Google Calls It Quits On Brand Banner Ad Test In Search Results
Google has ended last fall's test involving large brand banner ads on Google.com. Amit Singhal, Google's head of search, confirmed the experiment was over in his keynote at SMX West in San Jose, California yesterday.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google had been running banner-style ads for major brands on Google.com since last fall, an unusual departure from the text-only AdWords unit that dominates the page. At SMX West in San Jose yesterday, search chief Amit Singhal confirmed the experiment is over — a rare public kill decision from the executive who owns the results experience.
The reversal fits a longer arc of Google managing exactly how advertising looks on its results page: back in November 2010 it retired the "Sponsored Links" label in favor of a blunter "Ads" tag (relabeling all paid placements), and the banner test suggests the company is still probing where the visual boundary between ads and organic results can sit before pushback sets in.
First-order effects
- Brands that participated in the fall banner test lose their display-format placement on Google.com, with inventory reverting to standard text-based search ads.
- SEM practitioners and agencies get definitive closure from Singhal himself, ending weeks of ambiguity about whether the banners were a permanent format or a trial.
Second-order effects
- Brand advertisers redirect budget back toward conventional AdWords formats and product listings rather than waiting for a display slot that no longer exists.
- Rivals and publishers watching Google's ad presentation read the quick retreat as confirmation that even Google won't force visually dominant brand units onto a results page users treat as neutral territory.
Third-order effects
- The kill-fast pattern cements Google's approach of treating the results page as a controlled laboratory where ad formats survive only if they don't erode trust in the ads-versus-organic distinction — the same boundary regulators and industry watchers keep scrutinizing.
The trend: Search engines run short-lived format experiments on the results page and retire the ones that make paid placement too visually indistinguishable from organic results.