Google and Fastclick?

Is Google placing somekind of adwords via Fastclick

[Ed_Gibbon]

I run Fastclick banner and skyscraper ads on my site. Recently I noticed a new kind of ad: ads with real text and links (not gif images). Looking at my Fastclick control panel I see they are listed as coming from Google -- and that there is a warning "may contain competitive links". The ads seem targeted based on the content of my site. This is new (as far as I know). Anyone else know anything about it?

[tjcali]

Hollywood, it's a the top of his page where the spot for the banner is. Contextuality looks appropriate.

[europeforvisitors]

Are we talking about those Google all-text AdWords banners? TribalFusion was displaying them on my site a few days ago, but I disabled them when I noticed that many of the AdWords were competing directly with my affiliate links. It just doesn't make sense to cannibalize my affiliate sales with low-paying ads. (I don't mind having ads for businesses that compete with my affiliate partners, but I expect those targeted ads to pay targeted ad rates...not run-of-network CPMs.)

[figment88]

europeforvisitors - that is an excellent point that they should be paying targeted instead of RON rates.

[Luckenbach]

Hollywood,
I'm getting both banner ads and skyscraper google ads, but they don't really LOOK like ads. At least not what we're used to. Banners have one or two targeted links, and skyscrapers 5 or 6. On the sailing club part of the site I only use banners, but most pages have both.

GoogleGuy,
Yep, sailing instruction ads I've noticed too. Pretty well targeted as THAT'S WHAT I DO! While I only have one page on my site to promote the sailing lessons, that's really where I make the money. So far the ads don't seem to have affected my business, actually may have HELPED, had another student sign up today. Maybe visitors went to look at the other sites and decided my school was the better deal?

Thanks for the compliment on my site, I try to ad something every day.

[eaden]

So to get fastclick ads on your site you need 100 pageviews a day. To get Google adwords on your site you need 2 million page views per day.

How can these 2 companies see things so differently?

And if you can get google ads on your site through fastclick, on sites under 2 million /day, why can't you get them from google directly? I get about 11,000 page views a day, going up all the time, but I don't want popunder or dodgy .gif ads. I want nice clean text ads. I would sign up with fastclick just to get the google ads if I could choose not to have the gif ones. I wonder if google will also supply ads to text ad only networks?

[Luckenbach]

eaden,

You can sign up with fastclick and deselect all ads but Googles if you want.

[chiyo]

Anybody know what FastClick pays for clickthroughs for Google Ads? I guess it is a percentage of what the adwords advertiser is paying but going though 2 networks it will be much less than if you go directly though Google with a 2 M hit a day website.

[Luckenbach]

chiyo, Fastclick is paying $.65 CPM for the google ads

[chiyo]

Thanks Luckenbach. So its by impressions. Interesting...

Let me see,,

lets take an "almost worse case" example.

On Adwords say an advertiser is paying 10c per click and has a .05 CTR. That means they are paying Google the equivalent of .50 CPM then?

So if Fast Click run these ads for .65 CPM then for an example like the above, it does not even cover what the Adwords Google advertiser is paying yes? even before Fast Click and google taking their cut?

Are they therefore only displaying some ads? Or that the better (CTR * Cost per click ads) fund the lower ones enough for FastClick and google to make a good profit? Or have i got my sums wrong?

[Luckenbach]

"On Adwords say an advertiser is paying 10c per click and has a .05 CTR. That means they are paying Google the equivalent of .50 CPM then? "

Good questions. What are advertisers paying Google? Might they be paying more than normal? Or is the CTR actually much higher?

Looks like an experiment to see if it will be profitable. I'm hoping they start paying me more as soon as they find out how well it works.

[chiyo]

Luckenback, For our Adwords around 50% we are paying 5c to 10c per click and get CTR of around .05 to .08 The rest have higher costs (say up to 50c per click and .1 to .15 CTR)

Now the second group seems sustainable but for the first group FastClick and/or Google will actually be LOSING money for each impression if they are paying publishers .65 CPM.

It may be that they will only display ads which are high CTR and cost soon, unless the great majority of ads provide a good enough margin for both FastClick and Adwords.

[Luckenbach]

Well, I don't think Fastclick is losing money. If they charge Google $1 CPM and pay $.65 CPM it should be hard to lose money.

Can Google make money with this? Only if it makes the advertisers money is my lont term view. I guess we'll know whether or not it works soon. If Google stops buying adspace, might be because it didn't work.

I think it's going to work. I think it's the best advertising plan I've seen yet, because it gives people what they want, information that they are looking for.

I've been wrong before!

[vitaplease]

It may be that they will only display ads which are high CTR and cost soon, unless the great majority of ads provide a good enough margin for both FastClick and Adwords

Chiyo, I think you are right on, there should be enough inventory of ads of which the CTR x price multiple ads up to more than 1 dollar per 1`000 impressions.

Luckenbach,

thanks for sharing all that information, you also have an informative page on the goings of on-line (banner) advertising.