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May 17, 2005
AdSense for Feeds Now in Beta
Right about now word is out at the Syndicate conference (and soon on Google’s blog) that the company’s no-comment trials with news-feed advertising are over, replaced by a public beta called AdSense for Feeds. The ever-patient Shuman Ghosemajumder (business product manager) and way chipper Barry Schnitt (PR pro) briefed me yesterday (a lucky accident of my research) about this bit of news.
Quick facts about AdSense for Feeds:
*The ads are targeted off web articles or postings via their permalinks, not the feed itself, “so we make sure we have the full context to give our technology the most benefits to produce relevent ads.”
*The ads are rendered as images. “We have to conduct a real-time auction so that our advertisers are accurately represented in terms of their budgets and the current state of our advertising network. So rendering the ads as an image allows us to not only serve that function but also gives us the maximum amount of compatibility with feed readers.
*AdSense for Feeds fits into Google’s existing advertising framework so it uses the same technology and the same terms and conditions. “You need to be an approved AdSense publisher in order to use AdSense for Feeds.” In other words, wannabe AdSense publishing partners must check all porno and most profanity at the door. Darn.
*News feed ad frequency is predetermined by Google. And what has Google predetermined, exactly? “We're experimenting with it right now. There are different options that we have, there are many different levers that we have in the way of being able to tweak [and] enhance our targeting.”
*Flexibility is limited. Folks who want to buy advertising from Google’s network can do so. If I understood it correctly, you must buy Google search results (natch). Your ads will also run on web sites across Google’s Network, in news feeds, in Gmail (ideally on purpose and not by accident) and, if you choose, on Google’s Content Network, which has a site-targeting option. You don’t have to run ads across the entire network but you can’t choose to advertise in feeds only, for example.
The surprising bit to me was Google’s ostensible reason for the move: to make the web a better place. OK, I’m paraphrasing but how would you translate this quote?
“By actually giving a wide set of popular feeds access to Google's advertising network, one of the things that we want to do is encourage them to put more high-quality content in there so that it's not just interesting to those most technologically sophisticated users but also to mainstream users.
“And I think that's one of the things that's been missing for mainstream users, because a lot of their favorite publications don't have a lot of high-quality content in their feeds right now. Just because they haven't been able to be compensated for that. ...They are viewing feeds...as primarily a promotional mechanism, to bring people back to their web site, which is where monetization actually occurs.
“And what we want to do is encourage a shift in that thinking. So that publishers realize that users use RSS feeds and Atom feeds because it's convenient for them. And by making it as positive an experience as possible for those users by putting as much high-quality content in their feeds that publishers are going to attract more users who are interested in consuming their content. ...And they'll have the opportunity for monetization from our advertising.”
So does that mean Google will require full-text feeds from advertisers?
“It's part of our guidelines that we want as much high-quality contents in the feed as possible. What we're encouraging publishers to do is have full-text syndication of their articles. But in many cases publishers aren't willing to be that bold immediately. So what we're asking for then is as rich a snippet as possible on the article.
And does Google define that in some way?
“It's something more than a single sentence. We don't specifically bar people because there are different ways of looking at the issue and one of the ways ... is that if someone is just putting out a headline-based feed but users are actually subscribing to it, then even though it contains advertising then maybe that trade-off is working well.”
I asked Ghosemajumder to explain one more time why Google wanted to encourage full-text feeds.
“You’re familiar with Google’s overall mission statement, to organize the world's information, making it universally accessible and useful.”
(Well, no, but I didn’t admit it yesterday. Why doesn’t anyone ever asks me about IDG’s ten corporate values? At least I remember the action-oriented, let's try it attitude.)
“One thing which is consistent with that is just being able to make sure that the world’s information is continuing to grow and that we're not being short-sighted when it comes to any of our business opportunities.
What a relief. It’s not just about making the web a better place. It’s about making the web a better place for Google’s business. Alarmed shareholders, you may now exhale.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at May 17, 2005 09:37 PM
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» Google lanceert Adsense for RSS from Een frisse kijk op..
Hey, wat ziet mijn oog? Google lanceert Adsense voor RSS.. Natuurlijk in ‘Beta’. Zal er morgen eens even in duiken. Meer hier alvast.
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Tracked on May 17, 2005 08:27 PM