Google Grants Steps up Comp Ads

[Brett_Tabke]

[usatoday.com...]

Google provides the advertising space at no cost.

Google has given away $33 million in free advertising to 850 non-profits in the last two years, says Sheryl Sandberg, Google's vice president of global online sales. "We don't see any limit to this. We want it to continue growing."

[google.com...]

The Google Grants program supports organizations sharing our philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts.

[cerebrum]

Thatz good. Our lives are worthful only when we help others. Google is doing a great job. Long live google. Also check out www.google.org

[Clark]

I told a friend who has a nonprofit about the program and eventually she joined. Anyone have tips on how she can maximize the program?

[dbhatta]

Isnt some of that revshare for publishers? Lot of the PSAs are displayed in our site and we dont get credit for it, so technically google takes credit for a lot of publishers work. Nice tax writeoff for them.

[ken_b]

I don't know what percentage of ads on my site are PSAs, but I like having them show up. My target audience is involved in a wide variety of charitable efforts, so the ads fit well.

[Clark]

Technically they should allow us to write that off if they want to do no evil.

[ken_b]

Write off what? The PSAs are showing up on publisher sites because there are no targeted ads to show.

And Google has a system publishers can use to run alternate ads in place of PSAs.

[antoine]

It's costing them nothing to do this, any person in the same position would do the same thing.

If they truly cared they would donate some of those outrageous earnings to important causes. Once they do that than they can go ahead and rave about how they are such a great company.

[inbound]

I would imagine that the grants will in fact create ads that have a real bid value which, if they are served on AdSense, will cost Google.

I suspect that PSA's and the grant ads are 2 different things. A page that has no contextual meaning to Google cannot earn revenue as they would be doing a dis-service to their advertisers, hence the no cost PSA's. On the other hand if a page is known to be about a subject that happens to have a grant advertiser too, the ads will show along with any other paid ads and generate revenue.

Although I could be wrong.