Gmail's New Ad System

I've previously reported about Gmail's experiments with image ads and personalized ads, but it seems that these tests are two pieces from a puzzle: a new ad-matching system for Gmail.

New York Times reports that the new algorithms try to find better ads. "Alex Gawley, Google's senior product manager overseeing Gmail, (...) said Gmail's revamped ad-matching system, now in limited tests, analyzes context as well as the content of an individual message. It looks at what he calls 'signals in your inbox,' like whether you open messages with particular keywords and don't open those with other keywords."

Gmail will also include static image ads. "For example, an e-mailed offer for a ski package showing a skier on the slopes could be accompanied by an ad on the right side of the screen, showing a competing offer, replete with another skier coming down another slope. Mr. Gawley said the image used in the ad would be static, not animated, and would be used only in cases where the e-mail message itself showed images."

Gmail's new ads will still be related to your messages, but Google will add other signals that will make the ads an extension of your inbox. Just like Google shows small images ads next to images search results and uses your preferences to personalize ads, Gmail's contextual ads will improve using more data.

As long as the ads are relevant, moderately useful and they aren't distracting, Google is still on the right track. It might take a while to get used to the image ads, but the ad displayed below the messages and the list of messages will be the most obnoxious. "Gmail presents a single text ad when you look at an inbox view and haven't selected a particular message," according to the New York Times.

Personalized Gmail Ads

Gmail will soon start to personalize ads based on your preferences.

For example, if you've recently read a lot of messages about cameras, maybe you'd like to see an offer from your local camera shop. On the other hand, if you've reported these messages as spam, or marked them 'not important' you might not want to see that offer. Soon, some of you will start seeing fewer ads overall, and focused on subjects we hope will be important to you, at the right time.

Unlike Google Search, you can disable personalized ads from Gmail's settings page. Just make sure that this option is not checked: "Show more useful ads by using importance signals from across my messages".

"Only a few users will notice the change to begin with, but as we improve it we'll roll it out more widely. As always, ads in Gmail are fully automated - no humans read your messages - and no messages or personally identifiable information about you is shared with advertisers. We've already cut down the number of ads shown per Gmail user by more than a third, and we hope these signals will enable us to continue to show fewer, better ads in Gmail," explains Google.

Google also tests a new ad format that includes offers and coupons for your local area, which might be related to Google Offers, a service that will compete with Groupon.

Gmail Tests Image Ads

Greg Sterling spotted image ads in Gmail and this seems to be a controversial Gmail experiment. A Google spokesperson said that Google "recently started experimenting with image ads on messages with heavy image content." Greg confirmed that the image ads aren't displayed next text-only messages and they sometimes appear next to HTML messages that include a lot of images, especially newsletters.



Gmail's image ads are contextually targeted, but it's unlikely that users will tolerate them well. After all, one of Gmail's selling points was that it only used relevant text ads. Here's Google's answer from 2005 to the question "What makes Gmail different?": "There are other differences in the way Gmail provides access to your email. For example, Gmail automatically groups an email and the replies to it as a conversation. That means you always see a message in its proper context. And there are no pop-ups or banner ads in Gmail, just relevant text ads and links to related pages". Google's explanation continues: "[Gmail ads] are small and unobtrusive. They don't fill half your screen and we don't make you read them just to get to your inbox. Ads are never inserted into the body text of either incoming or outgoing Gmail messages and you won't see any pop-ups or untargeted banner ads in Gmail."

It's interesting to see that a Gmail page about privacy explains that "showing relevant advertising offers more value to users than displaying random pop-ups or untargeted banner ads". The key words are "random" and "untargeted".

{ Thanks, Greg. }

Google Tests Gmail Ads Below Messages

Google tests a new ad block below messages. It's not available to everyone, so Google probably tests its effectiveness.

Jordon, a Gmail user who spotted the new ad format, thinks it's "a bit more direct than other GMail ads", while Daniel Spiewak finds it annoying. It's certainly more noticeable than the ads from the right sidebar and you might accidentally click it when you try to reply to a message.



{ Thanks, Websonic, Jordon and Vasu. }

Google's Plans to Improve Ad Targeting

The Wall Street Journal got hold of a confidential Google document from 2008 about interest-based advertising, a feature that was released last year. In addition of providing ads that match the content of a page, Google wants to improve ad quality by creating user profiles based on the sites you've visited.

Selling ads is Google's big money-maker, but the online-ad business is broadening away from Google's sweet spot, selling ads tied to the search-engine terms people use. Instead, advertisers want to target people based on more specific personal information such as hobbies, income, illnesses or circles of friends. (...) Few online companies have the potential to know as much about its users as Google. (...) Significantly, however, Google doesn't mix the separate pots of personal data. For instance, it doesn't use data gleaned from a person's Gmail account to target ads to that person elsewhere online.

Google's internal document suggests that this might change. Google could use data from properties like Gmail, Orkut and even search queries to improve ad targeting. Here's an extract from the document:

Over time, as the value of audience targeting is proven and the market reaction to these practices is realized, we will discuss the use of Search data. Google Search is the BEST source of user interests found on the Internet and would represent an immediate market differentiator with which no other player could compete. Search could be used to populate user interests. It can also be used to create new surround-search targeting options in which relevant display ads (or text ads) could be delivered on [Google Content Network] to a user within 15-60 minutes of a given search, whereby the timeliness of the ad would presumably increase its relevancy to the user.

It's important to note that the author of the memo is Aitan Weinberg, a former DoubleClick executive who is now a senior Google product manager for interest-based advertising. WSJ says that Google's executives were against using cookies to track people online, but the DoubleClick acquisition changed their perspective.

For the first time, Google had the ability to deliver ads targeted to individual people's computers. But just because it had the ability, Google didn't start using it. There was still too much internal resistance. (...) Tensions erupted during a meeting with about a dozen executives at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters about 18 months ago when Messrs. Page and Brin shouted at each other over how aggressively Google should move into targeting, according to a person who had knowledge of the meeting. (...) Mr. Brin was more reluctant than Mr. Page, this person said. Eventually, he acquiesced and plans for Google to sell ads targeted to people's interests went ahead.

Despite the internal resistance, it's tempting to cross-correlate data about users. Showing contextual ads in Gmail seemed creepy at first, but the ads turned out to be quite useful.

{ via Google Blogoscoped }