Faced with increasing competition in search, Google Wednedsay announced new features for AdSense, the Google program that serves contextually relevant ads to publishers.
The major upgrade,
called "Ad Link," involves first serving visitors links to product and services categories in a box titled "Ad Links by Google," rather than actual ads. If visitors click on one of
the links within the box, they are directed to a new page containing a longer list of links with extensive blurbs, based on the category the user clicked.
For example, an Ad Link page
might contain a list of different types of telescopes, and a user who clicks on a single category will then get a list of telescope stores that offer those products. Starting at 120x90 pixels, some Ad
Links ads are smaller than the other AdSense ads--which range from a 180x150 rectangle to 336x280 rectangles, and also allow for banners and skyscrapers.
Advertisers that have purchased
ad keywords through AdWords, and are already published via AdSense, don't need to do anything to have their ads included in the new feature: The Ad Links pages are populated using the same list of
keywords that advertisers have been bidding on for sponsored links and AdSense ads.
Publishers of the Ad Links ads are paid a fee per click on each of the links on the Ad Links page. If
a viewer simply opens the page but doesn't click on any ads, the publisher receives no payment.
Also introduced in Wednesday's upgrade was a test program of automatic funds transfer,
which enables publishers to receive direct deposits of payment for AdSense ads, rather than receiving monthly checks from Google.
Earlier this week, reports that Yahoo! would introduce
its own ad publisher program, similar to AdSense, prompted one Wall Street analyst to downgrade Google's investment rating from "above average" to "average." And Wednesday, MSN
announced it would within six months start a pilot paid search program, similar to Google's AdWords program, in France and Singapore.