Google Begins “Next Chapter” in Search Advertising

Update: Google says its new ad formats are "the next chapter in search advertising", and its "AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative" will focus on two themes:

• Ad extensions offer you the ability to enhance your existing text ads with additional relevant information. Some examples of ad extensions include Ad Sitelinks which allow you to provide additional links pointing to specific information on your site and Product Extensions which allow you to show images and prices of relevant products from your Google Merchant Center account. By putting the most salient information directly wiithin the ad, ad extensions are designed to help users more quickly and easily find the products and services they seek on Google.
  
  
• New ad models are formats that offer better solutions to more complicated queries. For example, Comparison Ads enable users to specify the exact product or service they're looking for and compare multiple offers in a single location. New ad models also offer advertisers new pricing models, like cost per action for Product Listing Ads. Our new ad models are designed to make it easier for users to find exactly what they want and for you to reach more users with better information.

Original Article: Google is now offering some new formats for search ads. They have already been testing them in the U.S., so there is a chance you have already seen some of them if you live here.

Some of them include videos. Some include maps. Some include multiple links for different landing pages. Some of the new ads include product images with corresponding links and prices. Some actually offer comparison shopping functionality.

Take a look at some examples:

"At Google, we're committed to giving you the information you want — regardless of the form in which it might appear," says Google VP, Product Management Susan Wojcicki. "Text is often useful, but sometimes videos and pictures are a more effective way to receive information. For example, if you want to learn a magic trick, a video showing you how to perform the trick is likely the best result. So over the past few years, we've blended videos, images, maps and more into the search results on Google.com."

Using that logic, Google figured its search ads should fit a similar mold. The company says that while it is experimenting with new formats, they will "remain loyal" to their core principal, which is, "getting the right ad to the right person at the right time."

Google says you will probably see even more formats appear with search results in the future. This will occur until they figure out which ones are most useful, relevant, and engaging. Expect a lot of new things.

Have You Read This?

> Google and Heineken Study Paid Search for Branding

> Report: Paid Search Spend Up 10%

> Search Ads Convert Better with Display

Does an Organic Search Presence Help Paid Result Performance?

A study from a couple of NYU Stern professors has found that organic search engine results can play a direct role in whether or not a paid listing is clicked. Basically, if this research is any indication, if your business has both a paid result and an organic result appear at the same time, you have a better chance of your paid result getting clicked than if the organic result had not appeared.

Professors Anindya Ghose and Sha Yang have highlighted the following findings:

- On average, the impact of organic listings on paid advertising is 3.5 times stronger than vice-versa, possibly because of the tendency of consumers to trust organic listings more than paid ads.

- The positive association between paid and organic listings increases advertisers’ profits by at least 6.15% when compared to profits in the absence of either of them. The positive association is strongest when advertiser-specific keywords are used and weakest when brand-specific and generic keywords are used.

- Click-through rates, conversion rates and total revenues are higher when both paid and organic listings are present simultaneously than when paid search ads are absent.

- The combined click-through rates are 5.1% higher when paid and organic listings are present simultaneously than when only the organic listings are present.

- The combined conversion rate increases 11.7% when paid and organic listings are present simultaneously than when organic listings alone are present.

- Paid search advertising drives up to 54% of total revenue growth.

The professors used "a unique panel dataset of consumer responses to keyword ads on Google" to conduct their research. The complete findings from the study are evidently available in a paper entitled "Analyzing the Relationship between Organic and Sponsored Search Advertising: Positive, Negative or Zero Interdependence?" It's 52 pages long.

"These findings have important implications for the incentives of search engines to strategically modify the rankings of their organic search listings in order to boost their revenues from paid search advertisements," says Professor Ghose.

Ghose's point is an interesting one. Nobody's making any accusations here, but would search engines tweak organic results specifically with the goal of increasing the performance of paid results, and bringing in more revenue? What are your thoughts on the subject? Comment here.

Have You Read This?

> Google and Heineken Study Search for Branding

> Report: Paid Search Spend Up 10%

> Search Ads Convert Better with Display