Google Launches Magazine-Style Ads That Bring Text Ads To Display Ad Units
Google gives publishers the ability to run display and text ads on their sites. They can run both styles of ads, or just pick a single one. The same goes for advertisers, who also have to choose between one of these two formats for their ads. Today, however, the company is launching a new ad unit that brings standard text ads to sites that would normally just run display ads.
These so-called “magazine-style” ads will only feature text, but will appear with “a design aesthetic suitable for display,” Google says.
It doesn’t look like there is any graphical wizardry involved here and Google doesn’t add any images to the ads. Instead, the company simply takes the text and reformats it into one of the larger ad units typically used for display ads, with a lot of whitespace around the text.
These new ad types will appear whenever a text ad outbids a display ad, so the economic reasoning behind this move is pretty straightforward: Google can simply make more money when these magazine-style text ads appear instead of the usual display ad. Before, these text ads weren’t even in contention for these spots.
As the last quarter showed, Google’s ad prices are under substantial pressure — partially because of the general move to mobile and because it’s moving into more emerging markets where ad prices are lower. This new unit won’t move the needle all that much, but given the company’s size, even small changes can bring a few extra million dollars into the company’s coffers.