Google's adlinks
Ivan | Thu, 2005-03-17 01:30Shortly after the introduction of Google sitesearch, just recently Ad Links were introduced as a new form of text advertising. Using the same contextual targeting algorithm that targets Google ads to the content pages, Ad Links units display a list of topics that are theoretically relevant to the page. Each topic, when clicked, brings the user to a page of related advertisements.
The result is advertisements that are hopefully closely targeted to the interests of the user. When Google is unable to return relevant ad topics to the Ad Links unit, it will show an empty search box labeled with "View ads about." Users can enter their own search terms into this box to view ads related to their query.
I find this type of advertising the least obtrusive, probably even less disturbing than Google sitesearch. Find a live sample at the bottom of the right column. Keywords vary depending on the content of the page and also depending on your location. You can see in the screenshot on the right that probably because of my Middle Eastern location Google gives me a keyword: "Iraq blog". Wonder what keywords it shows to you?
PS: Isn't it ironic that blogger's own spelling checker doesn't know the word "blog"?
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In the entire time I've been involved with CreativeBits, unfortunately, the only ads I ever see (other than the ones with the graphics, like Dreamhost) are ads for Blog creation software. It doesn't matter where it is in the page, or how many times we put Adobe Photoshop, Quark XPress, etc. in a post... it just always has blog ads.
So what's the advantage/disadvantage of these to regular Google AdSense? I don't really see much of a difference.
Advantage of adlinks over regular adsense ads: less obtrusive. not trying to sell you stuff directly. it rather asks, are you interested in ads in any of these subjects?
Disadvantage: the reader needs to click one more to get to the offers. they are not presented right on the content page. for the advertiser, only clicks on the subpages count, which might affect the returns.
yeah, site search is cool, but if you want to search cb for the category: crativity, you'll get tons of results, coz there's a meta tag creativity.