Following the launch of Google Gadget Ads, I interviewed Christian Oestlien, the business product manager at Google responsible for Gadget Ads. I wanted to clarify further what role they would play and where Google might be taking them.
Access to an ad network such as AdWords for gadgets/widgets is obviously a huge step forward and opens up a lot of interesting possibilities. Could you set out in broad terms where you think this is going and how you think it will be used?
We're very excited to have announced Google Gadget Ads – non-traditional ad units with interactive, rich media capabilities, and believe they not only enable advertisers to target audiences in a flexible and timely manner, but also allow users to engage with ad content in a way static ads haven't facilitated in the past. Google is always looking to provide the best advertising experience for consumers, advertisers and publishers by creating non-intrusive and engaging advertising products that run on the Google Network. Google Gadget Ads are in-line with this goal because they give advertisers a new way to communicate with their consumers in a richer, more engaging medium without requiring that consumers leave the website that they're viewing.
How quickly to you envisage opening up access to the network for widget creators en masse?
We always aim to create products and tools for our entire advertiser base, and we're actively working on making that happen with Google Gadget Ads as well.
Will you consider creating a category separate from 'content network' so Gadget Ads can run on sites that do not want rich content ads?
We are actively working to create simple and easy ways for our advertisers to run Google Gadget Ads on most websites or networks they are interested in targeting. We understand the value that an open program brings to both our advertisers and publishers, and want to make sure we are as open a platform as possible for them.
"If users interact with your ad but don't click through to your landing page, you will not pay for a click but your ad will also not be credited with a click that could increase its Quality Score. For this reason, you should design your gadget ad to optimize clickthroughs to your landing page." Could you expand on this?
Gadget Ads are actually unique in that CTR will not be the primary measure of quality score for campaigns in this format that are run on the Content Network. We will increasingly use the interactions that are being generated within a gadget ad to determine the quality of any particular creative. Advertisers should therefore think about maximizing the performance of their creative in the context of how interactive and engaging the creative is for consumers. We will continue to factor click through in measuring campaign performance, but will also increasingly take advantage of the new signals the format offers.
"All gadget ad campaigns that utilize interaction tracking must display a visible link to Google's FAQ's on load. This link should be visible as "Disclaimer""
Can you explain the reason for this and why commercial adverts would want to carry a Google link?
We are asking any advertiser who is using the interaction-tracking feature to be transparent with consumers by including a link to an FAQ in their gadget ad. The link will go to a Google FAQ that provides greater information to consumers.
"Open platform Gadget ads work with any web API or code library, including products from Amazon, eBay and Microsoft."
Could you expand on this? What products are we talking about here and what products might be added in the future?
Using the Google Gadgets open API, gadget ads can be created by anyone with a working knowledge of HTML or XML. They may appear on sites within Google's content network, as well as other sites such as personal homepages so long as the advertiser has built the gadget ad to the various specifications of those other sites. We believe this will be of significant benefit to publishers and advertisers as most rich media platforms have tended to behave in a somewhat proprietary manner.
There are now several high quality Widget creation and distribution platforms, such as Clearspring, Springwidgets, yourminis etc. Is there any way for widgets created with these platforms to be placed via AdWords and if not, do you envisage that you will make this possible in the future? What is your relationship to these platforms?
We are working with multiple widget developers to help design easier ways for advertisers to create and publish gadget ads. We hope all of the existing widget platforms are able to thrive in the emerging widget/gadget ecosystem, and where it makes sense we will do what we can to help facilitate the overall growth of this industry.
"There is full support for product feeds including real-time inventory search engines." Could you give some examples of these feeds and engines?
We don't have any examples we can show at this time, but we are excited at the prospect of eventually being able to generalize some of the test work we have been doing with our commerce partners.
Do you have any demo or working example of a checkout merchant integrated with a Gadget? We currently do not have examples from our advertising partners for this specific implementation, but the Checkout team is currently doing some interesting work with the ad format to promote some of their merchant products. We are really excited about the potential opportunity the gadget ads format provides our merchants.Adweek also carried an interview with Christian yesterday that contained some interesting thoughts about the whole widgetization thing and how Google is on the case.
Google Turns AdSense Into Video Outlet The move is a sign that Google sees its AdSense network as more than a place to run text-link advertising. With relationships with tens of thousands of small Web publishers, Google sees an opportunity for AdSense to become a new version of the portal: able to re-aggregate audiences whose attentions are fragmented across many online destinations. "We think it addresses this whole notion of audience fragmentation that's happening on the Web," said Oestlien. "A lot of our video partners are living in a world where their audience is spread out across thousands of Web sites."
