variety of search terms in the US and Canada, including the trademarks of their competitors[12] and in May 2008 expanded this policy to the UK and Ireland. Advertisers are restricted from using other companies' trademarks in their advertisement text if the trademark has been registered with Google's Advertising Legal Support team. Google does, however, require certification to run regulated keywords, such as those related to pharmaceuticals keywords, and some keywords, such as those related to gambling and hacking, are not allowed at all. These restrictions may vary by location.[13] From June 2007, Google banned AdWords adverts for student essay writing services. While the move was welcomed by universities, there is no restriction on such sites appearing in the regular Google Search results.
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AdSense

AdSense is an advertisement application run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and more recently, video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google was also beta-testing a cost-per-action based service but as of October 2008 Google has discontinued it in favor of an offering by Google owned DoubleClick.[1]


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[edit] Overview

Google uses its Internet search technology to serve advertisements based on website content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted advertisement system may enroll through AdWords. AdSense has become a popular method of placing advertising on a website because the advertisements are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the advertisements is often relevant to the website.

Currently, AdSense uses JavaScript code to incorporate the advertisements into a participating website. If the advertisements are included on a website that has not yet been crawled by the Mediabot, AdSense will temporarily display advertisements for charitable causes, also known as public service announcements (PSAs). (The Mediabot is different from the Googlebot, which maintains Google's search index.)

Many websites use AdSense to monetize their content. AdSense has been particularly important for delivering advertising revenue to small websites that do not have the resources for developing advertising sales programs and salespeople. To fill a website with advertisements that are relevant to the topics discussed, webmasters implement a brief script on the websites' pages. Websites that are content-rich have been very successful with this advertising program, as noted in a number of publisher case studies on the AdSense website.

Some webmasters invest significant effort into maximizing their own AdSense income. They do this in three ways:[citation needed]

  1. They use a wide range of traffic-generating techniques, including but not limited to online advertising.
  2. They build valuable content on their websites that attracts AdSense advertisements, which pay out the most when they are clicked.
  3. They use text content on their websites that encourages visitors to click on advertisements. Note that Google prohibits webmasters from using phrases like "Click on my AdSense ads" to increase click rates. The phrases accepted are "Sponsored Links" and "Advertisements".

The source of all AdSense income is the AdWords program, which in turn has a complex pricing model based on a Vickrey second price auction. AdSense commands an advertiser to submit a sealed bid (i.e., a bid not observable by competitors). Additionally, for any given click received, advertisers only pay one bid increment above the second-highest bid.

[edit] History

The underlying technology behind AdSense was derived originally from WordNet, Simpli (a company started by the founder of Wordnet, George A. Miller), and a number of professors and graduate students from Brown University, including James A. Anderson, Jeff Stibel, and Steve Reiss.[2] A variation of this technology utilizing WordNet was developed by Oingo, a small search engine company based in Santa Monica founded in 1998 by Gilad Elbaz and Adam Weissman.[3][4] Oingo changed its name to Applied Semantics in 2001,[5] which was later acquired by Google in April 2003 for US$102 million.[6]

[edit] AdSense for Feeds

In May 2005, Google announced a limited-participation beta version of AdSense for Feeds, a version of AdSense that runs on RSS and Atom feeds that have more than 100 active subscribers. According to the Official Google Blog, "advertisers have their ads placed in the most appropriate feed articles; publishers are paid for their original content; readers see relevant advertising—and in the long run, more quality feeds to choose from."[7]

AdSense for Feeds works by inserting images into a feed. When the image is displayed by a RSS reader or Web browser, Google writes the advertising content into the image that it returns. The advertisement content is chosen based on the content of the feed surrounding the image. When the user clicks the image, he or she is redirected to the advertiser's website in the same way as regular AdSense advertisements.

AdSense for Feeds has remained in its beta state until August 15, 2008, when it became available to all AdSense users.

[edit] AdSense for search

A companion to the regular AdSense program, AdSense for search, allows website owners to place Google search boxes on their websites. When a user searches the Internet or the website with the search box, Google shares any advertising revenue it makes from those searches with the website owner. However the publisher is paid only if the advertisements on the page are clicked: AdSense does not pay publishers for mere searches.

[edit] AdSense for mobile content

AdSense for mobile content allows publishers to generate earnings from their mobile websites using targeted Google advertisements. Just like AdSense for content, Google matches advertisements to the content of a website — in this case, a mobile website.

[edit] AdSense for domains

Adsense for domains allows advertisements to be placed on domain names that have not been developed. This offers domain name owners a way to monitize domain names that are otherwise dormant. Adsense for domains is currently being offered to some users, with plans to make it available to all in stages.

On December 12, 2008, TechCrunch reports that AdSense for Domains available for all US publishers.[8]

[edit] XHTML compatibility

As of September 2007, the HTML code for the AdSense search box does not validate as XHTML, and does not follow modern principles of website design because of its use of

  • non-standard end tags, such as and ,
  • the attribute checked rather than checked="checked",
  • presentational attributes other than id, class, or style — for example, bgcolor and align,
  • a table structure for purely presentational (i.e., non-tabular) purposes,1 and
  • the font tag.2

1: using a table structure for unintended purposes is strongly recommended against by the W3C[citation needed], but nevertheless does not cause a document to fail validation — there is currently no algorithmic method of determining whether a table is used "correctly" (for displaying tabular data or for displaying elements, that get proportionally wider or narrower when browser window resizes in width without active client side scripting).
2: the font tag is deprecated but does not fail validation in any XHTML standard.

Additionally, the AdSense advertisement units use the JavaScript method document.write(), which does not work correctly when rendered with the application/xhtml+xml MIME type. The units also use the iframe HTML tag, which is not validated correctly with the XHTML 1.0 Strict or XHTML 1.0 Transitional DOCTYPEs.

The terms of the AdSense program forbid its affiliates from modifying the code, thus preventing these participants from having valid XHTML websites.

However, a workaround has been found by creating a separate HTML webpage containing only the AdSense advertisement units, and then importing this page into an XHTML webpage with an object tag.[9] This workaround appears to be accepted by Google.[10]

[edit] How AdSense works

  • The webmaster inserts the AdSense JavaScript code into a webpage.
  • Each time this page is visited, the JavaScript code creates an IFrame with a src attribute set to the page's URL.
  • For contextual advertisements, Google's servers use a cache of the page to determine a set of high-value keywords. If keywords have been cached already, advertisements are served for those keywords based on the AdWords bidding system. (More details are described in the AdSense patent.)
  • For site-targeted advertisements, the advertiser chooses the page(s) on which to display advertisements, and pays based on cost per mille (CPM), or the price advertisers choose to pay for every thousand advertisements displayed.[11] [12]
  • For referrals, Google adds money to the advertiser's account when visitors either download the referred software or subscribe to the referred service.[13] The referral program was retired in August 2008.[14]
  • Search advertisements are added to the list of results after the visitor performs a search.
  • Because the JavaScript is sent to the Web browser when the page is requested, it is possible for other website owners to copy the JavaScript code into their own webpages. To protect against this type of fraud, AdSense customers can specify the pages on which advertisements should be shown. AdSense then ignores clicks from pages other than those specified.

[edit] Abuse

Some webmasters create websites tailored to lure searchers from Google and other engines onto their AdSense website to make money from clicks. These "zombie" websites often contain nothing but a large amount of interconnected, automated content (e.g., a directory with content from the Open Directory Project, or scraper websites relying on RSS feeds for content). Possibly the most popular form of such "AdSense farms" are splogs (spam blogs), which are centered around known high-paying keywords. Many of these websites use content from other websites, such as Wikipedia, to attract visitors. These and related approaches are considered to be search engine spam and can be reported to Google.

A Made for AdSense (MFA) website or webpage has little or no content, but is filled with advertisements so that users have no choice but to click on advertisements. Such pages were tolerated in the past, but due to complaints, Google now disables such accounts.

There have also been reports of Trojan horses engineered to produce counterfeit Google advertisements that are formatted looking like legitimate ones. The Trojan downloads itself onto an unsuspecting computer through a webpage and then replaces the original advertisements with its own set of malicious advertisements.[15]

[edit] Criticism

Due to concerns about click fraud, 'Google AdSense' has been criticized by some search engine optimization firms as a large source of what Google calls "invalid clicks", in which one company clicks on a rival's search engine advertisements to drive up the other company's costs.[16] Some publishers that have been blocked by Google complain that little justification or transparency was provided. Such bans have increased since the start of the 2008 financial crisis prompting concerns for Google's solvency.[17] Webmasters who publish AdSense can receive a life-long ban without justification.[citation needed] Some sites have been banned for distributing copyright material even when they hold the copyright themselves or are authorised by the copyright holder to distribute the material.[18] Google claims they cannot "disclose any specific details" on fraudulent clicks since it may reveal the nature of their proprietary click-fraud monitoring system.[19]

To help prevent click fraud, AdSense publishers can choose from a number of click-tracking programs[citation needed]. These programs display detailed information about the visitors who click on the AdSense advertisements. Publishers can use this to determine whether or not they have been a victim of click fraud. There are a number of commercial tracking scripts available for purchase.

The payment terms for webmasters have also been criticized.[20] Google withholds payment until an account reaches US$100,[21] but many small content providers[citation needed] require a long time—years in many cases—to build up this much AdSense revenue. However, Google will pay all earned revenue greater than US$10 when an AdSense account is closed.

Google recently came under fire when the official Google AdSense Blog showcased the French video website Imineo.com. This website violated Google's AdSense Program Policies by displaying AdSense alongside sexually explicit material.[22] Typically, websites displaying AdSense have been banned from showing such content.
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