So, I came across this article on slashdot via their RSS feed. It’s another post talking about Google and what is happening from the deal that they made with AOL. This is not the first article that I’ve read about this situation, but since my own computer is not running I don’t have a lot of time to read the news or to comment on it.
It no doubt goes without saying that this bothers me. I’ve used other services that were destroyed by AOL and, in general, I simply have no respect for that company. It seems like whenever AOL comes into contact with something it invariably goes sour.
Now we have the Google situation. They signed a deal with the Internet devil and now, from what I’ve been able to read, we’ll have preferred AdWords placements as well as some preferred search placements, all for AOL, as a part of their deal. Last but not least they’re apparently going to start running graphical ads now.
This is where the situation turns both very frustrating and somewhat confusing. Some people are concerned that these graphical ads will appear on Google itself, others are saying that they will appear only within Google’s “content network”. This is where it becomes even murkier; when you choose your AdSense code you can already decide if you want graphical ads to occasionally display, or if you want to limit the ads to just text.
So what’s changing? I don’t know, to be honest, since I have not been able to keep up with the news what with my own computer being down. I can say one thing for sure, though; this is concerning me a great deal.
You see, their “content network” are the sites that you visit. Such as this very blog, and I can tell you right now that I am not bloody well happy with the thought of AOL ads suddenly appearing on my blog. On the bright side, I’ve been using very few of their ads for quite awhile now. So their appearance should be minimal, if at all.
So should I allow it to miff me or would that be over reacting? Strangely I haven’t quite decided yet. I’ll have to wait and see how this actually unfolds.
I can comment on something, though. The only reason that Google’s ads bring them any money is because a lot of people have chosen, specifically, to not block them. Perhaps Google has forgotten this fact or has somehow merrily skipped along all this time without realizing it (I doubt that last bit). Suddenly hitting people with graphical ads is going to annoy people. Annoying them is going to cause them to add the Google ads to their filters. They shouldn’t expect for one moment that a lot of people will allow the ads to exist out of some sense of loyalty.
I know first hand what ad blockers do to a site’s income. It’s not pretty.
Lastly, people blocking these ads will cause revenue to vanish from the content sites that use them. For some that’s not a big deal, for others it definitely would be.
Will this happen? I suppose it all depends on how prevalent these new graphical ads become. As you can see from the slashdot article that I linked to above, these graphical ad placements will not be limited to AOL.
So does Google have some trick up their sleeves to make this actually work, or will they feel the effects of ad blocking as so many other sites and systems have experienced?
Personally, I won’t be placing any new Google ads up until I know for certain how this is going to appear on the sites that use AdSense.