So I got an email from Google congratulating me on being "selected" to try out their new longer ads. I read on and realise that the longer ads they are referring to are located at the top of the results pages with a blue / green background, and I realise they look kinda familliar. Then I think back and recall that for a while, there were loads of these adverts; in addition to the adwords boxes down the right hand side, then they kinda "faded out" apart from a few notable keywords / phrases. Am I going mad, or did there used to be two parallel Google advertising programs - one for the adverts down the right hand side, and one for the adverts across the top. Now I think about it, the opportunity to sign up for the adverts across the top seemed to quietly "disappear" a while ago, although I assume they didn't want to piss off their existing customers, since a few of those adverts continued to hang around. As I remember it, this used to be a premium program which cost more than adwords, but since this was back in the day when I was little and didn't have such nasty thoughts as how to sell things, advertise on search engines or any of that such I never really focussed on it. So it looks like now Google are trying to reintroduce these adverts, but charge the same as for adwords adverts, and merge the two programs. It looks like your eligibility for these adverts may be decided by your CTR or something simillar. Someone put me out of my misery... what happened about all that? And what's happening now? - Jamie
Before adwords they had just the ads at the top. Check out my post from yesterday: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=23600 I've also seen some 4-line Adwords ads being tested already.
Those ads on top were CPM for the longest time after adwords went to CPC. They stayed CPM - I know of a few people who still pay CPM for those spots. My ads that appear in those spots (CPC) get about a 20-30% ctr rate most days. I'm not sure how google decides what to put on top though. I have #1 position on several adwords slots but they are off to the right (no ads on the top of searches). Others are on top of searches. Its weird.
Can anyone provide links (or write their own) to a timeline of Google's activities?! It's really pissing me off trying to remember. I'm sure there used to be two distinct programmmes, both of which had to be signed up to individually, one for each programme, at some point...
I worked for a company from april 2003 - march 2004. They had a huge google "banner ad" campaign which was CPM and it allowed them to always have the top ad in Google for a key phrase. it was separate than the side ads which were early adwords. We got just notice from Google (6 months) that they were discontinuing the banner ads, in favor of switching to all adwords. The banner ads ended in DEC. 2003 for good. It was staggered, some people ended earlier and we were one of the ones that got a two or three month extension. We ended DEc. 2003