Mountain View, California-based Internet giant Google has begun to show graphical display advertisements  alongside search results conducted using its Image Search feature for finding images online, in a test the company announced Monday at a media gathering at its "Googleplex" headquarters. The trial run of paid display ads within Google's popular Image Search inserts images that are relevant to searches conducted by certain groups of test customers, which appear in positions above and to the right of traditional non-paid results, as Google project management director R.J. Pittman demonstrated at Monday's "Google Factory Tour of Search" event. Bringing Paid Display Ads To Google Image Search The changes come as part of a series of Google experiments aimed at helping the company develop its graphical display ads much as it has successfully done with the text-based ads that represent the majority of the company's revenue, and as it looks to benefit from its March $3.1 billion purchase of online ad firm DoubleClick. "As we integrate DoubleClick into our advertising platform, we see exciting new ways to improve the user experience," Google chief executive Eric Schmidt noted in March. Among those new ways were the changes to Google Image Search announced Monday. "What we're announcing today is a new suite of image-related experiments [....] pairing images with images for the first time - display ads with image search," Pittman told reporters. Over the past two weeks Google has been conducting the Image Search test for certain users who have seen paid display ads shown on yellow backgrounds with small text labels pointing out that they are selected commercial images. Google vice president of search products and user experience Marissa Mayer said the company considered Image Search one of its most popular services, and through testing she hopes Google can find the best way to include display ads without interfering with a successful product used by millions of people globally every day. "How can we introduce advertising in a way that actually improves your image search experience?" asked Mayer. "This is one of our most popular properties, and we want to monetize it. [...] And we want to do it in a way that actually improves user experience," added Mayer. Google Testing Image Search Display Advertisements The Image Search paid display ad test is estimated to conclude in 2009, Mayer said, and comes out of a previously conducted trial phase that saw text-based ads shown within the service's search results. During that test  Google decided text-based ads weren't the best solution for providing relevant ads to people searching for images, which Mayer said led the company to the current display ad test for Image Search. Text-based ads "degraded the user experience on image search," Mayer told CNET in a recent report. "It's not a huge amount of fall-off, but we weren't willing to cash in user happiness to make revenue," added Mayer. The inclusion of graphical display ads within Image Search, which has been a popular Google service since it was announced in December 2001 and which Google first mentioned earlier this month during a radio interview, could help the search leader attract advertisers looking to place display ads. "We believe that if we can align the nature of the images from advertisers with the nature of the images in image search, we can really help users find more of what they’re looking for," Pittman said. Aiming For A Nearly Seamless User Experience Pittman echoed Mayer in stressing Google's desire to make the inclusion of ads within Image Search as unobtrusive as possible to its customers once the testing phase has ended and display ads make their way into Image Search for all Google users. "You'll see that these renderings show a fairly seamless user experience rather than just running a stack of ads down the side and across the top," Pittman said while demonstrating some of the changes involved in the test. Google said that it was also looking at incorporating new technology to automatically recognize the content of online images, and noted that it had added the ability for current users to search for images containing faces by selecting a new button on the advanced image search screen. A January Google patent application, "Recognizing Text in Images," which was published by the World  Intellectual Property Organization, an agency of the United Nations, holds the possibility of expanding the scope of what can be searched online, by recognizing text within images, including the images that make up videos such as those on YouTube. The patent, filed with the WIPO in June 2007 by Google and two of its computer scientists responsible for the company's Google Street View maps and Google Book Search, Adrian Ulges and Luc Vincent, envisions people being able to use a Google search to find what is on the shelves of the local grocery store or what is on display at the nearest museum, complete with related advertisements served up by Google. The technology has the potential to identify such things as tattoos of people walking in public, license plate numbers, or the lowest gas prices. The Image Search test announced Monday may signal that Google has begun incorporating certain features from the earlier patents. Related Links:
|
