Google advertisements are closely tied to its search functionality.
Leveraging its dominance over the search market, Google has become a force to be reckoned with in the domain of advertising. It sells advertising products to both advertisers and webmasters to create an extensive advertising network. These products are all based on keywords and common search terms that match a business and its products with the searches of ordinary Internet users.
History of Google Advertising
Google entered the advertising business in 2000 with its AdWords product. It then followed up in 2003 with a beta version of its AdSense application. In 2007, Google acquired DoubleClick, which was a business that sold tools for targeted advertising, such as tracking cookies, to advertising agencies and business clients.
AdWords
AdWords is Google's primary advertising product, marketed to businesses both large and small. Upon creating an AdWords account, businesses can create an ad campaign with a short advertisement, a website and a set of keywords. When a user makes a Google search and enters the keywords the business is associated with, that business is displayed as a "Sponsored Link" on the top and right of the actual search results. The link then leads to the business's website. Google charges for this service on a pay-per-click basis, with a payment plan that contains a strict budget limit.
AdSense
AdSense is an ad-serving program, which is marketed to website owners that are trying to earn revenue through hosting advertisements on their site. These ads may be text-based, or they can include images and videos. To use the program, a website designer inserts a string of JavaScript code onto the client's website. This code accesses Google's servers and retrieves AdWords advertising to display on the site. If using contextual advertising, Google accesses its cache of the website to determine which ads to deliver. In addition, the program favors high-paying advertisers by placing their content more prominently on the website, which results in more profit for the host.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Google Advertising
For website owners, AdSense offers many advantages over other forms of advertising. Before Google, most Web advertising was done through banner ads and pop-ups. These were found to be irritating to users, and many contained irrelevant, overly generic or deceptive offers. With AdSense's contextual advertising, most advertisements are tuned to the content of the website, increasing the odds of an ad's relevancy to visitors. However, AdSense is still imperfect. Although Google does police some content and removes certain keywords it considers inappropriate, it cannot guarantee that all of its AdWords partners are legitimate. As a result, users may consider the results less legitimate than ads sold directly by respected companies.
