Google Advertising Tools, 2nd Edition

The Automated Ad Broker: AdWords

Google places ads on its own properties—most significantly on search results pages—and on websites that have signed up for the AdSense program.

Note

Google also places ads in third-party content networks to extend the range of its ads even further.

Advertisers—businesses and people with something to sell or promote—sign up with Google via the AdWords program. Working with AdWords, which involves bidding a maximum amount for particular keywords, is explained in detail in Chapter 10.

Google’s software sits like an automated advertising broker between the two halves of this equation, as shown in Figure 7-11. It’s a really important point. If a content ad is hosted by Google and appears on your site, the advertiser and the publisher could theoretically cut out the company in the middle (Google), if each knew who the other was and could negotiate a price both felt was fair. For example, if I publish a site with information about digital photography, and I notice that online camera stores often provide the Google AdSense ads that appear on my site, I could theoretically approach one of these camera stores and negotiate a deal to carry ads for the store on my site that did not pay Google a commission. However, that assumes that I know who to contact and want to take on the added responsibility of a direct interface with the stores. Since many people don’t want this extra responsibility, using Google as an intermediary turns out to be a good solution.

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