[LINK] Net Ad quality

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Google: "We'd like to think that we had a hand in the webs shift
         to a "content meritocracy"."

http://googletesting.blogspot.com/2008/05/intro-to-ad-quality-test-
challenges.html


WebProNews: Tuesday, May 27, 2008. http://www.webpronews.com/feeds

Ad quality becomes a bigger issue in the coming weeks, as Google plans to 
subject advertisers to landing page load time assessments. Speedier pages, 
which will mean those without lots of plugged-in third-party content, will 
receive better ad quality scores. 

Google's strategy considers quality as king of the advertising and visitor 
relationship. Relevant search results are no longer enough; it might be 
suggested that certain competing search engines would suit people as well 
as Google does for queries. 

Better ad destinations make the organic search results look that much more 
valuable. Google's strategic shift from quantity to quality ads over the 
past few months means they believe the company makes more money from a 
single well-conforming ad than several less-pertinent ones. Google isn't 
about to leave money on the table, and neither should its clients. 

Wealthy businesses and smaller operations all compete fairly when it comes 
to testing ad quality, and thus a placement at the top isn't a divine 
right for anyone. 

The issue of ad quality appeared in a post at Google's Testing blog. (url 
above). Alex Icev wrote about the team and process involved with ranking 
the quality of search results, and how that transitioned into work on the 
advertising side. 

"We needed to change a system that was predominately driven by human 
influence into one that (built) its merit based on feedback from the 
community," Icev said. He detailed a little of the process behind this, 
especially in the context of moving poor performers out of view: 

The idea was that we would penalize the ranking of paid ads in several 
circumstances: few users were clicking on a particular ads, an ad's 
landing page was not relevant, or if users don't like an ad's content. 

We want to provide our users with absolutely the most relevant ads for 
their click.

Even though the big change to scoring ads based on concepts like landing 
page speed hits everyone, we think the bigger spenders have an advantage, 
and always will have, when it comes to bidding for certain lucrative 
keywords. 

The most competitive keywords spur advertisers to improve their all-around 
page quality. When all other factors are equal, the bid spend makes the 
difference. Advertisers spend more, and Google profits. With luck, the 
visiting ad-clicker benefits the most. 

About the Author: David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering 
technology and business. Follow me on Twitter, and you can reach me via 
email at dutter @ webpronews dot com.
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Cheers people
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia