AdWords - Proposal for a New Ad Type

[abbottsys]

I've used every ad type that AdWords has ever offered. But I still love the good old text ads, the workhorse of all my campaigns. They're are so simple there's no way to improve them, right?

Wrong.

They could be upgraded to support simple mouseover actions. For example: spidering the *display* url and showing basic advertiser info.

Why? It would help the visitor check out advertisers before clicking an ad. And it might increase CTRs, which would be great news for Google and advertisers alike. A win, win, win.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Yahoo and Microsoft don't do this ;-)

[LucidSW]

What kind of advertiser information do you have in mind?

I don't think this would add to user experience.

[pavlovapete]

Interesting idea abbottsys

I've been watching some developments in display for a while now that have a similar approach. One fellow in particular is claiming some very high conversion rates for interactive display ads.

And Google's display builder has some mouseover templates.

So I feel interactivity with ads (any type) has a lot of potential.

Interesting.

[Raheel]

I just have have a luxury for my ads as I can ad an extension that the address with my ads at Google and all its properties.

[Green_Grass]

won't that be very intrusive for text ads. It would be horrible user exp. if all ads started bloating up..

May work for display (image) ads though..

[Gomvents]

rollover ads are not new, and in terms of them on the Google SERPs... unlikely as their whole thing is an "image-ad free search engine"

[londrum]

speaking as a publisher, that doesn't sound too great. it's not much different to a pop-up, but on a smaller scale. people turn off banner ads because of all the intrusive flashing images and changing text, and having boxes pop up all over your page when the user is just trying to get to the navigation, for example, or read the article, is just annoying for them.

plus google has to keep the publishers happy. at some point the click-through rate will drop so low that publishers will start dumping the ads for something more profitable.

[IanCP]

Amazon have been doing it for quite awhile now. It's called a preview tool a.k.a. link-enhancer.

Simply add one line of javascript code at the end of a page before </body> and mouseover provides further information for the user including pricing.

Useful.

[johnnie]

I really, really hate those screenshots on mouseover.

[swa66]

As a publisher: I hope it never comes to this. and if it does, if I get the slightest chance to disable it I will.

As an advertiser: sure it might work if you're the only one, but imagine every other ad doing the same.
E.g. the earlier mentioned preview tool / link-enhancer of amazon: it doesn't work for my visitors: they almost never click on it, and even less do they buy things through it (I run a very few just to keep touch if this ever changes, but it's so miserable I might as well remove those last ones too). Regular links, "buy" buttons etc. do work quite well on the same site.

As a user: one more reason to use an ad blocker: I move my mouse and all sorts of ads think they need to interact with me: no thanks!

[signor_john]

Add me to the list of people who hate text ads that pop up and block the page. Expandable ads are fine, but only if the expansion is intentionally (not accidentally) initiated by the user.

[vincevincevince]

Absolutely right signor_john. A click is the proper signal that I wish the unit to share more information. A mouse-over is the signal that I am moving my mouse and should not be misinterpreted.