Has anyone noticed that recently the G ads have been quite the same ones, on my sites, many other sites and even on here, "google ads for your site" they are advertising themselves big time..i wonder why?? (oops posted in wrong place sorry)
They don't pay per click for those - they are CPM and the CPM is horrendous! I have added google.com to my competitive filters yet they are still being shown - we'll see if they are removed after a few hours.
It's driven from financial perspective. Google promised to its investors to meet certain quarter earnings. They didn't meet them, so the boys are trying to come up with some more aggressive advertising strategy to bring more revenue to investors. Google went publish last year, so they are responsible to their shareholders.
Those ads have now been removed from my site so the competitive filter works well, even against big G!