Are New Google Ads Doing Evil?

Google’s AdSense blog just posted news of a change in the look of AdSense ads. Gone is the “Ads by Google” bar at the top, replaced with a smaller mention in the bottom right of an ad unit. They write that “the new formats are not only visually appealing to users, but they also perform even better for publishers and advertisers.” This doesn’t mean they are better for ad viewers.

Is it any question whether an ad will perform better if it blends in with the page so well and only says it is an ad at the bottom in a small area? This smells like Google is being evil and sacrificing transparency in search of the almighty dollar. Of course the old format did look bad.

Source: Inside Adsense: A fresh, new look for AdSense ads

AdSense Keywords: Are they for you?

Findory recently added Google AdSense ads to their site, and the ads are more precisely targeted than regular Google Ads. They take advantage of 2 javascript variables: google_kw_type and google_kw. These allow publishers to more precisely target the ads being displayed on their site.

I searched around online and found a forum post which explains that: “This is something some publishers can use with permission in extreme cases where there are targeting issues (primarily Premium publishers, I believe). It is against the terms to use it without permission from the AdSense team. “ So Google must allow you to use the feature.

Original Findory mention posted by Google Blogoscoped.

Updated June, 3 2005 : Google’s AdSense support responded to my google_kw inquiry with the following: “The feature you’re referring to is one of several new features the Google AdSense team is currently testing for a very limited number of publishers. At this time, we are not able to offer these features to other publishers. “

Google Testing RSS Ads

CNET has an article about Google testing a variation of AdSense that allows sites to display related text or image ads alongside their syndicated content using RSS or Atom. Longhornblogs.com is testing out the service and you can see it in their RSS feed.

This is a great solution to RSS feeds that are used quite often to circumvent having to actually go to a specific site.

AdSense Ad Links

Google has released a new AdSense ad format called Ad Links. Instead of being actual ads the links are ad categories that when clicked open up the category and show some ads in them. It seems like a neat idea for allowing visitors to choose ads they are actually interested in, and it reduces clutter on websites displaying the ads.