Ads in Google News Turn it into a PR Playground

The Google News team blogs that contextual ads are now running alongside of news search results...

"What this means is that when you enter a query like iPhone or Kindle into the Google News search box, you'll see text ads alongside your News search results--similar to what you see on regular Google searches or Google Book Search."

Read between the lines and guess what that really means: Google News is now a PR playground. Given the relative ease of launching a simple Google Adwords campaign we're going to see a lot of companies - some legit, others not - buying up real estate on Google News solely for influence, not clicks. Google may bounce these ads if they don't perform - time will tell.

It's already happening. Here's a case in point. Last week an eagle-eyed reader alerted SEO blogger Barry Schwartz that one advertiser tried to use Google News sponsored links as a way spread fake news - in this case a false rumor that President Obama was killed. The ad, Schwartz notes, was pulled down. But you can bet there will be more. And clearly some people saw it.

On the whole, I am bullish about ads in Google News. The PR industry largely missed the first search engine marketing wave and I believe that, at least when it comes to smaller campaigns, we still have time to catch up. Richard Edelman, our CEO, is also thinking the same way (see point #3). For more, see this post from my colleague, Marhsall Manson, on how good SEO is an outcome of good PR. Ads on Google News will serve as just another log on the fire that will encourage PR pros to boost their search knowledge. 
However, the ethics issues around contextual news ads and search overall are huge, particularly on sites like Google News. It will fascinating to see what Google deems as kosher/not - and to what degree people in PR and outside may try to push the boundaries.

Comments

[Ryan Holiday]

Smart companies and people should have already been doing this with regular Google results and Google Finance.

[Max Kalehoff]

Steve,Agree that search and contextual advertising makes a lot of sense for PR people. Foremost, they should incorporate search as part of their strategy to connect with individuals during times of reputation crisis. That's well within PR's wheelhouse. But one twist to contextual advertising, particularly Google, could throw a wrench in your assumption that companies will begin "buying up real estate on Google News solely for influence, not clicks." The problem is that click-through rate influences Quality Score, or Google's rating of the relevance of your page to a specific keyword. If you have no clicks, your quality score will likely go down, which would mean that either the price of that keyword will go up tremendously, and the ad position will likely decrease. Of course, this is all presuming that quality score standards will be held consistent from standard search to news search.

[john andrews]

SEO consultants have been using PPC for PR (as you call it) since AdSense was in beta (myself included). In fact, we've been waiting and hoping that good PR people would get involved in SEO for years (and helping to make that easy in some cases).

But please, if you want to engage a good SEO to help you, don't offer peanuts or suggest we can work together to make you money. We're a highly efficient species, and we know it. We're constantly adapting, and don't have time to chat about what might be in the future unless it's core to our own, rapidly-changing industry.

It would be great to get more brilliant & talented PR people involved in modern search marketing campaigns. It would be better to work together, instead of PR people trying to hire SEOs as workers today, or the other way around in a few years.

[Alicia]

I suppose especially in the beginning we will see some funny mixed ads on Google News... As an advertiser I am looking forward to this,as an citizen I dont't like the mixe up of content and commercials.

[Darren Tan]

They're hard-selling? It's too flashy for my eyes. Less is more..

[EarRings]

Its about time they do this. For the longest time there I could not understand why they wouldn't ads in here. Now, its time to put a filter to select which categories your ads should show up.

[José]

I believe in quality.

Have a great weekend,

José

[On the Money]

Agree it will be interesting to see what is regarded as legit and what is not. We have a saying in the UK about ethics ... "... next to Sussex, isn't it?" ...

[Samsung unlock]

I believe in quality not in quantity.So keep it up.Have a good day.