Got the new Google Gadget Ads?

[abbottsys]

Google is rolling out these things to selected AdWords advertisers. Do you have them in your account? I think the implication of "gadget ads" could be *very* significant, because they change the basic concept of what an ad does.

But, let's not forget the fundamental problem of rolling out a new AdWords ad format.. the publishers *must* sign on otherwise it dies. However, in this case I feel a new advertising idea is being born, not just another format.

BTW: I just blogged about them in the AdWords Addict
http://adwords-addict.blogspot.com

[beu]

Good to hear they are finally rolling this out. This has been in beta for a few months now and Google has been working on this for two years. They talked about Gadget Ads at Google Developer Day 2007 the end of May but, I've seen presentations since then that were more geared at advertisers. The big advantage I see is that Google Gadget Ads run anywhere and with no serving costs (at least they did during the beta). You've still got to have an RSS feed or RSS of some sort though.

One case study used, an Atlantic Records "Diddy TV" Gadget Ad.

Click "Ad it now" at the link below:
http://www.google.com/ig/directory?url=http://flash.atlrec.com/google/diddy/diddy.xml

Then you can go to iGoogle to check out the ad:
http://www.google.com/ig

Gadget Ads are designed to deliver various solutions including video, menus, forms, transactions, mashups, feeds, user generated and other. There are "beta" examples from HP, iTunes, Pizza Hut, Ebay, American Airlines and 20th Century Fox. Gadgets recently went cross-platform.

http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/11/google-gadgets-going-cross-platform.html

All and all they seem pretty cool but, issues may come up is when clients request "super customization" of Gadgets. In those cases there will be developer costs, design costs and RSS related costs in terms of development. Google is working on compiling a list of Google Developers to recommend. "Google Gadget Ventures" offers grants of $5,000 USD to Google Developers who develop Gadgets with 250,000+ page views per week. They also offer $100,000 USD to Google Developers starting a business around the platform.

[abbottsys]

...They also offer $100,000 USD to Google Developers starting a business around the platform.
Yes indeed. Google is serious about their Gadgets. Here's their $100,000 offer to prospective developers..
Google Gadget Ventures
http://www.google.com/gadgetventures/

[AdWordsRep]

You all know that I work at Google, so take my comments for what you feel they're worth - but I'm pretty jazzed about Gadget Ads myself. ;)

I'd be happy to pass along any feedback about Gadget Ads to the right folks, whether positive, negative, or indifferent - so feel free to post with your thoughts. I'll send the link to this entire thread to the Gadget Ads team late on Thursday evening.

AWR

[beu]

Thanks AWR! :)

Also worth pointing out that Google Gadget Ads aren't available to everyone just yet.

For more information check out Google's Official Gadget Ads page, http://www.google.com/adwords/gadgetads/start.html

[abbottsys]

...But, let's not forget the fundamental problem of rolling out a new AdWords ad format.. the publishers *must* sign on otherwise it dies...
I love quoting myself :) But seriously, I'm super positive about Gadget Ads - I feel a new advertising idea is being born, not just another format - but still, what about the above?

The mechanics of keeping the "consumer/advertiser/publisher" equation balanced is subtle. Consider the dynamics..

1) consumer - expects to view the ad totally for free. (but note: in this case the consumer can actually play with the ad)

2) advertiser - expects great distribution and measurement. expects to pay to get it.

3) publisher - expects to earn money by running the ad. expects revenue to be comparable or better than other ad formats. expects the ad will not be to intrusive and will not drain (to much) traffic from their website.

Comments?

Here's a very strange one to get the ball rolling.. what if 1) was not set in stone. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but as soon as micropayments become truly transparent :)

[beu]

abbottsys, can you tell us anything about your ads, their design, format and/or functionality?

How would you rate the quality of reporting?

[abbottsys]

abbottsys, can you tell us anything about your ads, their design, format and/or functionality?...

Hopefully soon. I've just been accepted into Google's phased rollout and should have Gadget Ads available in my AdWords account soon. I also have our lead developer ready to help with the technology. I'll post my experiences here and in the AdWords Addict blog.

[abbottsys]

Update: We're close to producing our first AdWords Gadget Ad and hope to have it live in the next few days. I'll report our experiences here for anyone who's interested in this potentially very important ad development from Google.

Recap: With certain restrictions, Gadget Ads are basically mini-apps that get delivered under a Google Ad revenue model. If you have developers on your staff it's a good idea to start thinking about Gadget Ads. Stay tuned..

[beu]

Congratulations abbottsys, I'm really interested in hearing how things have gone thus far!

[1websitedesign]

i think these ads are great.

[abbottsys]

Congratulations abbottsys, I'm really interested in hearing how things have gone thus far!
On the technical side things are going flawlessly, so no problems, and we should be live with the ad soon. But the whole process got me to pondering the wider implications of this Gadget Ad platform.

Since my "strategy ponderings" can get a bit boring for some readers :) I'll keep them out of this thread and post them in a new thread for anyone who's interested.

[abbottsys]

Update: the mechanics of Gadget Ad production

1) You build your ad in the Google Gadget Ad Editor which is basically a very primative application development environment. So you're building a very simple "mini-application"

2) The actual gadget file (code) is nothing more than an XML blob in a particular format. The editor supports entry of XML, HTML & Javascript. Flash can be loaded as well. No java. Your gadget can use java, but if it does, it will need to be externally hosted. This is not really recommended due to bandwidth issues (your server will get killed dead).

3) The Gadget code can do anything that Javascript can do. Any Flash is loaded by the browser, so all browser rules apply.

4) When the code is ready you run the Validator. Validation is very much like "compiling an application". It is pretty comprehensive. It checks to see if you have properly defined click through URLs and whether or not you have supplied all of the relevant XML tags.

5) Once validated you tell your Google AdWords account rep, who uploads the Gadget Ad into your AdWords account.

We're still Validating and about a day away from step #5. Our first Ad is something very simple so we can test the system.

More to come.

[abbottsys]

UPDATE: Validation

Well, our code was fine (this stuff is real easy to produce), but it failed to validate due to a "missing thumbnail graphic". Not exactly sure how Gadget ads use thumbnail graphics, but no problem, we'll create one and get validation complete. Hopefully we'll deploy the Ad early next week.

[abbottsys]

UPDATE: Validation done

Our Gadget Ad now validates ok. So we've asked our Account Rep to move it from the Gadget Editor to our AdWords account. Hopefully it will be live today. Once live I'll report specific numbers.

[nigeyes]

where do these gadget ads appear?

[abbottsys]

UPDATE: The gadget ad is now live in our AdWords account. It's configured in one of our ad groups as an ad variation, and is therefore in rotation with one of our top perfoming text ads.

So far I'm seeing impressions (which is encouraging) but no clicks. Also, a browser display issue - I cannot view the ad in IE, but it shows fine in Safari. My developer is working with Google to investigate.

As regards ad distribution, obviously it's on the Content Network only, but is also in competition with text ads and has to beat them before a publisher will show it. This is a bit worrying, since it sounds like it could impact existing text campaigns. Still, publishers do need an incentive to show these things and I suppose this is the way google decided to offer the incentive.

To aid analysis I might need to configure the ad as a totally separate campaign as opposed to a variation.

More to come..

[abbottsys]

UPDATE:

1) We're still working on the IE display problem. I don't think this is a big deal, but until it's fixed I can't view the ad in my adwords account, so I have no way of testing it.

2) A potentially bigger problem is a low volume of impressions. The ad is currently setup as a variation and I have two variations in the ad group, a regular text ad and the gadget ad. Even though I've specified Ad Serving/Rotate, so the ads should display 50/50, I'm seeing this is not the case. The Gadget Ad is only displaying about 5% of the time. Clearly it's in some type of competition with the text ad. I'm going to see if moving the gadget ad out to it's own campaign will fix this. Clearly, since text ads rule in terms of generating my business, I can't afford to impact my text ads.

3) My fear of course is that Gadget Ads are not (yet) getting *new* distribution, but simply robbing impressions from text ads. If this is true it's a problem for advertisers, although it may please publishers. Again, we have the issue of the careful balance needed to satisfy all players in the distribution channel: users/google/publishers/advertisers.

More to come...

[beu]

got any images for us?

[abbottsys]

got any images for us?
Not yet I'm afraid. But the gadget ad we're currently testing is very simple. At the top of the ad is text with a live link (basically a text ad) and below is a small box that playes a video. The text basically says, "play the video first to see if you like our product, and if you do then click on the link to order".

Simple direct sales pitch all in one ad unit. Of course, gadget ads can do more sophisticated stuff than this, but we're using this one as a test.

[abbottsys]

UPDATE: Yesterday the gadget ad received its first click, and the click resulted in a conversion. So I'm now seeing a conversion rate of 100%. As I mentioned before, the ad is not getting many impressions since it's a variation in competition with a text ad. I've just pasued the text ad, so the gadget ad now has the field all to itself. Let's see what happens.

Clearly, *if* gadget ads have much higher conversion rates than text ads then I don't mind them robbing text ad impressions in the distribution channel. But, that's a big if, so the above test is a very important one.

More to come....

[abbottsys]

UPDATE:

1) I paused my text ad so the gadget ad was not in competition. This is something I would never do in general, but I did it just for this test. Text ads deliver all my business, so I'm in no rush to do *anything* that would impact them.
The Ave. Position of the gadget ad is now 1.1, so it's getting good rank. But, #impressions is still very low, and no clicks. My initial worries about gadget ad distribution seem to be coming true.

2) We still have the display problem, which means I have no way to test the ad. Therefore I can't be sure what users are seeing and if the ad is working correctly. Hopefully this will be resolved soon. *If* it turns out the ad was not working correctly there is a possibility this could explain the above, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

More to come...

[asiakingtravel]

A lots experience about adwords,
Very is interesting to learn

Nam

[abbottsys]

UPDATE:

1) Yeah! We got the display issue fixed. Our Google rep was very helpful and had the Google tech folks look at the problem. It was some kind of complicated issue with IE 6 and images. They told our development folks what to do and we did it. So the ad is now workng fine!

2) Impressions are "healthy", and we just got our first click!

3) It's important to remember that these things are "mini apps" and require a whole different level of development expertise and support. You need a developer to build these things.

More to come...

[AdWordsRep]

[...] More to come...

Hey, this is getting exciting. ;)

AWR

[abbottsys]

Hey, this is getting exciting. ;)

AWR
Yes indeed. Now that we have the ad working correctly, and separated from competition from our text ads, we should have some serious numbers to report soon.

[abbottsys]

UPDATE:

Well, after we got the initial problems fixed, our gadget ad has now been running for about 5 days. Our AdWords account rep was incredibly helpful, and a pleasure to work with.

The ad is working fine, we get impressions, we get clicks and we get conversions. So why am I not happy?

Because the volume of all the above is so incredibly low that I don't have anything like statistical significant results to report. Basically I could replace this volume 10 times over by just making a minor tweak to one of my text ads.

Good old text ads. Will anyone, anywhere ever beat these things? Text ads rule. Period.

Anyway, I plan to keep the gadget ad running as a measure of the distribution volume. Hopefully google will find a way to boost distribution of these things. I still totally believe in them, but as I've said many times - it's distribution, distribution, distribution.

[AdWordsRep]

Hi abbottsys,

I for one really look forward to these updates. It's a real pleasure to learn what the concerns are about a new product from someone who is very much on-board with the basic concept. It's a great perspective.

I'll assume that you don't mind that I regularly pass your feedback along to the right team - including the 'under pressure' Product Manager. ;)

Thanks very much for this thread, and for your 'tell it like you see it' observations.

AWA

[abbottsys]

....
I'll assume that you don't mind that I regularly pass your feedback along to the right team - including the 'under pressure' Product Manager. ;)
...AWA
Thanks AWR. Yes, I'm totally on board with gadget ads and I'm pleased to have my comments passed along. Give my best to the gadget ads Product Manager. Let him or her know that advertisers out here are hungry for distribution, we're addicts ;)