• by Shankar Gupta , June 20, 2005

Google will now allow all advertisers to take advantage of recent upgrades to the AdSense network, giving them the ability to target their contextual ads to any publisher site within the AdSense network, pay on a cost-per-impression basis, and serve image and animated ads. When the program launched in beta in April, it was only available to a few select marketers.

"Now, you can select specific content sites where you want your ads to show," said Bismarck Lepe, the product marketing manager for AdWords. "This will allow you to precisely communicate with those individuals who are most likely to be interested in your offerings."

Advertisers who bid on a price-per-impression basis will compete directly in Google's keyword auction system with cost-per-click bidders, because Google will combine the pay-per-click rate with the ad's click-through rate to yield an estimated price-per-impression figure. That estimate will be compared to the marketer's cost-per-thousand impression bid.

Although advertisers will be able to serve animated ads onto AdSense network sites, there will be a strict editorial policy on the types of animated ads that can be used. Google will not accept Flash animations, or ads that strobe or loop more than three times.

When the product was first unveiled for beta testing in April, eMarketer analyst David Hallerman said that the move to image ads and impression-based pricing represented a bid for the branded advertising market. "To give the advertiser the ability to choose a publisher--and to charge it on the CPM basis, which could be better for both parties, and moving on to allow graphical elements--are really the first major moves into some sort of branding advertising, which is one of the steps they need to diversify their income stream," he said.