ExpertAdWords

Sorry about the poor screenshots.

Google is experimenting with different colored sponsored links on their search engine results page (SERP). The new color is an egg shell yellow (#fff9dd) that appears white at certain angles and definitely differentiates itself from the top border bar. Most users will still see the light blue (#fff9dd) color that Google normally uses.

Looks like Google has finally announced its Pay Per Action experiment and it will be interesting to see how it is adopted. I hope I’m not violating my NDA by talking about it but hopefully, now that the news is out there, it will be alright (don’t slap me Google, I love you). The PPA experiment, to my knowledge, was another separate content network that advertisers were opting into. Seeing that the information is not on AdSense makes me believe it will still be a little while till it is totally implemented. I’m interested in seeing how Google is selling the network to publishers or if that was just how it was tested. PPA will be perfect for customers with a low conversion rate (see my last post) or customers that are worried about click-fraud.

I’m also curious about how pricing habits will develop. Will a mortgage PPA be around $2000 a conversion, Car financing, $1000 a conversion, Life Insurance $500 a conversion? This approach will definitely appeal to advertisers with fully developed backend marketing programs and less to scam artists and affiliate marketers.

Google became the dominate player in advertising to social networks today when Friendster announced that Google would be the primary advertiser on their network. Friendster which boosts over 40 million members has an active membership community of about 19.6 million people. Four out of Five of Friendster’s top markets are in Asia while the United States ranks fourth. Google plans on displaying both text and conceptual ads on the site.

Google already has a contract worth $900 million with MySpace, the largest social network in the US to display ads on their site till 2010. MySpace accounts for 80% of all traffic to social networks, has 106 million members as of August 2006, and reportedly attracts 230,000 new members a day. Google currently displays both text and contextual ads on MySpace.

Additionally, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten developed a social network service similar to Friendster and MySpace simply called Orkut which Google owns. Orkut reportedly has over 43.46 members and is primarily used in South America and Southwest Asia.