There was an article at TechCrunch that caught my eye today. It showed a screenshot of Google Image search with ads in the search results. The article didn't have that much info but I decided to play around with Google Image search to see if I could trigger any ads to appear.
Here's what I found out so far, you can trigger ads with generic search queries like 'shoes' or 'software'. Ads can sometimes be triggered with product names. I couldn't get a single company name to display an ad like 'Nissan' or 'Microsoft'. I haven't seen any Google Checkout icons next to any ads. Not sure if this is because its brand new or if they won't do that with this kind of ad placement. I know for sure RitzCamera is a Google Checkout partner and none of their ads had the icon. On to some screenshots:
Generic product search by a company: (Canon Camera) http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3165/2911039804_a8ffd5af74_o.png
Exact product search: (Nikon D300) http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3186/2911039674_013dde4cd6_o.png
Company ads spotted so far include: Target.com – Google Query = 'shoes' RitzCamera.com – Google Query = 'nikon d300' Buy.com – Google Query = 'software'
Original TechCrunch article mentioned at the top of this post: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/03/google-image-search-ads-in-the-wild-looks-like-they-need-work/
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I am getting a different ad location:
http://picasaweb.google.com/dberglind/Google#5253275565969920818 |
there was also experiments last year: http://googlified.com/images-search-experiments-with-adwords/ |
Wasn't there a story some years ago, where a Google engineer came up to Sergey/Larry and showed them that they could use ads in image search and make X revenue out of it, but it was squashed by Larry/Sergey because they wanted "clean" results for the user and not the money ?? (I don't have a link right now, perhaps you can find one)
Is Google now leaving their path and try to make more money ? |
Randy,
Marissa Mayer stated earlier this year, that they [Google] are missing out on probably 200 million in advertising revenue from not having ads in Image Search.
http://valleywag.com/383833/google-misses-200-million-a-year-on-image-search |
SearchEngineLand has a post about this and they also have seen banner ads in the wild.
They've also received a response from Google: << As part of our ongoing commitment to innovation and to help users find new and better ways of getting the information they’re looking for, we are currently conducting a test to show ads on the results pages for Google Image Search. The experiment is restricted to U.S. advertisers who are using formats including text ads and static image ads. >>
http://searchengineland.com/banners-image-ads-on-google-images-14941.php |
http://maps.google.de/?&t=k&z=23&ll=-3.226195,35.041576 these are photos from planes, look at this one! |
jim, What makes you say that? ;) http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3144/2913668806_f104f5ff57_o.png |
Text Sponsored links are in Image Search now: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3135/2976212563_3b365bacee_o.png |